Belated Birthday

I've been under the weather for the past week, so that's my excuse for the delay in posting Kate's birthday pics!  ;o)  However, don't let the title fool you!  We celebrated on her birthday without delay....she would not have let us postpone for ANY reason!  Here she is sporting her first birthday gift of the day: a purplicious outfit!

After a full day of school, we headed to gymnastics then to the restaurant of her choice.  Okay, I'm not gonna lie, I did not accept her first choice of McDonald's!  But finally we found a good second: BlueFin!  It's a local Sushi Bar... and YES she did eat Sushi for dinner.  (Okay, it's "cheater" sushi according to our waiter since it's cooked, but it's my favorite too!)  After stuffing ourselves, we still had room to walk next door to the frozen yogurt place!  Daddy let her get 6 toppings!  She did not make it through them all.  ;o)

Finally, home for presents!  We started off the night skyping with her bestie, Mary.  They were so sweet to mail a special gift...a diary that she has not put down since!  I LOVE it!  I was SO enjoying seeing their sweet faces, I didn't take a single picture...bummer.

Kate was so excited to get her OWN scooter.  This item has been the center of many heated debates at our house recently.  So a welcome sight for this momma too!

GRAPE!  No little girl can have too much purple, or pink or baby blue (apparently the new favorite)!  I think the huge purple bean bag was a hit Papaw!  Thank you!!!

Lolly and Pop scored big with the new Strawberry Shortcake friends!  Cherry Jam was a new one we had not even seen yet.  She wanted to break into them right away to play...unfortunately we were getting really close to 9 o'clock on a school night!  (We are normally in bed by 7:30!)

 The best part of her gift from Grandpa and Grandma Myers was them being here in person!  She got a very special purple Bible from them, which we used immediately that night for our devotions.

Still struggling to wrap my brain around the fact that she is SIX years old!  The fact that she is starting to read  as I type is mind boggling!  Love this little girl....though still praying for rapture before the tween years!  PEOPLE get READY it is coming!  ;o)  

Fall break!

The county school here in GA is closer to a year round school schedule (at least that's what they say).  So we started the beginning of Aug but now we enjoy a week off for fall break!  No complaints here! ;o) With Grandma & Grandpa here, we decided this was a great time to take a mini vacation.  So we spent a few days down in Atlanta seeing some of the highlights.

Wednesday we started at CNN, taking the studio tour.  It was very interesting to see the "behind the scenes" of the everyday news.  Kate did was an anchor with the help of Daddy reading the teleprompter to her.  Blake did the weather for us:

and they both experimented with the green sheet:

The face is compliments of a comment Daddy made...it doesn't take much these days!

Grandpa getting a picture...loved this one!

Next we headed to the GA Aquarium.  The kids found these dolphins out front, so we had to stop for pics!

I'm glad we did because my phone battery died and I didn't get any pic inside the aquarium, bummer!  I'm sure I'll get some from Grandma's camera.  We got to see the Dolphin Tales show...that was pretty cool.  I think Dolphins are my favorite next to active otters!  ;o)  The aquarium was closing early for an event so we missed some things, but the kids were okay with that since our next stop was THE COCA~ COLA MUSEUM!  

Cracks me up, but they both remember that more than the aquarium...I think it's all about the amount of pop they consume at the end of the tour!  I will admit though, it is a very interesting place and they seem to keep it that way.  We were there last year at Thanksgiving and there were new exhibits on display.  My favorite this time around were all the different torches from the Olympics!  Never realized they used a different style each year...pretty cool.

We finished off the night with a yummy dinner at Legal Seafoods and a dip in the pool at the hotel!

Our first/only stop on Thursday was the Atlanta Zoo!  What a blast.  This was our first time there and I was impressed with how well they maintained such an old zoo (est 1889!) and they pack a lot of things into a small park.  This is Willie B the gorilla...they had a very large gorilla exhibit, my favorite one.

The kids were able to enjoy unlimited rides on the train, carousel, and rock climbing wall.  I lost count how many times Blake rode the train!  Crazy boy.  

Someone had the great idea of telling the kids no dessert unless they reached the top!  They both made it...guess who first?!?  She loves her some dessert.  ;o)

On our way out the kids found another dolphin!

I love trying new places, so we found a high ranked pizza place on urbanspoon: Antico Pizza!  It was quite the experience and very yummy besides...we'll go back without the kids someday!  ;o)  After pizza we had to find a dessert place due to our promise...what did we ever do without smart phones!  Found a Kilwins at Atlantic Station, another first for us.  Not disappointed at all...of course how could you not go wrong with ice cream, fudge, caramel apples, shaved ice.....The choice was hard! 

Again the end of our day found us in the pool at the hotel!

Day three found us at Fernbank Museum of Natural History.  It was the first day of the Genghis Khan exhibit, very interesting!  They had a neat hands on area and the NatureQuest interactive play area was great for the kids!  I'm sure they could have stayed another hour or two there!

Behind the kids is the world's only fully mounted Argentinosaurus, the largest dinosaur ever classified!  

What is a road trip without a meal at Cracker Barrel?!?  We stopped and filled our tummies one last time before arriving home.  It is good to sleep in my own bed without snoring kids in the bed next to us!