Festival of Trees

The Festival of Trees is a big holiday tradition in Atlanta. I have only been once before the year before last. I volunteered as a costume character (Curious George) and walked around sweltering in a huge costume for several hours. It was really fun! This year the kids and I went with my friend Christine, her husband, and daughter Catie. It was amazing! Here is a link:

http://www.choa.org/default.aspx?ID=2081

There were beautifully decorated trees everywhere you looked, lots of rides for the kids, and plenty of activities. The first display we looked at was a huge interactive choochoo train. The kids could press buttons and make different parts of the exhibit move. Alex pushed one button to make a tiny Harry Potter fly around a Hogwartz castle. The kids and I bought some tickets to ride the carousel. An attendent and I convinced Kaitlyn to ride one of the horses. I stood in between her and Alex and the attendent stood on the other side of her. It was seriously the fastest carousel I have ever been on. I had to hold on to Kaitlyn and Alex or the baby and I would have gone flying! We stopped to feed the babies and the kids watched some girls ice skating on a mini indoor rink. I think they were more interested in the fake snow than anything else. Then we walked around a huge gingerbread house exhibit. There were probably at least 50 different ones donated by different companies in Atlanta. We saw a huge sandcastle construction of Santa. Kaitlyn wanted to go play in the sand. She was bummed when we told her it was off limits. Kaitlyn got her face painted and both kids rode a train. It was super crowded, so we didn't stay much longer. We babysat for baby Catie that night when we got back to our house, so we had a full day and weekend!