We really wore the kids out on Sunday, so they slept until about 8 am Monday morning. (This is unheard of if you know us at all, haha!) Hotel breakfast ends at 9 on weekdays, so we booked it to breakfast pretty quickly. This particular morning was much busier, probably because we weren't up at the crack of dawn and people had to get to work! We ate, packed up our room, checked out, and headed to our last attraction. (Hadley was so sad to leave the hotel...she wanted to know if next time we could stay "FOREVAAA")
Our last day in Atlanta saw us visiting Fernbank Museum. I'll be honest, I was enamored with the area where Fernbank is located as much as I was in the museum itself! You have drive on Ponce de Leon Avenue (adoringly referred to as "Ponce" to native Atlantans) which in and of itself is a looonnnng road, basically connecting all of Atlanta, haha. We were in the Druid Hills district and y'all. GORGEOUS. Of course the roads were lined with million dollar homes, but they were older, classic, full of character. I mean....this is the elementary school:
*For the safety of the kids and since this is a public blog, I'm not going to share the name of the school. But I got this picture from this website.*
Can you even imagine going to elementary school here? It looks like it's right out of a movie. There was so much greenery, pretty parks, sidewalks that wound throughout, it was just a really beautiful area.
Fernbank is a National History Museum and when you pull up, there are dinosaur statues outside. My kids were already excited when they saw those! For the second time on our spring break trip, we opted to leave the stroller in the car, and I'm so glad we did. Fernbank is 3 stories and while they have elevators, we chose to walk on the beautiful spiraling staircases to each different level. The kid play area is on the 3rd floor, so that's where we headed first. The kids seriously played in there for about an hour. There are all kinds of activities built into a tree-house that let their imaginations just go wild.
*Daddy teaching Hadley about the rings on a tree.*
*Standing in the misting cave.*
*Building a wall.*
We literally had to drag them out to make sure we could see everything else the museum had to offer! The second floor was a lot more of the "museum-y" stuff, where we walked through the different "eras" --based in Georgia, mostly. They had a lot of taxidermy animals in their wildlife habitat and Hadley pretty much skimmed over most of this. David and I thought there was some pretty cool stuff in there (like a tree trunk made out of stone...what?!), but Hadley wasn't having it. We finally got to the dinosaurs and she loved that part!
*Learning about the dinosaurs!*
David and I hadn't really been paying attention to the time and we realized it was about 11:45 so her meltdown was more than likely due to hunger, so we quickly headed to the cafeteria area. We grabbed some food and the kids were a lot happier after getting some food fuel! #badparentmoments
Once everyone was full and happy, we headed to the bottom floor of the museum, which was all about weather patterns. Hadley and Griffin got to make their own tornados, Hadley played a fun game where she was a part of a tornado, and then she did a quiz on hurricane trivia. It was all very interactive and they had activities that, even though she's young and doesn't quite understand the concepts, she still enjoyed and we got to introduce her to some science.
*Hadley making her tornado!*
*Griffin working on his tornado.*
One of the coolest parts, in my opinion, of Fernbank, is the nature walk. They have miles of wooden walkways over their natural land habitats, full of climbing ropes, and platforms for the kids to play on. There are a couple different viewing areas, and even a playground for the kids. Both Hadley and Griffin had a great time running up and down the boardwalks.
*Walking on the rope bridge.*
We knew it was time to go when our generally sweet-hearted girl had a fit about sharing one of the two xylophone hammers. So we made a family trip to the bathroom, walked through the gift shop, and got in the car to head home from our first family trip. By the way, Hadley and Griffin both picked out wallets as their present to commemorate our trip and David and I picked out a christmas tree ornament to add to our travel ornament collection (started on our honeymoon).
*Some of the natural habitat at the museum.*
We did make a pit-stop at the Mayfield Dairy factory for a dip of ice cream on our way home. We thought about going on the tour to see how ice cream is made, but ultimately decided to just eat the ice cream this time around. In hindsight, I'm glad we stopped because we got caught in traffic halfway home. (Something about a tanker truck spilling flammable liquid all over 85 and totally shutting down all 4 lanes of traffic for like 12 hours....) We ended up driving back roads the majority of the way home, so our typical 2 hour drive ended up taking 4 hours. Needless to say, we were all ready to get out of the car when we got home! :)
It was such a great trip. Some of my fondest memories growing up are the trips my family took and now I love to travel and explore new places. I hope my kids learn to love traveling and family trips just as much!
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
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