March and April Happenings - the rest of us....

Todd and I celebrated our 28th anniversary... we went to a popular Atlanta restaurant "Barcelona" tapas restaurant (giving a nod to when we honeymooned in Spain)  It was very good and took us back to some of the dishes we remember.  

We would go back, but.. we observed that we're a bit older than the rowdy throngs of people that were there, admittedly.  

Glad we went, though.

I took a couple more field trips for school.   

One field trip was at the request of the construction teacher:  girls in construction - touring a local contractor's office.

This program was put on for our school and one of Cobb county's schools... amazing they assembled the panel, tour, lunch, gifts etc for just 2 schools' worth of young ladies.  We were the 2 chaperones.  (I rarely take photos, so here one is. I was asked by our career teacher to take a picture with the lady - as it's a good friend of hers.)

They had cool custom-made art. This one is made out of construction hand tools.

This one is hard hats made of fasteners like screws and bolts. 

The panel of speakers was good.... the art was nice.... and I missed one of my hardest to manage "Intro to Architecture" classes back at the high school... so a good day all-in-all / glad I went to represent the female perspective. :)

The other field trip was to a brick plant (I planned this one - as I fondly remember a brick field trip back when I worked in architecture.  Who knew - all you had to do is ask and they said YES.  And they provided lunch for the students.  They were thrilled that we came. I guess we just need to ask more often for special things!)

Obviously, everything is dirty! but it was cool to see how they added color, then texture, then cut, and fire.  This visit was a lesson in inventing engineering / mechanical systems to automate the process.  It was like a real-life "how it's made" video. 

Heat just radiated off of these stacks of brick that slowly rolled out of the kiln (obviously).  You can see the fire at the back.  This thing moved only like a centimeter every few minutes... the stack of brick is in a long kiln (maybe a 1/10th of a mile long?)

And - of course - custom sculpted brick were used above the entrance. This is a lost art (and expensive!)

I found - on a mom's forum - a place where Izzy could volunteer to help take care of horses (cleaning stalls, grooming, feeding, taking out to pasture, etc). 

There was something about it that I had an odd feeling about (I met a mom there that I connected with and that mom also said something was a little off) so I always sat in the parking lot (while grading of course!) at the farm during the volunteer sessions. 

Here's my view from the car when my head wasn't down in the paper-grading mode... 

As it turned out, the place suddenly closed down at the end of May~!  With only a week's warning. It was short lived. 

But, Izzy loved it... and it was good for her to connect with other teen girls, horses, goats and guinea pigs!  

We celebrated Easter, Spring Break and Izzy's Adoption Day all in April.

    

The bunny (or what ever season it is for the wood cut-out) sits on top of the book case in the living room in front of one of my favorite photos of the kids -- an Easter photo shoot when they were TINY.  The flowers (given to moms at the baseball Senior night still looked good through Easter!) 

We did a couple things over spring break.  It had to be a "staycation" / do local things because my teaching schedule at KSU didn't align with MHS (I was teaching 2 nights in the middle of the week) + Mercer had baseball at the end of the week.

He had never been to the World of Coke!  (it's a top tourist attraction, of course!)

Parts of the museum were about mixology and the science behind creating a formula. 

There was memorabilia through the decades (history museum of bottles, sports gear, pop culture influences, etc)

 

There was a section on branding. (here you had to draw the signature logo from memory... not bad!)  

Posters, labels, etc.

There was a tasting room of the different drinks from around the world -- including the Beverly.  (which is the really terrible bitter drink!)

There was this fun thing - not sure what it had to do with Coke, but it was "imagine yourself" back-in-the-day sort of thing.... maybe when Coke was invented?  

Isabella looks pretty fancy here with her hair done up. 

Mercer looks dapper.

I don't know what happened to my teeth!  

I wanted a re-do.  :)

You stand in front of a glass "camera" and push a button as to which style of person you want to become.  They had different vignettes with you as an "aristocrat" "school child" etc.

On the re-do... at least the teeth got fixed this time - haha.   

This exhibit was fun(ny).

One night during our break, we went to a restaurant / game venue in the Battery (outside the Braves stadium -- went to actually enjoy some of the things around on a NON-game day.)  

