A Day in the City

Yesterday we decided to take the kids on a trip to Atlanta. Even though we live so close, we just don't go down there much. We drive through it to go on other trips, but we rarely actually stop and experience Atlanta, outside of horrible traffic. Honestly, the traffic is what completely ruins Atlanta. It's enough to make me not want to visit...ever. Not to mention once you get into the actual city, it's full of one-way streets and if you don't know it really well, you end up driving in circles trying to find your way to the right direction to get to the place you need to be. I remember back in the day visiting Atlanta before I lived in Georgia and driving around seeing the building I wanted to go to, but not being able to get there because it was surrounded with one-way streets and we were going the wrong way. Anyways, today, we drove to Doraville, right at Spaghetti Junction (which is on the perimeter of Atlanta), and rode the Marta into Atlanta. We then walked over to the new Coke museum. The kids had never been on the Marta or to the Coke museum, so it was lots of fun. I told the kids that the Marta was a train that's mostly above ground but sometimes goes underground and goes fast and all that stuff. Drew had herself so excited about it that she was shaking when we got there. We also had to make a train switch to get off the north/south train and head to the east/west train. That was a tiny adventure in itself. Once we got there, we walked through Olympic Centennial Park where they were having some huge thing for diabetes, and it was filled with people and balloons and loud music, so that was neat for the kids, too. They've recently built a new Coke museum, so, even though I'd been to the old one a bunch of times, I was pretty excited myself to see the new one. The first thing you do when you get there is watch this really cute movie about what supposedly happens when you put your quarter in a coke machine. Inside the machine is this imaginary world with all these strange creatures. It was one of those movies that's so cute and that the kids were so into that I almost cried watching them watch the movie. They really enjoyed it for the most part. The "milestones" section, which is a lot of the history of Coke was pretty boring for them, plus for some reason it was more crowded than the rest of the museum, so I could've lived without that myself. Crowded areas plus whiney kids makes me have anxiety attacks. But we left there and saw how Coke is bottled and then got to see another movie in 4D (the 4th dimension is feeling I guess - they squirted water and cold air and the seats moved), and that was really neat. Then, of course, there were the decades of old commercials we got to watch. And then at the end there was all the Coke products from all over the world that we got to drink until we were sick. The kids are still talking about Beverly, the horrible drink from Italy. And, I was alive when Tab was around, but never actually drank it until yesterday -- Ugh!!! Who in their right mind drank that more than once? It was a lot of fun, and we got to take home a free bottle of Coke as a souvenier, which was nice because they force you to walk through the gift shop at the end, so the kids weren't as tempted to ask for things when we were leaving. We then ate lunch at the food court in the CNN center, and then headed back to the Marta. At the Marta station, like all subways, once you pay and go through the gate, you can't leave unless you're done for the day or are willing to pay to get back in. Well, even though the kids went to the bathroom twice at lunch, their little bodies just couldn't handle all that carbonation and liquid. We got into the Marta station and Drew was about to explode...again. There was no bathroom anywhere. Then when we got to the station to make our switch, we couldn't find a bathroom there either. She was miserable, and I felt so bad for her. She couldn't even bear (or bare?) to sit down on the train. We had about a 15 minute trip from there, and thank goodness she made it. Back in Doraville we found a bathroom. Surprisingly, the kids fell asleep on the way home, even with all that caffiene and sugar in their systems.

