ATL

Last Friday Jessica planned this cool trip to ATL complete with riding the MARTA. That is something I have always wanted to do but never made the time. Jessica found a free parking area at the College Park station. We bought our passes and went down the stairs to wait for the train....or is it a subway? It was cool whatever it was!

I felt like a tourist and we probably looked pretty silly to the regulars on the trains! Plus to add to our awkward-ness I packed our lunches because I thought we would just be having a picnic....what i didn't realize was our picnic wasn't going to be by the car but somewhere in downtown Atlanta! So here we were lugging around a small cooler! At least I had extra helpers since Luke(12, nephew) and Kayla(10, niece) were here visiting from Tennessee. We all took turns with the cooler:)
Nate didn't like sitting down...but you had to or you would be thrown forward when the train started to move!

Kayla and Sophia would fight over the window seat!

Looks like it was Fia's turn!

After getting off at our stop we went up these LONG escalators which is always fun. It was so nice to just follow the crowd too. I didn't have to think the whole time:) I did try to make a mental note of everything so we could do this again with Richard!

This is the "moon sand" box inside the Children's Museum. This was a bit hit with children of all ages!!

We went to Centennial Olympic Park first to play in the fountains after the 12:30 show(they have a water show where the foundtains shoot up to music) but they weren't turning them on until 330pm(which was sad because there were at least 4 school/daycare groups there waiting in their swimsuits to play!!) So we thought we would go play at the park on the other side but it was closed also due to the Black Arts Festival being set up for that evening! So then we decided to visit the Children's Museum. This, the Coke Factory and the Georgia Aquarium are all next to each other. We have been to the Aquarium but never the other 2 so it was nice to actually go inside! Plus it was had A/C!
The museum was geared towards younger children but everyone had a blast. They had these balls that you could roll up and down ramps, through tunnels, etc. that you controlled with pulleys and shovels. Nate and Luke really enjoyed those and I thought I got a picture of them playing....but I didn't:)

They also had a very talented musician, storyteller, juggler guy. He asked Nolan to come up and help him sing. When the man asked what his name was, Nolan said "peter man". :) I laughed so hard!

Kayla trying out the stilts!

After we played in the Children's Museum we headed back to Centennial Olympic Park for the 3:30pm show. I had forgotten the girl's swimsuits so I went to the souvenir shop and got these T-shirts 3/$10 for them to wear in the water. Then they changed into their dry shirts for the ride home. I do believe thier shorts dried out pretty quickly since it was so HOT!

Nate couldn't decide if he wanted to get wet. Lately we have been having afternoon thunderstorms....and sure enough one blew in right as we were just starting

to enjoy the fountains!

But even with the rain it was a fab-O day!!