5th Anniversary

So, this past week Brandon and I celebrated our 5th Anniversary! (Exciting!) To celebrate, we went to Atlanta for 3 days to have some fun. Since I can't help it, I'm gonna give you a summary of the trip:

We left tuesday around 1 after dropping Jonas off for a stay with Grandma & Grandpa Kennedy. As usual, we spent a lot of the time down reading against time as we tried to finish (and did) Harry Potter and the half-blood prince before its movie release. Once we got to atlanta, we hit the historic landmark of Ikea, which we enjoyed browsing, and even purchased some chocolate and coffee smelling candles. More exciting (if it is possible) we had to get some milk for our breakfast in the morning-- and we swung by target to do so. Now, that isn't the exciting part, the excitement comes in that target's parking was UNDER the store-- in a parking deck (obviously, i guess). Woooow. It was hard to tell it was a target at all since we didn't see a giant lot surrounding it! Anyway, we got some pictures and our milk and headed back to our hotel.

The next morning we woke up bright and early at about 8 (sad, huh? and of our own free will to boot.) and headed off for six flags. we were there about 45 minutes before the gates opened, so we read more harry potter. This six flags holds a special place in my heart since it is the first year I participated in a marcing band comp. in high school, and we took home every award the offered that year-- quite awesome, if I do say so myself. Anywayyyy... So we were among the first in the park, and thankfully it wasnt TOO hot yet, so we managed to get about 60% of the rollercoaster riding out of the way before lunch. After lunch, we got the rest of the rides finished, and we were so tired we left at about 3 with nothing else on the docket for the rest of the day but laying in the hotel watching how I met your mother. Fate had other plans, though.

fate's plans were not too far from our own though. We watched most of 10000 bc, then heard a lot of noise down on the street. I called reception and found out they did a free movie ("flix on 5th" ) every wednesday in the summer, and we were on teh street that did it. SWEET! we had wanted to see monsters vs. aliens anyway, so we headed down and got a cozy spot on the curb. Tragically, they changed the movie to madagascar 2. We decided to tough it out through as much as we could, but after about 45 min we had had enough. THEN, we went back to our room and watched how I met your mother =)

the next day we packed up and left our hotel to go to our 'fancy hotel' downtown at the ritz-carlton (oh yes, that's right!). We then proceeded to walk to the coca-cola museum that was a few blocks away. it is a true mark of our age that this was our favorite part of the trip. we had so much fun watching the bottling process, reading about all the cool things coke had come out with, tasting all the coke varieties, laughing at the 'new coke' debauchal, watching the movies, and of course-- getting our picture with the coca cola polar bear.

I have never liked life sized costumed people... like chuck e cheese or something... I have alwasy thought they were creepy and not natural at all. I made the mistake of muttering this a bit too loudly as we approached coca-cola polar bear. seeing as how the line was pretty much gone (like I would stand in line for that!) he thought he would have some fun with me. he just started staring at me at eye level and blinking (yes, its head moved, and its eyes and mouth opened and closed... sooo creepy!). He finally gave that up, and we got our picture. Then as we lefte, that bear was 'creeping' after me! EEK! Luckily, it was hilarious after we hid in the artifacts room out of sight of the bear. I think brandon was pretty amused the whole time though.

after the coke museum, we headed over to the georgia aquarium, the largest aquarium in teh world. I was surprised brandon was cool with it since he doesn't like fish, but he was happy to go, yay! The aquarium was very cool. It was also very crowded, which took away from its coolness dramatically. Still, I petted stingrays and sharks while brandon said he was 'happy with my description of how they felt'. we crawled under the sections that were probably just for kids (whatever!) and had a big time looking at the dragon seahorses. We both really liked the jellyfish display, as well as the giant wall for viewing the sea creatures tank. It was like... 2 stories high and 67 feet wide or something... 2 feet thick. Very cool. We loved seeing the manta ray and trying to point out all the different fish... although we said if we were the fish in there, we would feel kind of belittled by the giant cool fish that were there... like the whale sharks. Anyway...

For dinner we went to a brazilian place a block up from our hotel. being who I am, i weighed myself before and after going, and noticed I gained 2 lbs. we. ate. SO. much. it was super. we in fact ate so much, that when we went to breakfast the next morning, we were still not hungry, but being who we are, we still managed to eat a ton of food since the hot breakfast buffet at the ritz is also AMAZING. In conclusion, we were still not hungry for dinner that evening, but decided to eat something small (just in case we got hungry). We stopped in concord mills to watch harry potter and the half blood prince in imax 3d on the way back, just to find out that imax 3-d doesn't come out till the 29th. WHAT?! This is insanity. First they push the movie back almost a year because of stupid twilight, THEN they still don't have the imax 3d version ready to roll?! those capitalists! =( . So we watched the movie in regular screen (but sat close) and just plain ol' 2d, and were very satisfied until the last 15 min. sigh... what were they thinking?? anyway...

so after all that, we finally got home super late in the rain. We had sucha great anniversary, and I can't wait to spent another 5 (and then some!) with my awesome Hubby!

We went to get jonas the following morning. It was an interesting feeling, getting him back after 4 days apart. I don't know about brandon, but I spent a lot of time carfully scrutinizing him to see what had changed since I saw him last... which was surely nothing noticeable, but I could swear he looked bigger!! His grandma tought him to say "joshua jackson" which we will waste no time in adding "is lame!" to the end of (hopefullly). I know he had a great time there, and so did the rest of the kennedys, though I think they are a lot more tired!! =)