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...

One Full Day in Atlanta

We booked a hotel in downtown Atlanta during our visit there, mostly because most of what I wanted us to do was downtown, all in walking distance.

Not the first thing, though: brunch at Mary Mac's! Our travel budget relies on us eating our packed groceries for almost all meals, with very few exceptions. For instance: when you grew up on Southern cooking, but have lived half your life up north, but now you're back down south for just a week, where there's a famous restaurant that specializes in Southern cooking just a few miles away?

That's an exception.


My smartphone doesn't take cute pictures like your smartphone does, so you'll have to live with these. The photo on the left is my brunch, with macaroni and cheese, fried green tomatoes, fried okra, sweet potato casserole, potlikker and cracklin' bread already consumed, and sweet tea to drink. This was also my dinner. On the right, there, Matt is mowing down a pulled pork sandwich. He inhaled it, so he had to make himself another sandwich from our packed groceries for dinner, the poor dear.

Tummies nice and tight, we dropped our car back off at our hotel, then hoofed it across Centennial Olympic Park--



(Do you see what's missing? This is when we discovered that women's sabre wasn't an Olympic event until 2004 for individuals, and 2008 for team! What the hell, Olympics?!?)

--and to the CNN Center. Matt and I, along with our friends John and Sarah, went on a Spring Break trip together many years ago when we were but little lambs in college, and I distinctly remember that we could look through a giant picture window into CNN going about its business, so I wanted to show the children. Alas, however, for either my memory is flawed or the CNN Center has vastly altered its design since then (which would be understandable, since that WAS twenty years ago...), because now all you can do is stand in the food court and crane your head up at CNN going about its business several floors above you. And we didn't even get to see Carl Azuz walking by so we could fangirl over him! Huge bummer.

Note to Carl Azuz: Walk through the food court sometimes!

Fortunately, the disappointments of no women's sabre and no Carl Azuz were well forgotten with our next, highly anticipated destination. Will first discovered this place last summer, during our sharks study. She was in the family room on the computer, and from my bedroom I heard her shout, "Mom! WHALE SHARKS!" She had found the website of the Georgia Aquarium, and was raptly reading all about their whale sharks. You could see whale sharks at the Georgia Aquarium!

I looked over her shoulder at the site, then said to her, before walking away, "Atlanta? We could go to Atlanta sometime."

That sometime was this time, and there we were at the Georgia Aquarium-

Syd's special animal is the beluga, because I spent hours at a time singing "Baby Beluga" softly to her in the NICU, so that she would know that I was there when she was too fragile to handle human touch.

--where dreams really do come true:



We spent much of the day with the whale sharks, it seems:

This one is filter feeding.

Here's a black-tipped reef shark. We know those from Hawaii!

Do you think the kids liked it okay?


Syd was even chosen to "help" one of the dolphin trainers during the dolphin show--



--and the whale sharks were STILL her favorite thing at the aquarium!

Magical moments like these are one of the main reasons why I love to travel so much. Yes, I can find magical moments at home (although that's harder sometimes--you know it is!), and yes, there are a bunch of other things that I really love about travel, but that experience of seeing or doing something that we've only dreamed of, or never even dreamed of? Of seeing my first glacier, live and  up-close? Of spending the night in the house of one of Mac's friends, and waking up in the morning to find a squirrel had sneaked in the open window of my room and was sitting on the dresser? Of a small Syd, spotting Cookie Monster and breaking away to bolt over and give him a great, big hug? Of being proposed to in Iceland? Of exposing my first dinosaur fossil?

Those are the stories that I tell the kids over and over--the places I've been, the things I've done, the sights I've seen. The magic. And I love it every time they tell me a story of their own, usually from some adventure that they've gone on and I haven't. They've already got their own magic to tell me about: the Day of Pranks that they pulled at camp, how nobody would sleep at the sleepover, white water rafting with their grandparents, the Robin Hood game at their nature program in which children shot actual (padded) arrows at other children.

And of the stories that we tell, there are now several more: the time that we ate in a restaurant that was also an aquarium. The time that we walked around the Parthenon, and it was in Nashville. The time that we saw a wild dolphin at the beach (more on that to come!).

