Easter and Atlanta

wow - I can't believe that I haven't even posted about Easter yet! Work and work travel has been kicking my butt recently but I'm resolving not to let that happen anymore.

For Easter I took Charlie and Diego to my mom's house where we had an amazing Easter Egg hunt. Armed with mini-shovels and kid gardening gloves Charlie and his cousins dug in the front yard while the Easter Bunny planted eggs around the backyard. The shovels proved to be lots of fun, but nearly lethal beheading tools. When the kids were released on the backyard it was hysterical. Wallis only wanted the purple eggs so kept giving away the others and Charlie was mainly interested in taking dissassembling the eggs rather than collecting them. In the end they ended up with easter baskets full of fun treats. Charlie was very good about not eating the goodies. He unwrapped the coin chocolates but then threw the chocolate away!

We also went to see Germantown Academy and my dad's prized new track. The fields are gorgeous and made me realize that no place around here has similar grounds. Our neighborhood school is sweet but there is no grass let alone fields!!

Here are a couple of Charlie-isms that I didn't want to forget. The other day Charlie was arguing with Carlos about whether his tricycle was indeed a tricycle or a bicycle. Charlie insisted it was a bicycle and after much back and forth he became exasperated with Carlos and told him "Dad, in ENGLISH it is called a bicycle!" He won that argument. Another classic was when we went to the store and Carlos got a sample of a chocolate cake. Charlie asked what it was and Carlos said it was something yucky in hopes of dissuading him from wanting to taste it. As soon as Carlos licked the spoon clean Charlie asked "You ate all the poo Dad?" Well that's one way to dissuade him from chocolate...

Carlos told me that the blog seems to only be about me traveling and Diego being sick. how sad! And well....here is another similar entry! I had my big work trip last week - hopefully it was the longest and last of its kind for awhile. It was basically from Thursday to Thursday but I came home for 36 hours over the weekend. Sunday afternoon seemed to be the hardest as Carlos had to deal with both babies and yet again Diego was running a high fever and Charlie decided it was a good idea to poo on the floor. Back in Atlanta I had eaten something bad and couldn't eat anything without it going straight through me. After 4 days of stomach issues I was about to hit my 10th grade weight. Lots of fun in both locations! And poor Sandra suffered too as Carlos had her stay until 10pm one night.

But we made up for all the madness with a GREAT weekend in Atlanta to celebrate Coke turning 125 years old. Carlos and the boys came on Thursday after my week long meeting and we all stayed through Sunday. I realized it was our first mini-family vacation and it inspired me to take more! We had a hotel with a kitchen and pull-out sofa bed for Charlie which was perfect though it would have been even better if we had an in-room monitor so that we could escape to the hotel restaurant. On Friday we visited the World of Coke where he refused to go near the polar bear. In the afternoon we walked around little five points eating tacos, listening to music and somehow letting Charlie have his first popsicle. I picked out 'hibiscus mint' from the gourmet popsicle street vendor assuming Charlie wouldn't like it but the result was him not letting me have any of it. 1/3 of it ended up on his shirt and a 1/3 of it on the ground because he kept trying to take the stick out of the top so I'm guessing he didn't actually consume much of it.

On Saturday we went to the Coke 125th anniversary celebration where Charlie got fake tattoos, played with bubbles, got face paint and insisted on going back to the World of Coke to get slightly closer to the polar bear. We got to see part of the concert including K'naan singing my all time favorite world cup theme song. He was way more exciting than hearing Ryan Seacrest talk about his hair. Also exciting was the spontaneous breakdancing that happened next to us during K'naan. We actually went back to the World of Coke yet again in hopes that Charlie would take a picture with the Polar Bear and in fact he got close but then fear struck as he determined the polar bear was likely to eat him.