Memorial day weekend was a fun one this year. We had special watery plans, however the rain was water enough for us. So we decided to explore Atlanta with the kids with a city pass. On friday we went to the Coca Cola museum. It was just really relaxed, and neat to see how it is made, bottled, etc, and how marketing was an amazing tool to get this weird brown drink to be a can't-think-of-a-world-without-cocacola famous drink. We were able to be photographed as a family in a fantastic Coca-Cola designed room, which I really thought was cool, and ofcourse we tasted all the drinks made by Coca-Cola worldwide. There were some really good ones, and as always Josh tried to get all of us to try the really bitter one, don't even know what it was called. We all had a blast and were delighted to take the famously shaped cola bottle home as a souvenir. What a fun night, the girls and even Jasper seemed to like it a lot! The girls especially felt 'grown-up' as we allowed them to taste everything. In short: a blast.
On saturday we went to the aquarium. I guess a lot of people decided to save their money for a trip and go museum hooping, wow I've never seen so many people in one place. We still had a wonderful time, this museum is unbelievable as they now have 4 whalesharks that are about 20-25 feet long and still growing. I love the oceanic part where they show the whalesharks, other sharks, and many extravagant other fish through several feet thick glass that you walk under, kind of shaped like a tunnel. Jasper was in awe of all the fish, and the girls just LOVE the whale sharks. My less favorite animal in the aquarium is a giant Japanese crab, which apparently can become as big as a car. I always think: what if you have never even heard of such an animal, you go on vacation to e.g. Japan, and you run into a crab as big as a car. Wouldn't that totally cause a heart attack? It would to me. Glad I know they exist, maybe I would only get a small heart attack when I'd encounter one. Yikes. We were going to go to a play area towards the end, and told the girls that was the next place, when 1 second later we couldn't find Sofia. I assumed she had already gone there a little too quickly, but when going there I didn't see her. So 10 minutes later, with a heart rate of about 200+, we decided to all go over there, when I see my sweet little girl, all stuped over, on the verge of crying, talking to a guard to help her find us. It was so sad, that I just held her and explained to her how terrified we were for not finding her and that we need to stay together. Thank heaven that we were back together.
Despite that, it was another wonderful day! The girls had fun for a while to draw whalesharks for pictionary or alike.
On sunday we went to church, and had just a fun relaxed afternoon playing games, and talking about the aquarium, etc. It was just so fun to have relaxed family time, and we even got to spend some time in the fresh air once it stopped raining. The girls biked to the playpark, and were able to get their feet wet in the pool.
On monday, we went to the Fernbank museum. We had been there before when the girls were little, 2x even, but I couldn't even remember until I walked into the door. Awful to be demented at 36 yrs. It was really neat with the new exhibits from dinosaur fossils and skeletons from China, they had made an exhibit with what the animals might have looked like in those days including some feathered very weird looking dinosaurs. They had dinosaur skulls in all sorts and shapes, some of the skulls seemed larger than the girls. They also had a part to play for little and even littler kids, which the girls enjoyed as well, and so did Jasper. We ended up with an area that dealt with various scientific 'experiments' showing the characteristics of light, color and sound, using mirrors, gases, and electricity to show some of these features. We all enjoyed that a lot, probably especially me :) . We stopped at Ikea for their special meatball dish (Lilian loves 'gehaktbaltjes' :)) and had yet another fun day.