The time that we saw whale sharks, and it was magical.

Work Plans for the Week of March 27, 2017: Science and Scouts

We took last week easy, decompressing as we finished up some school projects and kept up with some individual work--



While the kids worked on Girl Scout badges and personal projects (see all those peg people watching Syd do her math? The unicorn next to her? She sure knows how to keep herself busy!) and getting the garden going, I took some time to plan out our next semester of study. One big advantage to a road trip is that the kids are all trapped in the car with me, and can be forced to discuss their goals and desires for their continuing education. Will was not enthusiastic about much of it, as she claims to dislike music, art, grammar, home ec, and composition, but Syd, at least, likes art, home ec, and composition, and Will seemed a little more excited about history and science, and has a plan of attack for her SAT prep studies.

Our work plans for the next couple of weeks, then, will be gradually adding in the new studies that we've decided upon, and dropping some studies. I'd like for Will, at least, to finish up the MENSA reading list suggested for grades 4-6, so she can get into the meatier readings of the middle school list, so instead of a Book of the Day this week, I'm encouraging the kids to work on that list. We're gradually getting back into memory work, so will review prepositions and helping verbs. Typing on Typing.com continues, and I've added a very short piece of cursive copywork (this week's copywork is from this site) to each day, just to keep the kids' skills up. Will continues SAT prep with Khan Academy, although I'm currently researching textbooks to add into her schedule in the next couple of weeks. And here's the rest of our week!



MONDAY: We're still just getting started on this day, as we had a Girl Scout meeting this morning. The girls are using part of their cookie profits to plan a party for a local preschool that serves children experiencing homelessness and/or poverty, and part to go on a big camping trip--all next month! So this morning they had a presentation on the camping experience from an older brother who's a Boy Scout, and then another mom mediated the party planning brainstorming and helped the children form committees. Syd is in charge of the Story and Sensory committees (she's also working on this as part of her Junior Agent of Change Journey, and so has added responsibilities) and also on the Snacks committee, and Will is on the Music/Physical Activity and Crafts/Decorations committees.  They'll be working on their committee responsibilities every school day this week.

In Math Mammoth this week, Will is studying rational numbers and Syd is calculating fractions. Will had a lot of trouble with multiplying and dividing fractions at her age, but Syd seems to be handling it well--I'll just go ahead and pat myself on the back for all of those hands-on fractions lessons we have! Speaking of hands-on math... our enrichment lesson this week isn't really "hands-on," but is a game that will help the kids review multiplying fractions and encourage them to memorize some common fractions of groups. I don't usually make games and flash cards anymore, as the effort that I put into make most of that was almost always WAY more than the use the kids got out of it, but this game looks easy to put together, so we'll give it a whirl.

Will was really excited to almost be finished with the first season of Analytical Grammar, as I told her that we would take a break from the book when she had. She lost all of that enthusiasm when I excitedly showed her the Review and Reinforcement workbook that she'd be doing, instead, bless her heart. At least those worksheets will only be 2-3 times a week, not the daily work of Analytical Grammar, but still... not exactly the vacation that I'd advertised. Syd is still slogging very slowly through Junior Analytical Grammar, as she sneaks out of doing it whenever I'm not looking right at her. If she's not careful, she won't have any break between Junior Analytical Grammar and Analytical Grammar, which I'll expect her to start in the next grade (I was buying these books directly from the Analytical Grammar website, but I just discovered that I could buy them with free shipping from Homeschool Buyers Co-op--here's their affiliate link, because there's some more stuff that I want to buy from them).

Syd is still wriggling out of her Wordly Wise by completing a daily word ladder, but since the word ladder book only goes up through grade six, and since there are only so many word ladders left, I'm letting her go. Will, though, completes one chapter of Wordly Wise per week, and Syd will, too, once she's got word ladders out of her system.

