A Few Hours at Fort Pulaski National Monument

After our pilgrimage to the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, I had planned for us to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening in Savannah--walk around, steal some Spanish moss, perhaps eat another meal of Southern food--but as we learned after the crazy traffic caused me to do some emergency Googling, Savannah is SUPER into St. Patrick's Day, and although the holiday wasn't even until the next day, there were a million people on the streets and in their cars ready to freaking celebrate. It took us about ten minutes to be completely over it.

So instead of coming back to Fort Pulaski on a different day, we headed straight there after our birthplace visit, and spent the rest of the day peacefully in the sunshine (although it was still cold, grr!):

This place is amazing, by the way--by FAR the best fort that we've ever been to for this one reason: it's still there!!! At Fort Smith, you can follow the outline of the ruins. At Fort Frederica,  which I'll show you later on our trip, you can do the same, and with the earthworks, and see one small recreated building from it. Those are impressive enough, but at Fort Pulaski, the entire fort is extant. And the moat around it. And the maze of the underground ammunition store that is like wandering a labyrinth to explore:







Fort Pulaski is maybe as close as you'll get to an authentic castle in North America, with its genuine moat (in which there was a genuine alligator that the National Park warned us to be on the lookout for!), and genuine drawbridge over the moat:

You could walk on top of the walls of the fort to see its turf roof and explore the offensive structures--

Just after I took the following photo, a Park Ranger screamed at me FROM THE PARADE GROUND BELOW to get off the cannon. Sorry!

The lower level had barracks and cruel prisons and even crueler prisons for the officers, as well as interesting hallways and lots of nooks and crannies to explore and windows to look out of to search for the alligator:

We all knew a LOT more about 19th century forts by the time these two took their Junior Ranger oaths!

Now, let's go to the beach!

Work Plans for the Week of April 10, 2017: The Three-Day School Week

School last week went well, although it felt really busy--well, it WAS really busy. Syd prepped daily for the Trashion/Refashion Show, which was last night. It was perfect, we had an awesome time, and Syd's garment and modeling were a hit! I'll talk more about it another time, after I've caught my breath (and caught up on my sleep!), but here's a little preview of Syd's original design, Supergirl of the Night:

The other activity that the kids worked on ALL last week was preparing for the party that our Girl Scout troop threw for a preschool class--this morning! This was the Take Action Project for Syd's Junior Agent of Change Journey, so she had an especial lot of work to do, including sewing the favor bags for each of the small guests, but both kids were on numerous committees and had several jobs that took the entire week to complete. I think the whole troop was a little nervous about this party, but they did amazing work, the preschoolers loved it, and I think that all of our Girl Scouts came away with that awesome feeling that you get when you work hard for someone else and are surprised by how great the experience turned out to be for you, as well.

All of that on top of a full academic schedule made for a very busy school week! The kids' favorite subject turned out to be our Story of Science curriculum--building the Platonic solids did not go so well, as dang, those nets are tricky to put together, but drawing models of the celestial spheres turned out to be a HUGE hit:


The kids loved the silliness of the concept of the celestial spheres, but I think they really took to heart the understanding that without experimentation to draw from, observation and logic were really all the tools that the Ancient Greeks had to help them understand how the universe works. Without science, logic and observation can get you many places, but they cannot get you everywhere, including to an accurate model of our Solar System.

We're taking this week a little easier, as thankfully we have nothing to frantically work towards for this weekend. That will change next week, when we need to start preparing for a Girl Scout camping trip the next weekend, but for this week--easy does it!

I've taken advantage of our three-day school week (the kids have an all-day nature class on Friday) to skip our more consuming subjects, our history and science curricula. We'll hit them again next week, when we're fresh.

Daily work this week includes journaling or writing from a creative prompt for ten minutes (I've finally gotten Will to agree to do this--woo-hoo!), typing practice on Typing.com, more reading from their MENSA reading lists (Syd generally reads a chapter from her current book, while Will often reads an entire book in one sitting), Wordly Wise for Will and a word ladder for Syd, SAT prep on Khan Academy for Will, and cursive copywork for both kids.