One day we went out for the BIGGEST pizza in town to share with friends. (It's one of those places where you can do an eating competition with you + 1 other person eat a 10-lb pizza in an hour, then you get $100 cash and a belly ache. Well, the pizza is $50.)  

We got the colossal sized pizza, but not the meat-lovers one. (pepperoni on half and spinach on the other half).  It wasn't amazing or life-changing because it was giant, but it was something "different" to do!  ha.

Izzy worked on some school projects:  a capstone project and one was a personal project.  (one for gifted class and one for science)

One of her chosen projects was to plant a garden.

We went to buy the plants at our local farm-and-garden store, she helped to weed the raised beds / amend the soil / plant and water.

I do this every year on my own, so I was happy to have help this spring!

The other project: making resin objects!  (learning how to use the materials was her goal) 

It's a bit of an expensive hobby, but I had a couple of things from when I used to do it in college, I got some things off of our local Buy Nothing Group... including silicone molds and a heater (!!) and lots of embellishments like flowers and gold leaf (!!) -- I love the Buy Nothing Group!! 

All I had to buy was the actual resin for mixing & pouring.  

She loved it. (Who knows....maybe she will enter some things in the local art festival this fall that are resin?)

And - for her 13th adoption day - we took her to restaurant of choice (Vespucci's for alfredo... as always!!)

.... and a funny instrument that she wanted as a gift.

We also went to a "zany" baseball game called "Boom Ball" (that was trying to eek in on the competition for Savannah Bananas - the guy even came out in a pink tux like the Bananas' founder in his yellow tux).

"Banana Ball" is better, but - all of it is silly. We found it when they were in the Collegiate Wood Bat league in Georgia & the Coastal Carolinas.  Now, they have their own thing and they've abandoned "real" baseball to do entertainment like the Globetrotters Basketball team.

At Boom Ball, they had a skydiver to come in at the beginning. 

Exploding color bombs. 

Circus antics to get from one base to another (obstacle course and bicycles).

A Home-run derby.

An interactive fan experience with light-up wrist bands that flashed to the music.

There were fireworks at the end. 

We did it. We checked it out. Izzy enjoyed it. Mercer - not so much. (the little tiny kids that were all around us -- they seemed to really really love it. That's probably the target market - families with young kids.)   Don't need to go again.

Here are some signs that I made at a table at the front of the stadium.  We kept holding up to get it on the big screen when there were camera people walking around, but ours never got posted on the TV.

Probably just as well. I had some spelling errors on Mercer's sign... ha!  

(I was in a real hurry b/c they didn't know I was making the signs)  Oh well!

I had jury duty for a whole week (big box home improvement store where some wood fell on a woman's head / we had to come up with a settlement)... not too much to report here, but that it was a (long) interesting experience. 

I ate on the square, but also brought lunch and found this cool spot to sit and eat (and grade!)... this is behind the clock at the courthouse. I had no idea that you could see through it -- when you're on the ground seeing it from the square!

I met an old friend on the square + her daughter and 2 grandchildren (she's been a part of our lives from before all of the kids were born hers & ours.... and she adores our kids. She moved to Germany for a couple of years, but we got to catch up once she returned.)

Cecilia's daughter lives in Mississippi so it was a treat to see her and the babies too!

I was feeling sentimental and sent her this photo of her baby (Cristina) feeding our baby (Mercer)!

Izzy switched instruments AGAIN... tried out a tenor sax at the music store.  So instead of practicing alto sax for her audition at the end of the school year so she can play next year in honors band... she's doing tenor sax. Same music teacher. Same rental company. just a little bit more price (of course!)  :/

She tried out several and really wants the one in the photo above. However, we are NOT buying one 'til she plays and practices consistently for YEARS.  

And - to wrap up the March / April post about some other random goings on:  Mercer also worked on a unique school project in his sculpture class - made it to look like a baseball that was on fire because it was thrown so hard.... cutting a baseball in half and cutting into a book + burning the book! 

This was a "welcome to the art world" - he's getting exposure to what art classes in college will be like!! 

I'll have to ask him for a photo of the final project to update here.
  

This seems like a lot, but.... MAY-HEM is way way busier!!

(that will be the next post... hang on!!)