atlanta

it is so fun to be able to stop in atlanta on the way to florida. matt and i went to college and met in atlanta, so it is a little special to us and then we get to see uncle derek and my friends shannon, earl, allie and ollie who live there too!  matt had to spend today in a conference for work, but the kids and i were free to visit the city. after looking at our options, i thought that it would be fun to go to the atlanta zoo. they have 10 month old, twin pandas, i had never been before and our zoo pass got us half off admission. as an added bonus allie and ollie joined us for the morning!

waiting for the zoo to open

one of the twin baby panda girls

everyone but maddux was very excited to brush the goats

there were lots of cut-out photo opps and the kids had to try every single one. i liked these two shots the best because you can see all three in the first one and maddux gave a pretty perfect face in the second.

the elephants were orange because of the georgia clay which was sort of neat.

the kids sort of melted down and we didn't end up staying but for a few hours. they were all tired, hot and overall crazy. i felt so bad making allie and ollie leave so early. allie was awesome too because she has done the 'behind the scenes' at the zoo and knows tons about all of the animals. i learned so much just from her!

as a surprise, shannon was working from home today and invited us over for lunch. the kids were thrilled with her super indoor picnic and disney junior.

and i just had to take a picture of our amazing view from our hotel room. it was very impressive at night, but i never managed to take a picture. we were on the 31st floor and the elevators were glass and very fast. i can't handle that kind of speed and view so i just focused on the doors. well, apparently, mason can't handle it either. all of the kids faced the glass walls when we rode in the elevator, but as we were going downstairs this morning i noticed that mason was getting lower and lower into a squat during our ride and was literally pulling the handrail off the wall! it took me a minute to get him to let go when we reached the bottom because he was so terrified. and then mason and i both only watched the doors in the elevator.

tomorrow we hit the road for florida! love.