Books of the Day this week include some selections that I'm really excited about--Kids of Kabul for Will, a re-read of Marvelous Math for Syd, a book of folk tales from Iraq for both kids, and The Tail of Emily Windsnap for Syd.

And here's the rest of our week!



TUESDAY: Math Mammoth this week is more fraction calculation for Syd and more solving equations for Will. Each kid hit a bit of a wall with their respective units last week, so we may have to take some more time with them if it's not feeling any clearer this week.

Poor Syd also loathes Junior Analytical Grammar, perhaps because, for us, each exercise is a multi-step process. She parses the sentences in the exercise, then hands it to me so that I can mark the words that are incorrectly parsed, then tries those words again, then gets my okay to diagram the sentences, then hands it to me so I can mark the parts of the diagram that are incorrect, then tries those parts again, etc. It's nearly impossible to get every single word and every single diagram correct on the first go, and if there ever was a person who hates to get even a single, tiny thing incorrect, that person is Syd! Nevertheless, the kids are learning English grammar, so there you go. Will follows the same procedure for her Review and Reinforcement worksheets, and although she doesn't love them, either, she is more resigned than Syd and more willing to muscle through to the other side.

This day is Home Ec day, which means that I won't have to make dinner! We're using Your Kids: Cooking, which I'm happy with even if I don't always love the recipes (Matt theorizes that this is because the books author is an educator, not a chef). The kids ARE learning how to cook independently, and they seem happy with how their food tastes, and that's enough for me.

The first school day of the week, the kids take a new keyboard lesson from Hoffman Academy. Will LOATHES these lessons, but since she's already admitted to me that she only wants to learn history and science in our homeschool, I'm neither surprised, nor do I care other than about how annoying it is to make sure she puts in her five minutes of half-hearted practice each day. But when she's grown, I want her to say not "My Mom didn't bother to give me music lessons," but "My Mom got me music lessons and I blew it." Syd enjoys the keyboard much more, but insists that she does not want "real" lessons; she likes the low-effort, low-expectation, fun-for-her system that we've got in place.

After starting her dog house this weekend, Will should, with daily work, be able to finish it this week and earn her Girl Scout Cadette Woodworker badge. And when she's finished this dog house, she should be able to build anything! Syd, as well, should be able to finish up her Junior Gardener badge. She's tried the step that requires her to complete a seed-related science experiment numerous times, until I finally decided that it's the experiment that's at fault, and not my kid, and planned out a different one for her to do. That experiment, plus regular work setting up her sister's old bee and butterfly garden for the season, will complete her badge work.

In math enrichment this week, I'm going to show the kids how to key the decanomial square to symbols so that you can use it for algebraic reasoning. They don't love the decanomial square, although I find it fascinating, so every time we pull it out is another chance for me to share my love of it.

WEDNESDAY: The kids have really been enjoying working on a new Junior Ranger badge by mail every week, and they're getting a lot out of the experience, as they always do with Junior Ranger programs. This week, they'll be doing the Hot Springs National Park badge--my entire childhood, I lived less than three hours from there, and yet I've never been--and I've also found a documentary of the park to show them.

At Syd's request, she works on a new baking project every week. Sometimes she looks up recipes and sometimes she makes them up, and sometimes, as in this week, she doesn't actually bake at all. Will's grandmother gave her a cotton candy maker for her last birthday, and Syd wants to use that appliance to make cotton candy out of Jolly Ranchers, and perhaps also pop rocks. We'll see how that goes!

Surprisingly, Will is interested in earning the Cadette Budgeting badge. It seems like a dry badge to me, but I guess tweens and teens are naturally interested in learning more about money. Unfortunately, Will rarely has any (by her own accord--I have plenty of lists around the house of ways that an enterprising tween might earn herself some pocket money), so I've had to modify some of this badge's requirements. For instance, instead of tracking her own spending for a week, and coming up with one dollar spent on a candy bar from the vending machine at the library, beginning on this day and carrying on until next Wednesday, Matt and I are going to hand her the receipt for every single thing that we buy (must remember to do the Easter Bunny purchasing before Wednesday!). Will is going to be responsible for logging these expenditures, tallying them, organizing them into categories, and then evaluating them. We'll discuss her findings with her next Wednesday.

