Atlanta Trip

Kyle and I went to Atlanta, GA last month. We were there Aug. 21-26. Kyle served his mission in Atlanta and has been dying to go back. He is working on getting a job there with one of the Big Four accounting firms. Anyway, after school ended in August, we left on our trip. It was kind of a "mission visit/happy graduation (for me)/happy anniversary/we want to go on vacation" trip.

Traveling to Georgia was probably the worst part of the trip. We had to be at the SLC airport early Sunday morning. We flew to Vegas where we had an hour long layover and then we flew into Birmingham, AL. In Birmingham, we rented our car and drove 2.5 hours to Atlanta. So it was a long day of traveling. This long day was made even longer by the fact that Braxton stayed at home with his grandma (thanks Debbie!) and so I hadn't nursed all day. But I had prepared for that. I brought our car adaptor so that I could pump once we rented our car. Psych! It didn't work. There wasn't enough juice to power my pump. So I went about 10 hours without pumping or nursing when I normally feed Braxton 6-8 times a day! So I was hurting pretty bad by the time we got there. Anyway, back to our trip. We grabbed a quick lunch from Hardee's on our way out of Birmingham. It was NASTY! Grossest chicken ever! And they messed up our order.

Once we got to Atlanta and checked into our hotel, I pumped and then we cleaned up for dinner. On our way to dinner we stopped at Target to pick up a couple things- snacks, water, the works. Oh- the Target was underground. Like you take an elevator DOWN to the Target. It was crazy. We drove down to dinner, parked, and... it was pouring! So we ran across the street to the restaurant we wanted to eat at. Out of business. So we ran back across the street to our second choice restaurant, Longhorn. By the time we got inside, we were completely soaked through our clothes. The seating hostess got us towels to pat ourselves dry. Our dinner was amazing! Kyle got this amazing chicken dish that was to die for and I got a salad. It was the most not wimpy salad. It probably could have fed both of us. It was that big. It had pecans, berries, mandarin oranges, grilled chicken, red onions... tons of stuff! So good!

After dinner, we went back to Target to buy an umbrella. The only color they had was pink. Nice. Kyle was really excited about that. :) We headed back to our hotel and spent a couple hours relaxing and watching TV and went to bed early.

DAY 1

Our first morning, we got up, showered, and got ready for the day. Kyle went and got us some breakfast while I finished getting ready and pumped (I pumped 3-4 times a day while we were gone). The breakfast was not all that great, but it was free! We headed out the door and headed to our first stop: The Atlanta Aquarium. Now, if you have not been to the Atlanta Aquarium, you are sorely missing out. The Atlanta Aquarium is the largest aquarium in the world. It is rather pricey, but totally worth it. There was so much to do! We got to touch stingrays and sharks in one of the little tanks. It was so cool!

The Dolphin exhibit is new since Kyle had been there on his mission. It was really neat.
One "wing" of the aquarium has this walk-through tunnel thing that goes through the tank. It has one of those moving sidewalk things like some airports have. So you can ride on this little sidewalk and you are completely surrounded by the tank on all sides. It is super cool! The picture below is of us in the tank!

The picture above is another tank. I loved all the bright colors. Can you find the seahorses? There are two in this picture.

Jelly's. Braxton's favorite!

Kyle's favorite are penguins. He's so cute :)

My favorite fish (above) and a picture of me in front of the tank (below).

Who's bigger? Me or the fish???

After the aquarium, we left our car in the parking garage and walked up through Centennial Park. It was so beautiful. I had never been to a big city before, so I had never experienced "big city parks." THEY ARE AWESOME! So big and beautiful. Tons of space for everyone.

This is the fountain in the middle of Centennial Park. It is interesting that the park is surrounded by the business district. We continued walking up through the park and went to the CNN center.
Yes, this is where they actually film CNN. Pretty cool. I wouldn't have thought that this would be in Atlanta. We had lunch here at Moe's. It's kind of like Chipotle or Qdoba. So we enjoyed lunch with all the business people :)

After lunch we drove around the city some more. Pictures below.

