Vacation Part 5: Athens and Atlanta

Then we hit the road for leg 3: Athens, GA to the Lauers.  The Lauers are super fun and love to stay busy.  Even when we lived in the same town as them quality time was hard.  Josh is an Assistant Coach for girls Volleyball at UGA, which means he is always on the go with games and recruiting.  So we just decided to campout for a couple of days in casa Lauer to get as much time with them as possible.  They have a cute, spunky little 21 month old who seems so much older.  He and C liked each other a lot.  It was definitely harder for C at the last stop b/c there was a bigger age gap and we were further into our journey...and it showed in C's behavior.  He had a great time, but was running out of patience. 

Athens is a very cool college town.  We checked out the campus and saw the most unfortunately named building there (maybe anywhere)--The Butts-Mere building.  Gross name.  We ate at a local taco joint, visited the local free zoo/park, played a game after the boys went to bed.  Friday we bought some GA Dawgs merchandise for me and C.  I'm no Dawgs die-hard fan, but we root for whoever Coach Lauer is with, which is currently UGA.  Friday afternoon we headed to Atlanta w/Deb and E also to see some volleyball: UGA vs. GATech at Tech (hence Atlanta).  We originally had visions of taking the boys to the aquarium or some other fun place, but honestly C was pretty much done with vacation at this point, and we would have all been miserable.  After a little quiet time in the hotel for C we headed to grab some dinner--ate it in Centennial Park (wether was gorgeous) and then watched some volleyball.  C pretty much fell apart in the first game.  He demanded to leave (thankfully it was crazy loud in there).  We had to have a little "talk," and then he was fine, but mad at me.  The Tech fans were crazy supportive of their volleyball team: large pep band, huge student section, and tons of alum/parents.  It was a great atmosphere, but really loud and tight--which was stressful for C I think. 

We got to squeeze one more quick visit in with Deb and E at breakfast the next morning before we headed for the Birmingham Airport.  Lots of fun. 
As a side note: I did a terrible job taking pictures on this leg.  We were all just tired by this time.

Random: all three boys had cute little voices.  M has a very deep voice and says Daddy like Daw-dee (think British),  E says Ma-Maw (think French), and C has a southern accent though he doesn't live in the south...just a weird observation.

posing at the zoo

walking, well E doesn't walk anywhere.  He has the cutest happy feet you've ever seen.

checking out the bears

C taught E...1,2,3 go!

decked out to root for the dawgs

a little action shot...sadly they lost in 3 games, but they were all close.



and taking a page out of Becca Bryan's mothering advice we let C go crazy jumping on the hotel bed before we left for another long travel day to St. Louis. He thought it was so cool