THURSDAY: Will has been complaining lately that she doesn't understand Biblical references.  Shame on me for that, but at least it's easily remedied, especially this week, when there are so many seasonal celebrations to enjoy. Sometime this week during our family time, I'll read them the story of Moses and we can watch Prince of Egypt on Netflix, and on this day I'll read them the story of Jesus and we will analyze Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper, then make a model of it with an egg carton, of all things. We may also have a feast, since it will be Holy Thursday, after all. I'll have to plan for a more comprehensive Bible study for next semester, though if Will was just a couple of years younger, I could have gotten away with just enrolling the kids in Sunday school, dang it! That's where I got all of MY Biblical references, as well as learned some pretty terrific songs and did some frankly astonishing craft projects.

Syd is just almost done with the Girl Scout Junior Scribe badge--as always happens, she's completed the fun activities, and now has just the couple of ones left that don't sound so fun. She does love creative writing in general, though, so I think this spot on the work plans will be enough to encourage her to push through.

Syd covers vocabulary and logic with her word ladders, so Will and I do a mind bender once a week. I loved these at her age, but I've either forgotten how tricky they are, or this is exactly the kind of mental stimulation that my poor, aging brain needs. Last week I even had to cheat by peeking at the solution!

FRIDAY: The kids have an all-day nature class that they are LOVING, and I get to spend five hours getting tons of stuff done!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet for one. Chinese for the other. Will has a Girl Scout program with the fire department, and I think it's going to be freaking incredible. Both kids have been invited to what sounds like an epic Easter egg hunt sponsored by the church that a couple of their friends attend--can you believe that my kids have never gone to an Easter egg hunt?!? They have only done hunts at home, the poor lambs. They're going to have a fabulous time.

And then on Sunday, there will be the traditional Easter Bunny clue hunt (our Easter Bunny makes the kids solve riddles and run all over our property and the drive-in to find their Easter baskets), ham and yeast rolls, maybe some sweet potatoes, and lots and LOTS of chocolate.

What are YOUR plans for the week?

A Google Map of the National Parks

So this has been done before, but not just the way that I wanted it to be. When I plan a road trip, I like to look for all the national parks that are near our destination or on the way there. I like not just the national parks, themselves, but also the historical sites, the memorials, the national battlefields, the national recreation areas, the scenic trails... you get the idea. If our national park service owns it, I want to know about it. And I just kept not finding the exact kind of map that I wanted, or if I found a good one, it was made by another individual, which means that they could take it down whenever THEY wanted and then I'd be back in the same boat of not having a good Google map of the national parks...

...So I made one:


Here's a pretty little pic of what it looks like when you zoom in:


It's not  a perfect Google map of the national parks, because I had to put in the office of some sites to get a street address, and that may not be exactly where the park is located, and I couldn't mark the entire length of a scenic trail, just a couple of waypoints, but this is enough that, when I'm planning my next road trip, I can simply reference this map instead of Googling eighteen different things like I had been doing.

That's not all, though, because THIS map is only step #1. You know what I really want? I really want a Google Map with only the national parks that offer a Junior Ranger program marked, so that when I'm planning a road trip, I can easily see which itinerary offers us the best access to the most Junior Ranger badges. So you know what I'm gonna do?

I'm going to make that map next!

A Girl Scout Pilgrimage to the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace

I won't say that our entire vacation revolved around this, because it was originally whale sharks and Atlanta that guided my road trip plans, but it was about five seconds after I Mapquested the road to Atlanta that I thought, "Huh. I wonder how much further it is to Savannah from Atlanta?", and that was solely on account of Juliette Gordon Low.

The Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace is the Great Pilgrimage for all Girl Scouts, because it's the home of our founder, and still contains many artifacts from her life and from the early period of Girl Scouting.

This picture was taken after the visit, you can tell, because both children are wearing their Birthplace pins. You earn that pin by making the pilgrimage to the birthplace, and it's one of the very few awards that you can wear on your Girl Scout uniform, no matter how many times you bridge, for the rest of your time as a Girl Scout.

