Ladies Day

If any of you follow my Facebook, you know that my beautiful Essie became a WOMAN this week. Her body has been showing signs of it coming for AGES now, so I was prepared. And given Essie's... um... dramatic nature, I was ready for the torrent of anger and emotion that would come with this unwelcome visitor (like as she's developed breasts - she hates them and plans to have them removed when she moves out of the house... wanna take bets on her changing her mind?) SO... as she told me that she'd gotten her period, she was so calm and matter of fact about it! No drama, no nothing. Totally, typical Essie. She's freaks about the stuff I DON'T expect freaking over... and she's totally cool with the stuff I think will bring on the drama.

Mr. B suggested that perhaps Essie and I should have a bit of a "Welcome to Womanhood" day to celebrate. The lovely Kat agreed to watch Gert for a few hours, and Essie and I made plans. I suggested pedicures, or hairdos, (clothes shopping was out - Essie HATES shopping for clothes)... she didn't care for any of those ideas. Then I suggested we go to the top of Stone Mountain -something she's been wanting to do for ages. While not exactly along the vein I had in mind, it was her day, so away we went.

As we were driving towards Stone Mountain, I was watching for the trams, just to point out and say "Look Essie - that's where we'll be a in a little bit"... but I wasn't seeing them. I thought perhaps I was just not looking at the right times. Pulling up to the tram entrance, we see the sign... "The Sky Lift is Closed Today".

Crap.

There were tears. We tried to think of plan B... Big Target... Ikea... Haircuts...... then I hit on it - World of Coca Cola!!!! My trusty cheap, no frills phone managed to give me directions to the place. We found it and headed in.

After checking out these cool bottles, we were let into this REAL cool area with all this neat Coke memorabilia. It was the last place we could take pictures, so I snapped a couple. I DIDN'T get one of the thing I REALLY wanted - a Norman Rockwell original painting!!!! Have I ever expressed my love for Norman?

I LOVED all the retro stuff!!!!

This is where I vent for a moment. They said at least 5 different times that this was the LAST place you can take pictures until the tasting room. And as we're walking through all these exhibits there are people snapping pictures left and right. The same thing happens at The Biltmore. Ok... I understand that it seems silly, and that in general they don't want you to take pictures because of copyrights and wanting to sell you pictures for WAY MORE in the gift shop. Yeah, that sucks. But it still just annoys me that people feel it's okay to just go ahead then and take pictures. Ok... rant off.

So our favorite area by FAR was the tasting room. They have drinks from all over the world. Our favorites were from Asia and Africa - lots of different fun flavored Fantas. Our least favorite was Beverly from Italy. Essie said it tasted like barf.

But by far, our VERY favorite was good old CocaCola from the U S of A. Here's Essie happy to try a sample
And hamming it up for the camera... in Coke Camo.

And a little proof we were there!