Who climbs a hunk of granite in 90+ degree heat?

Yes, that would be us.

We climbed Stone Mountain yesterday. Well, it's only about a 1-mile hike up the side of it. But, that didn't mean that the kids didn't complain about how hard it was. Julia, on more than one occasion, asked me, "How are you doing this?" Meaning, apparently, walking uphill. I guess this is better than us gasping for breath trying to keep up with them, right?

So, what is Stone Mountain? It is basically a really REALLY big granite "monadnock". This is a real word, I didn't make it up. That means it's a big rock sticking out of the ground. At some point, somebody decided to carve some civil war figures into it. This led us to conclude that it was not, as Allison suggested, done by Indians. Well, I suppose it could have been done by Indians who bore a striking resemblance to Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and "the third guy". But, no, it was in fact carved by (let me go look this up)...okay, it was apparently several different people. It was started sometime after 1916 and was finished in 1972. I did find out that the third guy is Stonewall Jackson. It's big, very southern, but pretty interesting too. The laser light show at night is good. Unless you ask Matthew. He was not the slightest bit impressed by any of it. He hates loud noises. He just kept his hands over his ears and kept asking us, "Is it done?"

So, we've crossed off another "to do" on our list of things to do before we leave Georgia. We still have to "shoot the hooch" and maybe do a few other things. I'm not sure about shooting the hooch - that means taking a canoe trip down the Chattahoochee river. Me, alone, with 4 kids in a canoe? Yes, what a blog entry that would be!

Hey, aren't you moving?

I get this question just about daily, so I figured I'd post an update, which isn't really an update:

The answer is yes and no.

Todd will report to Rochester shortly. We will be in a holding pattern in Atlanta until we are able to sell the house. It's already been 3 months. But, some have been at this a lot longer.

So, yes we are supposed to move. No, we don't know when. Hopefully, we'll be able to visit somewhere this summer. We have no plans for anything. But, it could all change in a day. We'll just see what happens...

Summer in Atlanta

It's now officially summer in Atlanta. It's been summer for over a month, we've just been in denial. The browning of the grass, the fact that our air conditioner is on most of the day and night, and our inability to walk outside without sweating has signalled that it is, in fact, summer.

So, we finally started doing stuff other than swimming. We still do that too, but the sharpies are now put away.

Yesterday, we went to the World of Coke, CNN Center, Centennial Park, and the Georgia Aquarium. It sounds like a lot, but they are all in the same spot.

World of Coke was first. It was, as you may have guessed, all about Coke. We saw lots of memorabilia, saw the polar bear (but couldn't get a picture due to there being several thousand day camp kids in attendance as well), and were able to try 64 varieties of Coke products produced around the world. Some tasted awesome, some just so-so, and some you had to wonder if it was a joke and they actually sold it. One in particular was "Beverly" - which is sold in Italy. It tasted like peppery tonic water, and really was not even the slightest bit good. Todd had one that had a pine nut flavor marketed in South Africa that wasn't bad. The kids loved the taste testing, and loved even more that they each got their own mini-bottle of coke to bring home.

Incidentally, look at the picture with the writing about "79 days". This is about the huge screw-up in the 1980s called "New Coke". It's funny that the at least acknowledged it - but even funnier that (according to Todd) you can actually still find it in some remote locations in the southeast Pacific!

Next up we went looking for food. This brought us to the CNN Center. It's actually pretty big and I hadn't realized it was so close to where we were going. If we thought CNN actually did a good job reporting the news, we might have taken a tour. Just kidding - it probably would have been interesting no matter what.

Next, we went through Centennial Olympic Park built for the 1996 Olympics. It's a nice park right in the middle of the city. Being that it's summer, there were about 200 kids swimming in the fountains. And, yes, the fountains were turned back on this year since we are technically out of the drought.

Our last stop was the Georgia Aquarium. This is the world's largest aquarium. It has whale sharks and beluga whales and everything in between. It will be getting a dolphin exhibit in Winter 2010. Matthew, upon seeing the asian river otters, came up to me and excitedly said, "I want one of THOSE cats!" Sadly, we won't be able to comply with that. But, it was a cute request. Overall, it was pretty impressive (but I think I still like the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga the best).

In other news, you know you have a kid with a loose tooth when you hear the following questions:

"Mom, can I throw a softball at my face?"

"Mom, do we have any pliers?"

Do we even have to say that Julia was the source for both quotes???