Girl Scouts of the USA owns the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, so when my daughters walked inside, proudly wearing their Girl Scout vests, the docent greeted them with "Welcome home, Girl Scouts."

Oh, my goodness. My heart.

The tour that you go on is technically your bog-standard historical house tour, but all the rooms were peppered with Daisy's artwork--because Daisy was an artist who dabbled in a LOT of media!--

--and interesting clues into her life--



--and artifacts from the early days of Girl Scouting--

This is Daisy's own Girl Scout hat. 

Nina Pope is the friend to whom Daisy first told her big idea. What she said is Girl Scout history: “Come right over! I've got something for the girls of Savannah and all America and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight!”

--to keep the kids happy throughout all of the historical house stuff:

One thing: Daisy's family kept enslaved people when she was very small--she *was* born in 1860 in Savannah, after all... Her father was a Confederate soldier, although her mother was from the north, and received the protection of Sherman himself to flee the area after that whole "March to the Sea" business. Daisy and the rest of the family almost starved during the Union Army's occupation of Savannah, and one of their enslaved people actually saved their lives because she could go out and sell and barter things to the army. That's the sum total of information that we were given about the enslaved people of the Gordon family, and that was a bummer, because they deserve a lot more. If you're reading this and you're a history major, there's your senior thesis project! Heck, go to grad school and make that the topic of your PhD thesis!

I found that I really enjoyed seeing what Daisy, herself, said and wrote about Girl Scouts. She was a true philanthropist, and so it's good to be guided by what she thought Girl Scouting should be. Look, for instance, at what she said about badges:

This badge is not a reward for something you have done once or for an examination you have passed. Badges are not medals to wear on your sleeve to show what a smart girl you are. A badge is a symbol that you have done the thing it stands for often enough, thoroughly enough, and well enough to BE PREPARED to give service in it. You wear the badge to let people know that you are prepared and willing to be called on because you are a Girl Scout.

How often do we treat something that we've earned as a reward, something designed to show off what smart girls we are? But in Daisy's mind, everything that you earn is a symbol to the world that in that thing, you are able to give service. A Girl Scout badge means that you know that skill so well that you can use it to give back. That's why the end of every badge book encourages the Girl Scout to use her skill to give service, and offers suggestions for how she might go about it.

The garden is ahistorical--landscaped with non-natives, in fact--and one of the Birthplace's future goals is to have it remade into a more accessible and welcoming spot. Nevertheless, it's beautiful:

Daisy forged the decorative bits of this gate. FORGED them. Because she did everything!!!

One of the reasons why I love seeing my girls look up to Juliette Gordon Low so much is how highly I look up to her, myself. I strongly believe that she did give something invaluable to the girls of Savannah and all America and all the world by founding Girl Scouts. It's a truly special organization, empowering and engaging, welcoming and embracing diversity, ready to encourage girls wherever they are to lead and learn and do.

I'll stop fangirling now and just leave you with this, a photo of my daughter and Daisy, both in their Girl Scout uniforms:

Work Plans for the Week of April 3, 2017: Party Planning and the Platonic Solids

Call it a boon for our first week of the new semester, but last week's school went quite well. The kids have a little more daily work than they did last semester, with the accompanying daily reminder to work efficiently and the daily threat, also accompanying, that I am only available to help them until a certain hour each day, and if they still have tasks remaining that require me after that hour, then they cannot finish their schoolwork for the day--and therefore cannot have their hour of screens! The horror!

Schoolwork, then, although it hasn't been completed as efficiently as I'd desire, has been completed efficiently enough to avoid this terrible fate. And the kids still have had time to wander around outside, cut stuff with their pocket knives, bake elaborate and decadent concoctions, such as tie-dyed cupcakes, from scratch--


--go to the mall with friends, read a metric ton of books, and, yes, zone out with Minecraft and Dragon Quest and My Little Pony.

Syd also had a sick day last week, with some mysterious bug that's going around our town--one-by-one, people are struck down for 1-2 days with a fever, and when that finally breaks they're left with a cough and a runny nose. It may be Will's turn this week, or it may hit the adults, sigh. The only work from that sick day that we really have to make up, however,  is Home Ec, because I sure as heck wasn't going to let any kid cook me penne when she'd just been sick!

