Our trip to Georgia...

This week we are in Georgia, enjoying a family road trip and some new adventures. Ethan had an opportunity to speak at a big conference in Columbus, Georgia, so we all went along for the ride. Columbus is just under two hours from Atlanta, so we decided to take an extra day or two and see the sights. Can you tell that we're all exciting to be getting out of Starkville for a few days?

One thing we love about road trips is getting to see new country. And, after being here in the south where there are trees every direction you look (literally, you cannot see anything but trees), it's always nice to see some wide open spaces like these...

 These were both taken in Alabama, which we're discovering is probably our favorite part of the south that we've been in yet. Now, you may not think this next one qualifies as open space, but come live in the Starkville area for a couple of months and you will discover that it is almost a physical relief to your eyes to be able to see for such a long way as you could here. We're so used to not seeing anything on the horizon but a line of trees that too see a hill rising in the distance was exciting.

We crossed the Chattahoochee River, and entered Georgia. This was Ethan's first time ever in this state, and my first time here outside of the airport.

We got to our hotel Monday night and Erik and I settled in to hang out while Ethan went down to the convention center to sign in to the conference and take care of a few things that had to be done before his presentation Tuesday morning. Erik was so excited to be out of the car and in a new place to explore. I was not so excited to have him crawling around on our less than clean hotel room floor, but he'd been in the car for something like 5 or 6 hours, what was I to do? So I ended up crawling around after him making sure nothing went in his mouth, and we all survived.

Ok, so this is before Ethan left, but oh well...

That night, after Ethan got back, we decided to see what Erik thought of the swimming pool. Now you have to understand that Erik has always been afraid of running water. He hates fountains, the water running in the bathtub freaks him out, and the ocean was the most terrifying experience of his life! So, we were expecting this whole party to last all of two minutes once he saw the water, especially when we got in and it was definitely on the cold side. We started by just dipping his toes in, and he didn't react, so we let him stand up to his knees on the first step into the pool. Then we showed him how to splash his hands in it and he thought that was pretty fun. Soon he was up to his neck, splashing and kicking and having a great time. I think he got half the pool up his nose, and the other half went down his throat, but he didn't care. He was laughing and chattering and just having the time of his life. We did have to take him out after about 10 minutes though because he was obviously getting pretty darn cold, though it didn't slow him down at all. We took him and warmed him up in a nice warm bath and then we all went to bed. Unfortunately, it's a little hard to take pictures when everyone is in the pool and your camera isn't water proof, so we didn't get any of our swimming fun on camera. Maybe next time we go swimming we'll see what we can do.

Tuesday morning, we all went to breakfast in the hotel lobby, and then Erik and I went back to bed and Ethan headed over to the convention center to do his thing. Erik and I spent the most part of the morning just sleeping and hanging out, but it came time to check out, so we got that taken care of and then went to wander downtown Columbus for a little while until Ethan was done. It was really cool! There are tons of really neat historical buildings, and I could've stayed well entertained for hours just enjoying the history and the architecture. As the city has expanded and threatened diferent historic homes and buildings, the city has moved the buildings to a special historical district in downtown. This means almost all of the old buildings are together in a couple of blocks and you can wander around and see them all. It's so fun! All the old mills and factories along the river front have all been turned into hotels and convention centers and University buildings, so it all looks like something out of a history book. It was so fun to spend an hour just checking it all out.

When we finally met back up with Ethan, we headed to lunch at Golden Corral (SO EXCITING! This is the first time we've had Golden Corral since we moved to Idaho!), and then we decided to go check out the Columbus Botanical Gardens. A brochure we read said that it is among the biggest botanical gardens in the south, so we couldn't pass it up! It is centered around an old farm house and outbuildings, which were built in the 1890's. The farm house is open for tours so we decided to check it out. It was really a neat house, and quite large for a homestead farmhouse.

Erik seemed to really enjoy it!

We left the farm house all excited to go and tour the gardens, but it turns out this is a fairly new park, and not fully developed yet. We saw all there was to see without hiking through 20 something acres of forest (that's what makes it one of the biggest, not the garden part), and then we were back in the car and on our way, slightly disappointed. Erik in particular was not so happy about getting back into the car! Good thing it was only about 2  hours to Atlanta, and it was naptime! :)