Field Trip

This is a picture of me with my class, plus a few extras. We have four 4th grade classes, and there were only 3 guides at the place we went to, so we had to split a class. I was supposed to have 5 extra, but I ended up with 8 extra for various reasons. One just decided she didn't want to go with the other class, and the other 2 live in outerspace the majority of the time, so they just went the wrong way. By the time I caught them, the other teacher was gone. Anyways, I haven't talked much about school because, while everyone asks, "How's school going?" I am aware that it's like asking "How are you?" You're generally just looking for a "Fine." But, since we went on a field trip today, I thought some highlights wouldn't hurt. We went to this place called Tallulah Gorge, which was pretty neat. It's this huge gorge (obviously) with a few waterfalls and lakes. It's so pretty because it's up in the mountains with these overlooks that make your knees weak because they're so high. This crazy guy (too tired to remember his name - starts with a W) walked a tight rope across it back in the 70's. So anyways, when we first arrived, one of the busses broke down. Every bit of oil in the bus leaked out all over the parking lot and it wouldn't restart. So, the whole time we were in the museum and hiking and petting snakes they were working on the bus. When it was finally time to go to lunch, the bus still wasn't fixed, so the other bus had to take one group and drop them off, and then come get the rest of us. They finally got the bus fixed, but at that point we were running late. When we were about 5 minutes from school, the principal called me (no clue why I was the chose one - I'm the new one!) on my cell phone to tell me that one of the other busses was being split and as soon as we got to the room we had to figure out what kids were being sent on different busses for the day. Also, fundraiser items had been delivered, so we had to pass those out. So, we ran back to the room 5 minutes before busses had to be loaded to go home. I'm trying to figure out who has to ride a different bus while passing out fundraiser junk and parents from the field trip are in my ear asking if they can go ahead and take their kids. It was all crazy, although it doesn't sound so crazy without me there in person to add in the hand motions and the excitement. I was telling Andy about it and he kinda mentioned that it sounded like a mess, and the sad truth is, it was really just another day. It seems like the end of every day is crazy. Parents call and decide at the last minute they're gonna pick up their kids instead of sending them on the bus, or they decide at the last minute to send their kids home with someone else. I've even gotten a note 2 minutes before it's time to leave from a kid who forgot to give it to me in the morning stating that he needed to ride the bus to a certain address, but the parent has no idea which bus that is. Oh, I could go on and on, but most of you are probably starting to skim at this point and are over the picture of all those kids you know nothing about, so I'll close for now. I have to say, though, as stressful and crazy as it gets, I just love it. And I'm not just saying that the way some people act like their life is perfect when we all know they're full of it. The truth is my house is a disaster, the laundry is piled way too high, and there's nothing I loathe more than house work. But, I really love my job.

Mmmmmm...

This weekend we went up to Helen, mainly just for some caramel apples. For those of you not from here, Helen is this little tiny German-themed tourist trap of a town with souvenir shops filled with all the junk and Harley-Davidson memorabilia you could ever want. They also have several little camp grounds and a river that you can go tubing in. We went up there for the homemade candy. We got stuck in traffic before we really even got there, because, being that it's German-themed, they had started Oktoberfest, so it was packed. We decided to stop at the little candy shop just before the town instead of actually getting into town. So, once we got in there, Andy told the kids they could get one thing and could pick anything they wanted. In a store that's wall to wall candy, that was a bit overwhelming for them. Their brains went into overload and nobody could make a decision. They ended up migrating over to the tiny little section of name brand candy that you can get in any gas station, so we had to convince them that everything else in the store was so much better. Eventually Drew settled on a caramel apple with nuts and Evan and Alli chose a rice crispy treat on a stick dipped in chocolate with sprinkles. We went to this little picnic area by the river and ate our candy while we laughed at the people trying to tube through a river that was way too shallow due to the horrible drought this year. They kept getting caught on rocks and having to get up and drag their tubes through the river. After that we went to the Corn Maze -- the same one we went to last fall for those of you loyal to my blog. We got there before dark and sort of followed the same pattern as last year letting the kids run us around wherever they wanted. The only problem was I couldn't figure out the map and Andy was thoroughly enjoying wandering aimlessly. By the time we decided to get serious and figure out the way out it was dark and we couldn't even see the map. Normally I would've freaked out in the dark in the middle of a corn field, but, fortunately, we weren't the only people lost. We finally made it to the edge after a couple of hours of wandering and just cut through the corn to get out. I don't have any pictures of it this time because I left my camera in the car, and once we were in there, there was no getting out. We topped the evening off with a viewing of The Apple Dumpling Gang, which 2 of the 3 kids fell asleep in the middle of.