Daily work this week includes our ten minutes of memory work during the first car ride that we take (if we don't go anywhere in the car that day, we don't do memory work, but still--that adds up to 50-60 minutes of memory work every week!), more progress on the kids' MENSA reading lists in lieu of a Book of the Day (I lagged a bit in picking up library hold requests, so the kids didn't work on this as much as they could have last week if I'd supported them better), journaling or writing to a story starter prompt for ten minutes, Wordly Wise for Will (if she continues at her current pace, she'll finish the book in six or so weeks and then will take a good, long break from it), a word ladder for Syd, SAT prep on Khan Academy for Will, Junior Analytical Grammar for Syd, typing on Typing.com for both kids, and cursive copywork, also for both kids. For cursive this week, they'll be pulling quotes from Aristotle from their Story of Science book, just one quote a day, just enough to keep them in practice as neither of them choose to write in cursive at any other time, sigh.

And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: In Math Mammoth, Syd is still multiplying fractions and decimals, and Will is starting two-step equations. Will also has three days of work from Analytical Grammar's Review and Reinforcement workbook this week; that should give her a little over a month before she starts the next season of Analytical Grammar, but I may cut the work down to two worksheets a week and give her longer between seasons.

Chapter 11 of Story of Science concerns Aristotle and Plato and their different ways of thinking about the the world. The kids have reading comprehension questions in their quest guides, and they will mark all the locations in Ancient Greece mentioned in this chapter on their maps of Ancient Greece as a review.

Ugh, how many times will the kid have to repeat this Gardener badge experiment before she remembers to attend it daily?!? Hopefully just this one last time! Will has decided to make Luna a dog house as the culminating project for her Woodworker badge; I'll be curious to see exactly how much I have to help with that--she's growing up to be so capable!

The kids reviewed their Hoffman Academy lessons last week (although Will, the most unenthusiastic piano player who ever tickled the keys, somehow managed to do this without once tickling the keys), so this week they will watch a new lesson. I'm limiting them to one lesson a week, with practice on the other days, as Will otherwise tries to blow through a lesson a day in the hopes that when she's finished them all I'll let her stop.

Decorating Easter eggs is one holiday activity that the kids never seem to get too old for! I bought a nice stash of wooden eggs last year, so we have several to try some fun new techniques on today.

Syd has a couple of extra daily activities that Will doesn't this week. The Trashion/Refashion Show is on Sunday, so she needs to practice her runway routine daily, as well as finish up a couple of final bits of her garment. I also have to allow her plenty of time to make the present for a friend's birthday sleepover this weekend, as her favorite thing is to reach beyond her grasp, fail, get frustrated, and sulk. Good times.

TUESDAY: Nobody has any extracurriculars today, other than our regular playgroup, so we should be able to block out plenty of time for the kids to make their baked penne, with puppy chow for dessert. I love a school assignment that requires me to NOT make dinner!

Our Girl Scout troop is throwing a party for a local preschool--next week! The project is entirely girl-led, with the girls deciding on the theme and the activities, then breaking into committees and figuring out books to read, crafts and songs, a snack, and favor bags. Now each of the kids has plenty of assignments, so they'll have plenty to do working on this every day for the rest of the week.

Syd's word ladders work for vocabulary and logic, so until she's completed that book, I've added in a simple weekly logic activity for Will. I LOVED mind benders when I was her age, so I'm eager to see if she likes them as much as I did. If so, this series has two more levels of books to work from.

WEDNESDAY: Now that we've established geohistorical context for Aristotle and Plato, the kids will complete a couple of hands-on enrichment assignments to help them remember a key concept for each. On this day, they'll work together to assemble the Platonic solids from nets. I think that we'll use colorful paper, just as this tute shows, and then hang them in the playroom to look pretty. This will also serve as a review of their identifications.

We're adding in a new unit this week--the kids requested Medieval history, so we're starting volume 2 of Story of the World. On this day, we'll just read/listen to the chapter, then go over the reading comprehension questions in the activity book.