Really cool building that says ATLANTA.

The Capitol Building has a gold dome!

Kind of hard to see, but that tall tower is the Coca-Cola building. For you, Mom! :)

For dinner that night, we had plans to go out with some people from Ernst & Young. We ate at this little steakhouse called Aspen's. It was such a good meal and so much fun. We had deep fried lobster tail as one of our appetizers. We had never heard of anyone deep frying a lobster tail, but it was dang good! For our entrees, I had a chicken dish and Kyle ordered a medium rare sushi-grade salmon on a potato cake. Everything was so good, but we somehow managed to smash a dessert in there, too. It was really nice getting to know some of the employees at EY and chatting with their wives. I was able to get a pretty good idea of what to expect as Kyle enters the accounting world.

DAY 2

Slept in. Had lunch at Kyle's favorite place from the mish. Buffalo Wild Wings. I was pretty nervous about having wings again since the last time I had them I was pregnant and they ended up in the toilet at 4 in the morning. But they were really good! Kyle bought some of their special sauce to bring home with us and we have been enjoying that.

After lunch, we headed up to Stone Mountain. It is the largest mountain in Georgia and the largest slab of granite in the U.S. (or something crazy like that). So we paid to take a gondola ride up to the top of Stone Mountain.
The carving in the side of the mountain is of the Confederate war generals- Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson. It might be kind of hard to see in this picture. The carving is about 40 feet deep and hundreds of feet tall. It is huge!

Me at the top of the mountain! These yellow daisies only grow where there is granite nearby.
Kyle at the top- look at all the trees! I never knew that there were so many trees in the South.

US!

The view from the top. There are a lot of other things to do at Stone Mountain. During the summer, they have a laser light show that they shine up against the granite that you can watch. There are lots of other activities that go on there, but they were kinda spendy.

After Stone Mountain we went back to the hotel to shower after being out in the sun all day. We got all dressed up for for our anniversary dinner (funny story- our anniversary was actually the day before, but we went out with EY. So technically we got a free meal for our anniversary). Kyle took me to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. It was amazing. I have never had such an expensive meal (and I probably won't again for quite a while). Kyle ate a fillet and I had the mixed grill. It came with a crab cake, fillet and chicken. Oh, we got sides too. It was a lot of food.

Then the restaurant gave us a free dessert for our anniversary! Crappy phone pic below:

Voila! Chocolate Mousse Cake! It was gone really fast! So good!

After dinner we went and drove around the city some more. We passed some places that Kyle recognized from his mission. We took some pictures with the city skyline in the background. It was such a beautiful night.

DAY 3

Wednesday morning we went to the Atlanta Temple. It was recently renovated so we were really excited to go. Apparently they don't rent out clothing anymore, so we had to get approval from the Temple Presidency to borrow some clothes. Oops! So we went and did sealings and there were only four of us there. It is really sad because the temple has had to cut back their hours because not enough people were coming to the temple. We also ran into the bishop from Kyle's first area on his mission. He didn't remember Kyle- he was a greenie and only there for a transfer or two, but Kyle recognized him instantly.
After the temple, we went back to our hotel room to change and left to meet a family Kyle had taught on his mission in Carrollton. On our way, we stopped to get some lunch at The Shack on Main. Now, the Shack looks just like that- a shack. You walk in and order and then go sit outside at a picnic table to eat. It looks super questionable and most people would probably just keep driving past, but it has the BEST southern BBQ! Oh my goodness it was good! We got a briscut sandwich, a pulled-pork sandwich, fried okra, and candied yams all for ten bucks! And it was one of our favorite meals of the week!

We spent the rest of the day with the Stevens family. Kyle taught the discussions to their grandson, Gage. Gage got baptized while Kyle was there. So we spent the afternoon talking with them. Gage graduated from high school and is now going to Georgia State. Kyle was also really happy to find out that they are all still active in the Church. It really made him feel like his mission had made a difference.