We've dropped the idea of a MOOC for the coming semester, and the kids finished their Animal Behavior MOOC last week, so this leaves us with enough time for me to make the Story of Science unit more immersive--which was my dream, so yay! On this day, the kids will read the chapter and complete the reading comprehension activities for it in their quest guide. And then we'll move on to the fun stuff!

I know that we work on a lot of Girl Scout badges during school time, but that's because they're educational! On this day, Syd's Gardener badge is actually science, as she sets up an experiment on seeds and plans to monitor it all week. Will's Woodworker badge is woodshop and practical life, as she learns how to use tools and makes plans to build Luna a dog house as her final project for the badge.

Syd is neutral about learning an instrument, while Will is stoutly against the plan. Nevertheless, they're going to continue Hoffman Academy, which is free, so that I at least don't have to spend money on their ambivalence. Will likes to blow through the video lessons without retaining much, so I'll have to monitor the children more closely this semester. I'll practice that during this week's review week.

I am SUPER bummed that Will wants to take a break from fencing this session, as it's been my favorite thing from the beginning. I could continue on my own, but... eh. Fencing with my kid has been my favorite thing, and the idea of going without her, partnering with another of the sea of teenagers, has much less shine on it. So I'm going to take a break, too, and if I miss it too much I can pick it up again next session, with or without her. That being said, we DO have a much easier weekly schedule without four hours of fencing in it. This evening's only activity is Syd's ballet class. Why, we can actually eat dinner tonight! We haven't managed a Monday or Tuesday dinner in a year and a half!

TUESDAY: Our Story of Science chapter this week covers Democritus and the atom. Even though we completed an entire Greek mythology unit, we didn't spend as much time as I wanted on the map of Ancient Greece, so this is a great time to explore it more deeply. The kids adore cookie maps, so I'm thinking we'll make a big one of Ancient Greece, possibly with a few batches of blue Jello under it so that we can figure out the islands, and then decorate and label it.

WEDNESDAY: One of the semester projects that I think we'll be doing is trying to complete a new Junior Ranger badge by mail every week. The kids did one on the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site last week, and I was surprised, as I am every time, by how into it they got, and how they still talk about Jimmy Carter and his peanuts. Will actually made a "Jimmy Who?" joke last night, and for real wants to go to his church in Georgia and hear him preach. It's on our someday to-do list! On this day, the kids will be finishing the Junior Archaeologist badge books that they picked up at Fort Frederica a couple of weeks ago, and I've got a different Junior Archaeologist badge book they they can complete to earn a different badge, as well.

THURSDAY: The cookie map of Ancient Greece has been made (and possibly consumed!) by this time, so now it's time to study atoms! The kids have studied atoms before, but I don't think we've previously gotten into electron shells, for instance, so we'll have a more detailed lesson on atoms, with the help of Bill Nye and Youtube, and then the kids will complete this Bohr model of the atom worksheet, choosing their own elements to model.

Will was not excited about home ec, but Syd loves it, and is actually planning to do both a cooking and a baking project every week (normally, I'll let her choose her own baking project, but for this week, working on the cookie map of Ancient Greece is plenty). We'll be using Your Kids: Cooking for the weekly cooking assignment, with some leeway for Syd to choose what recipe or lesson she wants to do. Since Will has a horseback riding lesson on this evening, I imagine that the kids will either make their penne with bacon and peas for lunch, or that Syd will make the dinner herself and Will will make the puppy chow. We do tend to eat late dinners, though, mostly because we have a lot of trouble getting our act together in the evening, so no, I wouldn't be surprised if the kids chose to start this at 8 pm and we ate it at 9...

FRIDAY: Of course, once you understand atoms, the periodic table of the elements is next! Again, we've studied the periodic table before, but after the previous day's activity, the kids will have even more context to understand this day's lesson on how to read it. I may plug in an activity or game, but it's also going to be Friday, when we're all a little tired, and we'll have a playdate that day, etc., so I may also not.