Syd's special unit this semester is cooking and baking. This week, she wants to bake the cinnamon rolls from the Nerdy Nummies cookbook--to say that I'm excited is an understatement! I hope she succeeds, as I've actually tried cinnamon rolls from scratch two different times, and I've not been happy with either batch.

THURSDAY: Today's Story of Science enrichment is Aristotle's celestial spheres. I want the kids to understand what the great minds of the ancient civilizations thought of our universe, and Aristotle's concept is one of the most beautiful of concepts--totally wrong, of course, but beautiful. I'll give the kids the option of making either a two-dimensional model of the celestial spheres on poster board, using a compass, or a three-dimensional model with Sculpey. I'll be curious to see who chooses what.

The Story of the World mapwork takes just a few minutes, although it is parent-directed. To make it a little more sophisticated, I'll likely ask the children to also mark the important Greek cities on the map.

FRIDAY: Syd is learning how to multiply fractions in her current math unit, and Will could always use a review, as she struggled with remembering the algorithm a little during her rational numbers unit. I caught her inverting as if she was dividing a couple of times, which tells me that she doesn't yet truly understand the concept of what she's doing. So on this day, the kids will make some models of multiplying with fractions on transparencies or cellophane, and we'll put them in the window to look pretty and to serve as a reminder of what multiplying a fraction really looks like. The idea is that if you can visualize what 1/3 times 1/3 should look like, you're unlikely to tell me that the answer is 1.

This week's SOTW chapter is really just a background on the fall of the Roman Empire, so the only enrichment that the kids are going to do is to play around on the BBC site for Ancient Rome. I imagine that there will be more hands-on assignments in future weeks.

The Junior Underwater Explorer badge is another book that the kids picked up during our road trip, so they should have already started on it. I really like this book because it includes some hands-on activities--those red-boxed ones that I told the children that they had to do. They should be able to complete them all independently, which is the gold standard for Friday work--by Friday, I'm tired!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The kids have their regular Saturday extracurriculars, and Syd has a sleepover, which means special time with Will. That will flip the next day, as Syd and I will spend nearly the entire day prepping for that evening's Trashion/Refashion Show, where Supergirl of the Night will make her debut. Afterwards, it'll have to be straight to bed, because the next day these girls are throwing a party for some very, very, VERY excited little preschoolers!

We Drank Beverly and We Lived To Tell About It

You see all these photos of us in our coats on this trip? That's because it was FREEZING in Atlanta! In the middle of freaking MARCH! My hopes of spending Spring Break in the warm sunshine were dashed every single day of our trip, but at least we weren't back home, where it snowed that week.

Twice.

My hopes were dashed again on this final day in Atlanta, when the temperature made it clear that the afternoon that I'd wanted to spend at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, romping around and earning Junior Ranger badges, was just not going to fly. We'd muscled our way through an unseasonably cold national park experience before, and that is an experience that I NEVER want to repeat.

With the original plan of the morning at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site and the afternoon on the Chattahoochee, leaving from there to head southeast to Savannah, in shambles, we decided to instead sightsee in walking distance of our hotel for the morning, then pick up the car, spend the afternoon with Reverend King, and leave from his house for Savannah.

Next problem: what to see? My vote was stoutly towards the Center for Civil and Human Rights. Ties in perfectly with our visit to Martin Luther King Jr., and it's super educational! As a plan B, I reckoned that we could maybe do the CNN Studio Tour. But on the way home from the aquarium the night before, we had walked past a place that looked like a candy-colored wonderland to the children, and they and Matt had their hearts set on it. I was vastly overruled.

And so we went to the World of Coca-Cola.

I admit that I had kind of wanted to go to this when I was planning our trip, but the same things that turned the kids on about the place turned me off. I mean, yes, I knew it was going to be basically a Coke commercial, but wow. This place was really, really, REALLY a Coke commercial!

Ah, well. Mustn't spoil the children's fun.

When we arrived, the first thing they did was hand us a souvenir Coke, and then give us a lecture on the history of Coke, and then make us watch a really long Coke commercial in which a soldier's homecoming and some frat boys' successful Spring Break stunt, among other life events, are tied to Coca-Cola.