After the Stevens, we went and walked around Piedmont Park. It was beautiful, but we didn't stay very long because the sun was starting to go down and for some reason all the weirdies like to meet up at Piedmont after dark...

Beautiful pond in the middle

The area where the missionaries used to go play ultimate frisbee.

The rest of our night was pretty low key. We went to dinner at this little place called Thai Silk. We couldn't understand our waitress at all, but for some reason we got 50% off of our meal. Sweet! It was really good. I would love to go back there some day.

DAY 4

On Thursday we spent the morning at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. It was absolutely amazing. As Kyle said, "I'm not even black, and it was moving." And it is totally free! Free parking, free admission!

This is the mural that is painted along the walkway up to the museum. It was huge.

Kyle and me in front of the mural

First we went in the museum. The museum had lots of shows and displays of the Human Rights Movement and a chronology of Dr. King's life. There were a lot of things that I didn't know about him- like that his best friend when he was little was a little white boy, but when they started school, the friend's mother wouldn't let them play together. Or that MLK's dad was also a preacher. And that MLK had his doctorate in theology (duh, DOCTOR King. Somehow I missed that). MLK also offered to negotiate the end of the Vietnam War.

After the museum, we walked across the street to the church where Martin Sr. and Martin Jr. preached. This church, Ebenezer's Baptist Church, was restored in 2007 to look just as it did in the 50's and 60's.
After the church, we walked farther down the street and visited the grave site of Dr. and Mrs. King. It is sad that she was a widow for over 40 years.
Our last stop was at the house that Martin grew up in. You could pay to take a little tour through the house, but we just looked at the outside. Cute little house, huh?
That afternoon we went and drove around the richy part of Atlanta. We are cool and took pictures on our phones of some of the cool houses. These houses are all in the Buckhead area and all range from $2-20 million!

This last one was my favorite! Isn't it just gorgeous?!

Dinner that night was with some more reps from Ernst and Young. We went out with Luke and his wife, Angie. Luke was doing an internship in Atlanta when Kyle was on his mission. He went out with Kyle on exchanges a couple times. We went to Fogo de Chao, which is like Tucano's only a million times better and several times more expensive.

All dressed up for dinner.

After dinner, we drove up to Kennesaw to visit with Kyle's Black Mama. When Kyle served in Kennesaw, the missionaries were always over at Demenia's house. She (and the Stevens) are some of the few people Kyle has kept in contact with since his mission.

It was so fun meeting DeeDee. She is a crazy lady! A loud, black lady! She has six kids ranging from 26ish to 17. I think we saw two or three of them while we were there. And her grandson was over. He was the cutest thing ever. He showed us his sweet karate moves, complete with sound effects. It must have been quite the workout though because he fell asleep on the floor next to us. We stayed at DeeDee's for a good three hours talking and laughing together. She is seriously one of the nicest people.

DAY 5

Going home. We packed up our stuff and left at about 10:30 am. We drove over to Birmingham and had lunch at Chipotle. We still had some time to kill, so we went to the Museum of Aviation. It was very historical... and not very entertaining... and definitely not worth $14, but... here is a picture anyway.

We had to return our rental car by 2:00pm, so we headed back to the airport. We watched "Back to the Future" on Kyle's laptop until our plane arrived. We had a layover in Chicago before landing in Salt Lake.

What I learned from visiting the South:

1. Everyone is super friendly. Say hi to everyone. If you don't, you are mean.
2. Black people are awesome. Nuff said.
   
3. It really isn't that humid there. It's nice, actually. A lot better than living in the desert.
4. Two men + one dog= GAY
5. City living is expensive. Pretty much everywhere you go is $10 parking.
6. Eight lane freeways are scary.
   

We had such a great time on our trip. Georgia is so beautiful; I think it might have just as many trees as North Idaho. I love it. Can't wait to go back!