Thanksgiving

Our first Thanksgiving in Atlanta was fun.  We had a great day!  We went to the Georgia Aquarium that morning.  Robert has never gone, and it is one of our favorite places to go, so he wanted to check it out.  They were very crowded, so we only stayed a couple of hours.  But, we had lots of fun while we were there.  Still love the dolphin show, and they have added several new tricks.  I think I could watch that every day and still look at it with wide eyes and a big grin on my face.

When we were walking by this glass bubble to look at the tank, an employee came up and told Eric to climb into it.  He then told him to take a couple of steps back.  It made it look like Eric was standing in the tank.  

I made the full dinner for us - turkey, dressing, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, green bean bundles, broccoli salad, giblet gravy, rolls, pumpkin pie, and oreo balls.  Robert invited a friend from work to join us.  He declined at first, which we later learned is because he had never been to a Thanksgiving dinner.  He is from Hong Kong, and all of his family is still there.  He agreed to join us, and we had a wonderful time.  He googled before he came to find out what to bring to a Thanksgiving dinner.  We had told him not to bring anything, but he wanted to show up with something.  According to google, these are the items he should bring:

2 bottles of wine

a fruit basket

a pecan pie

We were all so full from dinner that neither pie got touched (although several oreo balls were consumed).  The guys all bowled on Wii while I cleaned up.  Then we visited for a while.  

Eric had spent the week coming up with some Thanksgiving games to play.  After our guest left, we played them as a family.  The first game was a series of multiple choice questions about Thanksgiving/pilgrims.  We had to buzz in using the alarm sounds on our phones.  We won't say who won that one (I don't want to rub it in).  Then there was a game with mixed up spelling of Thanksgiving words.  Again, I won't say who won, but one of us totally and completely crushed the other at that one (It would be rude for me to keep rubbing it in).  And the third game was a game of headbands with Thanksgiving/pilgrim themed words.  That was our favorite and very fun. 

The same winner squeaked out a win in that game too. 

The day was great.  Love making memories with this crew!

Atlanta Zoo

The Atlanta Zoo has a very neat program with the libraries here. There is a DVD that is produced by the zoo and floats around the library system. If you are fortunate enough to get your hands on it, then when you return it, you can get a free family pass to the zoo. Well guess who got her hands on it. :) A pass for the three of us would cost $41, so we were tickled to get to go for free. Unfortunately, you only have seven days to use the pass, so we had to go on November 1, a freezing Saturday. FREEZING! They warned us before going in that a lot of the animals would not be on exhibit due to the cold. Nice thing was, there was no one there. We had the place almost completely to ourselves. This Palawan Peacock Pheasant must have been lonely. The other birds in his habitat were huddled up in corners. He was so excited to run back and forth with Eric.

This little Joey had jumped into his mother's pouch and wouldn't come out.  Just too cold!

Eric and I had each just finished reading a great book called The One and Only Ivan.  It is based on a gorilla that used to be at the Atlanta Zoo.  None of the gorillas were out that day, but we enjoyed seeing their habitat nonetheless.  

Geocaching

We love to geocache!  We started on Christmas Eve last year.  As of today, our family has found 105 caches.  Georgia has a really neat state park geocaching program.  You get stamps at different parks.  Once you get a certain amount, you can get a geocoin.  They have three geocoins you can earn.  Today we headed to Fort Yargo State Park and joined another homeschool family that we had never met before.  We found 3 caches in the park, including our first state park cache.  The park was beautiful! 

The coolest thing we saw at the park was a Fort that was originally built in 1793.  It was built by the state of Georgia as protection for the settlers against the Native Americans.  This fort was one of 4 built across the state.  This building would hold 30-50 people when they were under attack.