Guatoberfest – Have a seat
Lots of photos to follow so get your coffee and have a seat. First I should say that we arrived a day later than everyone else and left a day earlier – we were only there for just over 24 hours. Because of this, I didn’t get a meet a good number of families. I did get to meet Kelly and Alleen – the 2 I most looked forward to finally meeting in person. (Hey P – where were you girl? I’ve met you but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting M and missed you guys!) We even had a couple of lovely non-Guat adoptive families (hi Muriel! hi Dorie!). But Atlanta seemed like a lovely city with a lively downtown area. Our hotel was next to the aquarium and across the street from the Bicentennial Olympic Park.
Self Portrait:
At one point we took over a very large portion of the park with strollers and beautiful Guatemalan babies. This was the last wave of strollers arriving:
Kelly and Kathlyn:
Alleen chasing after Gabriella:
Sabrina thought it was all kind of cool for a while but then started to get a little tired and overwhelmed:
So we grabbed some dinner and went back to the hotel. The beds sucked so no one slept well except Miss Sabrina (and that is what counts, right?). The next morning we wandered down to breakfast and it felt like very familiar – it was like going down to breakfast at the Westin and looking around for other families, asking how the night went, etc.
Sabrina and Gabriella made friends during breakfast – Gabriella even let mommy sit down for a little while and chat!
After breakfast, we returned to the room so Sabrina could nap before the aquarium. Unfortunately, she fought the nap so we had to wake her early to check out. For those who think my child smiles all of the time – I give you the result of waking her early from her nap:
On to the aquarium – which was very cool but very crowded.
I loved the beluga whales
Sea lions swimming by:
We left after the aquarium. Thanks to Julia and Kerry for organizing this (and anyone else who was involved)!
After our 4 hour ride home, Sabrina, who had spent 90% of her day in the stroller or the car seat, proceeded to go insane. She crawled all over the apartment like a mad woman and played with every single toy that she could get her hands on until we put her to bed and she passed out.