Visitors from the North

This past weekend was a special and fun weekend for the boys as their grandparents from the north made a visit to Hotlanta.  Saturday was filled with bowl games and some time at the King Springs Elementary playground.  Like it seems most all the bowl games have been this year, we all suffered through another overtime nail biter only to watch the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets come on the wrong side of the final score.  The good news was that the disappointment of the Sun Bowl did not last for long as New Years brought another great 60deg day in Atlanta and the Holden's (minus Parker and Mom) were off to Piedmont Park!  Carter was very excited and provided a full tour of the great park right in the middle of downtown.  It started with a trip to the Mayor's Grove Playground which is a smaller kids playground that was just Carter's size.  He had a blast exploring all the areas, but especially loved the slides and climbing obstacles.

There were even some items that none of us were real sure what they were... but Carter had no cares.  He just wanted to have fun!

Being the budding musician that Carter seems to want to be, he could not pass up the bongos

After a while, it was time to move on and continue the tour

So we were off.  We took our time walking around the lake, stopping at the Gazebo for a long while as some people were feeding the ducks and the geese.  Carter really liked this and when we made it to the large dock, Carter even took some of his Goldfish snacks and threw them at the geese.  Then it was off to the Noguchi Playscape.  This playground was designed and built in 1976 and in those days, shiny metal slides and concrete structures were approved playground apparatus.  I think Carter liked the older models as they had great slides with more height and speed (just hope he doesn't want to run over there in the summer as the metal slides get scalding hot in the summer sun).  He started by taking Dad up the spiral slide.

 Carter was nervous at the bottom of the slide as who was fast behind him?

Grandma!

We continued to play on this playground and even returned back to the Mayor's Grove, but it was soon time  to head to the Botanical Gardens to experience the Garden Lights that are setup for the holidays.  The Botanical Garden did a great job and we all had a blast.  As we waited for dusk to give way to darkness, we went to the model train exhibit.  Carter was very excited here and was pointing and saying "choo-choo" every time and engine came in sight .

As the daylight continued to hang around, we headed to the conservatory to see the indoor sights.  There were neat projected lights and patterns, some fun holiday topiary displays, and a ton of poinsettias.  As we came outside, we noticed the sky had gotten dark, and were soon greeted by the Santa Mantis!

Carter really liked the bees in the edible garden

and even was kind to take a quick group photo in front of one of the light trees.

We walked through the small edible garden and stopped for a bite, then we continued to walk around for about an hour marveling at the displays.  The Gardens put out over 6million lights and did a great job, here are a few photos we took with our phones (we forgot the cameras at home).

    It was then off to bed with dreams of what the next day would bring.