One of the national parks that we visited on our Spring Break trip was Ocmulgee National Monument, where the kids learned more about the Native Americans and their history and culture. One of the interesting skills that the site spent a lot of time telling us about was their pottery making, coil pots with stamped patterns. Matt bought a small bag of clay from the area, so this day's craft is just a fun little activity making and patterning coil pots. Super simple, but something that I know they're eager to do after that visit.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet! Chinese class! Trashion/Refashion Show rehearsal for me and Syd! A potluck party for Girl Scouts and their families at our house! And therefore... cleaning the house!!!

What are YOUR plans for the week?

How Homeschoolers Go on Vacation: One Morning at the Stones River National Battlefield

We stayed the night very near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, so that in the morning we could just pop up, eat motel breakfast (we crossed the gravy line south AND were blessed with expansive breakfasts in even the sketchiest motels on our trip--this hotel had biscuits, gravy, and egg patties in addition to the bog-standard waffle maker that everyone in the family but me loves, so we actually all got a good breakfast), pack ourselves away, and be at the Stones River National Battlefield minutes later. This was our only activity on this day other than the drive to Atlanta, although I was hoping to also spend some time at the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Battlefields on the way, so we had an unrushed time immersing ourselves in yet another bloody battle of the Civil War:

We always do the Visitor Center first--I mean, of COURSE--so that the kids can pick up their Junior Ranger books but also because it's really the best way to orient yourself, especially at a battlefield. After you tour the museum and see the orientation film, by the time you get out to those blank fields with cannons at the edges, you should know what you're looking at.

In other news, look who I finally taught not to write on top of the exhibits!

As someone with a Master's in Library Science, with an emphasis on Special Collections, who used to work as a gatekeeper at a special collections library with one of my main tasks making sure that people did not write on top of the exhibits, it's probably about time...

If you've toured the museum, and watched the orientation film, and you have an audio tour at hand, NOW you may go see the battlefields!



At the end of our trip, I asked the kids which national park had been their favorite, as we had visited several. Will told me that this battlefield was her favorite, which surprised me, as both kids LOVED Fort Pulaski, which you'll see later. But it turns out that it was this part of this battlefield that was her true favorite. This is the Slaughter Pen, and it's fabulous to romp around in, and has a fascinating and very bloody story behind it.





Battlefield touring can get a little annoying, as you're always popping in and out of the car, but the terrain of Stones River is so varied--woods, boulders, fields, old cabins, the river--that there was always something that the kids wanted to see.

That kid spends much of her time at battlefields pretending to shoot people. We had just learned, though, that at this particular site many of the Confederates had charged with actual sticks in their hands in lieu of real weapons, so at least she's being historically accurate. 

William Holland's story is especially interesting. We might not have noticed his memorial, there in an out-of-the-way spot behind a larger memorial, but the kids' Junior Ranger books had an entire page on him and so they directed us there. 

Can you see something unusual in the following picture?



I didn't, but Will spotted it soon after:


Check it out!


On the back, the artist wrote that the finder was free to keep it or rehide it. Will REALLY wanted to keep it, so we agreed that when we were home, she'd replace it by painting her own rock and hiding it in a park for someone to find.

The battlefield also has a national cemetery. Many national cemeteries are very sterile, but this one was great, with tons of character and markers that made you wonder about those memorialized:





There's a huge section of the cemetery devoted to soldiers in the United States Colored Troops.


After that, two little girls were certainly well prepared to become Stones River National Battlefield Junior Rangers!




And then we were on our way to Atlanta! We got snookered into stopping in Chattanooga for fancy cupcakes (worth it) and a Moonpie store (not worth it), and then got confused about what time it was (Central Time, then Eastern, then Central, then Eastern again!!!) so that we only arrived at Chickamauga 15 minutes before it closed, the cranky ranger informed us. He begrudgingly gave the kids Junior Ranger books to work on until we came back through, and when I told him they would work on them in the car some, he told me that there was nothing they could do outside of the park (which is untrue--over a third of the book doesn't require any outside information to complete), and yet somehow he neglected to inform me that we could also just drive twenty minutes back the way we came from and be back in Tennessee, where we would have an extra hour of Central time to work on the books.

See? He even made me cranky, and on my own vacation!

Whatever, Cranky Ranger! We're going to Atlanta next, and it's going to be awesome!