Gasbarro Family: Atlanta

Why would you take off early on a Friday and head to Atlanta for a quick weekend? Well a surprise party and big fish of course! We originally planned on just leaving really early on Saturday morning and making this a quick trip, but the more we thought about putting A in the car for 5.5 hours each way it made more sense to actually enjoy our time in Atlanta and not be rushed. So we jumped in the car on Friday night and off to the Marriott Marquis we went.

Fortunately the wild child from Friday night when we first got to the hotel slept in on Saturday morning. At one point Grant and I debated waking her up because she never sleeps that late. No worries - sanity kicked in and we just sat there in silence and waited. Not too long afterwards every one was up, dressed and A was strapped into her stroller for a quick stop at Starbucks for breakfast and then on a stroll to the GA aquarium.

If you haven't been to the aquarium yet, I highly suggest it. We had A all excited to see the "big fish" and when we first got there she was over the moon with excitement. Then it happened - TERROR!!! I don't know what triggered it, but the poor child was absolutely terrified of everything that we saw. So no, there are no cute pics of her trying to touch a fish, in fact there are practically no solo pics of here because she jumped around in absolute terror and would cry. The good thing is I don't see a large Sea World bill in our future.

The best part of the trip for her was sitting in Daddy's lap watching the dolphins jump. Eventually we had to move on because the dolphins had a show to do.

Do you see that scared face in there behind the penguins?

No way was my belly crawling in there, that was Daddy's job.

An example of her not getting anywhere near the fish or the glass, she was literally crawling up me to get away from all of the windows.

The one family photo from the trip.

Notice that they are holding hands - this is as far away as she got from one of us if there were fish in sight.

Just don't drop me in the stingray pool Mom, I will never forget it!

Now on to the real reason for our trip to Atlanta - Matt Blacky's 30th birthday party. We had very little time between the aquarium and the party which of course meant that we were late. The good thing was that no, we did not ruin the surprise because we weren't the only ones who couldn't tell time.
Paige (Blacky's g/f) did such a good job of pulling everything together and managing to get Blacky where he was supposed to be without ruining the surprise. After Blacky got there you could tell that it didn't all sink in instantly what was going on because as he made his way around the table saying hi to everyone he just kept saying, "dude, what are you doing here"? I'm going to take it as a good comment.

Check out the surprise on his face.

Should have gotten a better picture, but these cupcakes came from Knoxville and they were fantastic!

A was getting Matt ready for his new arrival later this year. He wasn't too shocked when she threw up later either - apparently too much cupcake was consumed that day.