But let's start with the birthday ... Isabella had an invitation to a school friend's 7th birthday party and like every kid's party we've ever been to, there was ordered chaos in a themed activity, followed by party (junk) food, and cake, finishing up with present opening and a goodie bag to send you on your way.
Another little friend, Kennedy, stayed the night and we were all amused by her nightie's uncanny resemblance to one of Isabella's toys - a Dr Seuss creature.
Just look at those excited little faces! No wonder they didn't sleep ...
The girls were a little hyper and didn't settle down until well after 10 o'clock. Isabella had made the ultimate sacrifice by offering Kennedy the top bunk, which was lovely but required a few creative yoga moves - thanks Maggie for helping prep me - to change the sheets.
After all that, both girls decided to camp instead ... Check out Abby, however - she's no fool!!
Isabella came along to one of the ABC (Aussie, British, Canadian) craft sessions - a painting class using a few sneaky techniques to great effect.
I should have taken a leaf out of her book and painted without inhibitions and too much conscious thought - the result would have been much better! (My painting is not on public display as it's such an embarrassment!) It was fun, though ...
Daniel spent most of the week at school - clearly the safest place for him ... While at home, the poor fellow decided he'd wrestle with a wooden pull along bunny; the bunny won. (Note welt under his right eye, and the set of the eyebrows expressing deep distress!!)
That incident hasn't curbed his predilection for living on the edge ... see below!
As residents of Georgia, we are obliged to follow the home baseball, American football, and basketball teams. I'm still working out which is which, but on Friday night, we drove up to the Big Smoke to see the Atlanta Hawks play the Cleveland Cavaliers - basketball, at the Philips Arena, a huge stadium in downtown Atlanta.
So much for getting away early so we could have a leisurely drive to Atlanta, check in to our digs and saunter off to dinner and the game ... a 1 1/2 trip to Atlanta took a hellish 3 hours in gridlock traffic and we didn't quite make it in time to have dinner with the rest of the Aussie contingent at Hudson's Grille, a sports bar on Marietta St, next door to the arena.
Did I mention that we had a last minute panic as we were leaving home due to Abby going AWOL? She was located after a mad 20 minute search, in a bathroom cupboard! Daniel owned up to it but it was in response to the "yes-no question": did you shut Abby in the cupboard?! Not entirely convinced, as he has recently answered in the affirmative to all sorts of y-n questions, such as: "Did you fly to the moon this morning, Daniel?" and "Have you eaten a hippo today?!"
Anyway, we had booked an Air Bnb in a beautiful 1930s Art Deco building in the same neighbourhood as the dinner and game, but needed to pick up the key from the owner in person, so I spent the 3 hours in traffic SMSing Richard with our amended estimated time of arrival.
"Ms Garmin", our sat nav, was recalibrating as we crawled north on the I-75 at about 6-12 mph. Tedious, very tedious, but thankfully the kids slept for about half of it.
We've stayed in two Airbnbs since we've been here - one in Savannah, and this one, and we've really enjoyed the experience which is often surprising and gives us the opportunity to meet the locals. Richard, our Atlanta condo host, happens to be a Communications lecturer at Georgia State Uni, and has his own coffee plantation in the Blue Ridge Mountains, northern Georgia, so it was a pity we didn't have more time to chat as he seemed like a fascinating character.
Richard had asked me to give him our ETA en route, and as the sat nav kept adjusting, I was in frequent contact, which became quite entertaining and helped pass the time:
Richard: How come your texts don't have a British accent ... like your voice? :)
Me: Because I'm an Aussie - you're no Henry Higgins!
Richard: Actually ... I played him once ... "The rain in Spain ... falls mainly on da plane ... uh ... plain."
I'm a sucker for a linguistic joke!! Just as well we didn't have more time with him - we were getting on far too well!!!
Our building for the night!
And on to the game ...
Any worries we'd had about a 2 1/2 year old playing up we're allayed - he was fascinated!!
The game itself was pretty interesting - certainly more so than cricket (for me!) and all the accompanying show biz made it quite an experience. We were part of a group of about 25 Aussies who'd made the trip up for the evening, and it was fun to be there with a gang of similarly ignorant folk!
It was, however, a late night for the kids and after a three hour trip, we were all pretty tired, so skipped the opportunity to let the kids "shoot hoops" under the stadium at the end of the game, and hightailed it back to the condo, instead.
At breakfast the next morning, Dave and I tried Richard's own brew and the kids, being used to tea-drinking parents, were enthralled with the coffee machine!! Such cheap entertainment.
Time to get Daddy up ... and it's never gentle!!
The rooftop terrace gave us a great view of the Atlanta skyline ...
Clearly, "selfies" are more effective when only one or two heads are in the shot!!
Goodbye, style and culture!!
Woodruff Park was just across the road from the building so once we'd dumped the luggage, we gave the kids some time to be free!!
Does the play equipment look like anything to you?
Daniel taking a walk on the wild side ...
As pretty as the park was with all its spring blooms, there was an "element" that kept us moving, on to Broad Street for lunch at Reuben's Delicatessen.
It was mentioned in Richard's blurb to visitors and it seemed casual enough to take two hungry children. Casual? It was a hoot! The instructions to patrons made me wish we could witness it during a peak lunch period ... probably much like a family Christmas in our household!!
So that was Atlanta again, where we tried to suck up as much civilization and culture as we could in just under 24 hrs, before having to head south again to the land of family chain restaurants, Baptist churches, and squirrels ... Ok, so the squirrels are worth coming home to ...
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