A few days late, a few dollars short

We were in Atlanta last weekend - landed Friday afternoon and took off Sunday afternoon. We decided, in the tradition we started in San Diego, to end our first night with a trip to the local ballpark. It was a 7:30 PM first pitch with fireworks afterwards...

Turner is a nice park, and our seats were pretty good considering this was last-minute. We were behind home plate on the first mezzanine. It was a nice evening - about 80 degrees still when the sun set.

The girls were hella-tired. I'd forgotten Lindsay's blanket in the hotel room, which meant she couldn't nap in her stroller (she might not have anyway, but we would've had a better shot with blanket). I took Dad's approach of snack every 2 innings, and I have no idea if he was using it as a diversion technique, but it is an awesome one. Hot dogs in the 2nd inning, cotton candy in the 4th, and ice cream after the seventh-inning-stretch got us all the way to the fireworks...

...which were a lot more spectacular than I managed to capture. It really was an awesome 20 minute display and neither of my kids minded the big booms. What I didn't know about Atlanta was that the traffic is terrible. We spent an hour driving back to our hotel, which was only 4 miles away. We did the Walk-of-Shame you may have read about on Worst Mama.

We got up and had breakfast with Alec before he had to go to his conference, which was what he was there to do. We were there to spend time with our friends. I took the massive SUV we rented (alright, it was a Toyota Rav 4, which is a bit bigger than my Mazda 5) and drove out to Decatur to meet Jeremiah, Sarah, and Kate at the gazebo.

Sarah and Lindsay eyed each other. If they were dogs, this is where the sniffing would've started. Sarah said, "Hi, Baby" through her pacifier at Lindsay. Lindsay responded with a little wave. Kate and Lauren were instantly thick as thieves. They discussed relationships: "Where's your dad?" "He's at work." "What's his name?" "Alec." "My dad's name is Jeremiah." As well as their mutual admiration for Disney princesses. "So your favorite princess is Aurora? Mine is Snow White."

We went back to their house and met Lisa, with her brand new hair. The children played. We caught up. There were pork sandwiches with fried lemon (OMG! so good). Lisa and I tucked Sarah and Lindsay for naps and walked with the big girls to the Oakhurst Community Garden. Lisa blogged about the garden here, if you haven't seen it already - I didn't take pictures there for some reason. When the little girls woke up, we all went to the McKoy Park Pool.

Jeremiah playing with Lindsay. I think she's feeding him a toy. She thought he was hilarious, and just couldn't get his name right, so she just kept calling him "SarahDad". She called Lisa "Weesa".

Sarah and Lindsay

Lauren has some serious skills now she's taken some swimming lessons. She shows Lisa how long she can hold her breath underwater in this picture. Considering she wouldn't go IN the water at the beginning of the summer, this is a huge accomplishment.

Sarah plays in the fountain.

Lisa whipped up some smoothies for the girls for dinner, and Jeremiah got to work on some beef tenderloin.

"My kids need to go to sleep, "Lisa said. "Maybe we can put them all to bed and enjoy our dinner?"

And so, we did. Dinner was some serious meat candy. We enjoyed some wine and dark chocolate with rock salt for dessert. Lisa and Jeremiah helped get sleeping girls in the car and I headed back to the hotel.

On Sunday, we went to see the aquarium, and Alec finally was done with his conference. We met there around 9 AM, sharing sleepy expressions - Sarah had kept Lisa and Jeremiah up most of the night, and we just didn't sleep very well on the lumpy mattress at the hotel. The best thing was this giant tank:

My pictures from the aquarium were the worst of all. That's Kate and Lindsay looking into the giant tank. We saw the performingest octopus ever - usually you get to see a tentacle or two, but this guy was hanging out and actually swam across the tank. After the aquarium, we headed back to Lisa and Jeremiah's for lunch, and then had to make our way to the airport.

Atlanta - awesome. I chat with Lisa most days, so it was really cool to see her in person, and even better that our kids got along.