The McGarys : Atlanta Adventures

I don't think I mentioned this in our last post but when Brad got in the car accident with the Scouts, he had to leave our van in Atlanta because it took the auto shop two weeks to fix it. Thus, last weekend we decided to make a weekend vacation out of driving back to pick it up. It would have been nice to drive in our own van on the way there because it has a DVD player and this is the first time we would have been able to really use it. Kallie did surprisingly well though; being trapped in her car seat for five hours forced to think of creative ways to entertain herself :)

We decided to get a hotel room right there downtown near the attractions we wanted to see so we ended up in a Motel 6. Let's just say it wasn't the nicest place we've ever stayed but it wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be as we drove up and saw the building from the outside. It actually worked out well because we thought we'd hafta sleep in separate twin beds but they switched us to a room with a king size bed. When we picked up our van and dropped off the rental we opened up the back gate and there were ants everywhere! Brad killed as many as he could with a paper towel and we went on our way. I figured one of the scouts had spilled something that was attracting the ants but a few days later the auto shop called us to seek our approval of their work. Brad told them about the ant explosion and the employee replied, "Oh...that's our fault. The shop had an ant infestation and we recently had the whole building sprayed. If you wanna get that taken care of, send us the bill." We're glad Brad told them about it!

We ended up visiting the Coca-Cola Factory, which wasn't as cool as I thought it would be but it was fun to taste test all the different coke products throughout the world (and they had a lot of fun facts to learn). We tried taking Kallie to a 3-D short film but it scared the heck out of her when the seats started moving. I actually thought it was really annoying when the seats moved. It doesn't feel like a roller coaster or anything; it just feels like you're being jerked forward and backward for no reason.

Coca-Cola Factory

Waiting in line

We had walked from our hotel to the Coke Factory and realized that I wouldn't be able to walk back so as soon as we finished our tour, Brad walked back to the hotel to get the van and pick us up. Besides being SO tired the only annoying thing about my pregnancies is that I get pain in my stomach just from walking too much so I can barely get ANY exercise as all (you can tell from the pictures how big I'm getting). I was pretty exhausted from our first adventure so I totally napped with Kallie as soon as we got back to the hotel.

Next we went to the Atlanta aquarium, which was a lot of fun. There was tons of cool stuff to see and Kallie loved it. We wanted to stop for ice cream on our way back to the hotel so I whipped out my phone and looked for ice cream shops. Quite a few popped up on the map but NONE of them ended up being what we thought! The Dairy Queen was in the middle of a shopping center that was closed down, one shop was lame and only had a couple flavors to choose from, and another was in the middle of a dark sketchy neighborhood and was ALSO closed down (looked to be that way for a long time). Finally we found a grocery store, brought our Ben & Jerry's back to the hotel and ate it after we put Kallie to bed.


Inquiring knowledge from someone older and wiser

For those of you that don't know, Brad's little brother Kyle happens to be serving a mission in Atlanta right now. Technically a missionary isn't supposed to see any friends or family on their mission so we debated for quite awhile whether or not we should try to find the ward in which he's currently serving and attend church there hoping to "run into him". We tried calling the mission president ahead of time to get his permission but no one answered at the mission home. In the end we decided to go to the closest ward to us and hope Kyle was there. It turned out to be the wrong ward BUT coincidentally who happened to be visiting and speaking in that ward? None other than the mission president. We talked to him as soon as sacrament meeting ended and he told us which ward Kyle was in and said, "Kyle is a really hard-working missionary so I think he deserves a visit from you". High five!

We hurried over to the right building and were so afraid we had missed Kyle because his ward had actually ended about 20 minutes before we got there. We ran inside as fast as we could and through gasping breaths asked a random ward member if the missionaries were still there. They were in a meeting! It was in a room with a window so it was really hard not to peek in while we waited. The meeting dragged on FOREVER and the anticipation was killing us but luckily the nursery was right next door to their meeting so Kallie found a bunch of toys to play with. As soon as we heard their door open we put Kallie in the hallway on a little riding toy to see if Kyle would recognize her. We saw him walk out and and look at Kallie with a weird expression and then look up and see us. "What are YOU guys doing here?". We didn't keep him for too long but it was fun to surprise him. Everyone we talked to that knows him as a missionary expressed how great and hard working he is. We just hope our visiting wasn't a negative distraction or anything!

I take Kallie to the beach every Tuesday along with other moms in our stake and this week we wasted so much time looking for a parking spot. We drove around the closest lot and I wasn't expecting to find a spot there but I saw some people getting ready to leave from the FIRST spot to the front so I waited for them...and waited for them...and as soon as they pulled out to leave I realized it was a handicapped spot! Their truck was so big it blocked the sign. We sadly continued to a different lot...

Kallie pulled down the body mirror in our bedroom onto her head and SHATTERED it. I turned around and almost had a coronary as I rushed to her side to remove the mirror. As I lifted it off her head shards of glass fell everywhere and I even saw a couple toughs of HAIR floating through the air and I couldn't help but cry a little.Yet again, head wounds are scary because of the bleeding but it wasn't that bad. I recognized that much this time that I wouldn't need to take her into the doc because it was basically just a little piece of scalp surface that was scraped off. Ugh.

We had decided to follow a "Potty Train in 3 Days" method this weekend. We planned to stay home Friday-Sunday (except for Brad working on Fri and church on Sun of course). I thought Kallie was ready because she pats her bum and signs "potty" when she poos. I put her little potty in the living room on a tarp and spread towels everywhere. We watched a lot of videos. Every time I noticed her peeing I whisked her to the potty as fast as I could. It got really tiring for me to jump up so fast but I got used to it. She got some in the potty a couple times so I praised her and gave her treats. That still didn't seem to click in her mind and by the end of the day I thought she would at least give me SOME warning sign that she was about to pee but never did. Toward the end of the evening when I whisked her to potty she even started crying because I think she was confused.

That's when I realized she's not ready for potty training (at least not the hardcore part that gets rid of diapers for good) but I don't think it's because she's too young. I just haven't prepared her for it and now I know how to go about it the right way. Lot's of people gave me good advice beforehand but I didn't understand it because it wasn't specific enough so I had to try this and learn first hand. Now I realize, "Ohhh, that's what all those people were talking about!". All is well. I'm happy I stopped the potty training boot camp when I did and I'm excited to take it slow for awhile.

At church I've moved my primary class downstairs to the stage because it gets SO hot in our classroom! I think I'm the only one that suffers as much as I do because I'm pregnant but by the end of every class I'm sweating bullets and have had enough. I'm at that point in my pregnancy where I'm DONE and it feels like I'm so close yet SO far from the end. I'm pretty sure I'm big enough to have already been pregnant for 42 weeks and I can't wait to recover from birth and have my body back to sleep on my stomach and bend over (much less exercise and start running again)!