OMG, I just found the trailer for it! It even has the bros!!! We reference those bros often.

And then we were given permission to enter the museum:


The museum's high production values were used to mask the reality that there was little content. The galleries that showed off Coca-Cola artifacts and told the history of its production were interesting, but the many interactive displays were just silly games, not hands-on opportunities to add enrichment to the experience, and there were a lot of even sillier hoops, such as a pretend security screening or a Kinect-style wall projection game, to jump through to access different galleries.



The bottling factory display was pretty cool, until I spoiled it for the whole family by pointing out how the freshly bottled bottles get taken along a conveyor belt at ceiling height back to the front of the exhibit, where the soda is dumped out and they're re-used.

We declined to get our pictures taken with the Coca-Cola polar bear, or to sit in the movie theater and watch Coke commercials, but we spent ages at one one redeeming feature of the entire World of Coca-Cola, the one thing that made the visit worthwhile, the one reason why I didn't simply wait outside while the rest of the family went in:

The sampling gallery!











Oh, my gosh, this room was so fun! I'm putting more of my images at full size than the unflattering lighting in them deserves, just so you can see the varieties of soda up for tasting. The gimmick is that it's a selection of Coca-Cola products from most of the continents of the world, and you get a little plastic up and free reign to taste them.

Reader, I tasted them ALL!


Asia and Africa had most of my favorites, with South America having some dicier flavors and most of the North American flavors being WAY too sweet for my taste:









And Europe? What the heck is WRONG with you, Europe?!? I guess I'd drink that lingonberry-flavored soda again, but all of those teas were nasty, and do you see there on the far right of the below photo, mostly cut off? The drink that came out of that dispenser comes straight from the hellmouth.



Seriously, Beverly was SO bad that I thought that there was something wrong with it, like the syrup had gone rotten. There was a group of tweens there on a field trip (what on earth kind of school field trip takes you to the World of Coca-Cola? Marketing class? Home ec? Georgia history?), and they were playing an elaborate game whose rules mainly consisted of tricking each other into tasting Beverly, and then videotaping it.

This drink was so bad that we later Googled it, and discovered that yes, it's officially bad.

The tasting gallery is set at the very end of the museum, right before the exit through the gift shop, but I was so excited about it (and only it) that I insisted on doing it before most of the other activities.

This was a HUGE mistake, because our next activity?

A movement-based 3D film:



I did not vomit up my stomach full of high fructose corn syrup, food dye, and caffeine only because I closed my eyes. And it wasn't just me, because Matt also agrees that the film wasn't correctly focused and that the chairs were crazy bumpy, and Will says that the glasses didn't fit her face well, either. Sydney was fine, though, which was crazy, because she was the one who'd been making suicides of all the drinks of an entire continent and then downing it. That kid has an iron stomach.

Still, though, the movie gave us hours of fun making fun of it for the rest of our vacation, and we still will turn to each other, apropos of nothing, and say, "Hey, you know what the fourth "u" is? YOU!!!"

 OMG, I just found a bootleg copy of it on Youtube! It's soooooo bad!!!

I was still slightly nauseated as we finally, FINALLY left World of Coca-Cola, hiked back to our hotel, picked up the car, and wended our way through downtown traffic to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. And of course my tummy was completely forgotten as soon as we got there, because it was exactly where I wanted to be and there was no need to sulk!







I really liked this museum's explanations of segregation. It thoroughly answered the question, both for kids and for potential non-believers, of why exactly segregation was so harmful, and why separate simply cannot be equal.

The birthplace was closed for tours due to some renovation work--good thing that we've toured it before, then!--so we were only able to hike over and see it from the outside:



And then I took a photo of my kids standing in the same spot, with the house taking up the same space in the background, as they were in the photo that I took of them here five years ago:



To get their heads in the right spot this year, I had to have them stand two steps lower than they stood back in 2012. They were only just beginning to learn about Civil Rights then, and I like to think that now, five years later, they're coming back to the same site with so much more understanding of Reverend King's legacy, with so much more history and context and so many more insights to bring to the experience.

Even if we did go to the World of Coca-Cola instead of the Center for Civil and Human Rights...