Lantern Parade + Zoo

Pregnancy insomnia is no joke. Since there is no chance of me sleeping I’m up way past midnight and writing about my little weekend and having deep thoughts about life. Well, kind of.

This weekend was just all about exploring Atlanta with my little family. Saturday I was seriously craving Atlanta’s Tin Lizzie’s, which happens fairly frequently as you know if you read my blog regularly, but we really wanted to go to the Old Fourth Ward Fall Festival so we headed to one on the other side of town. I got my fix of low country boil tacos (aka heaven in my mouth) and queso, we watched the Georgia game, and we were good to go.

This Tin Lizzie’s is right across the street from Oakland Cemetery. Despite living in that area for three years we never had so much as stepped foot in this historic cemetery. We took a little walk through it and it was gorgeous and had some really interesting graves.

Afterwards we headed to the Old Fourth Ward Fall Festival where we planned on hanging out until the Lantern Parade that evening. It was a free festival, and the weather felt like fall for the first time, so it was kind of perfect. We sat together on a blanket, listened to live music, and danced. It was pretty much the best time. After a while we moved to the parade route to have a better view of all the lanterns. I’d never gone to this parade before, but it was really neat. Maddie Grace seemed to really enjoy sitting on daddy’s shoulders and watching all the different lanterns that people made. There were minions, puppies, a cat, dragonflies, and about a zillion jelly fish lanterns.

Sunday we did our normal church routine followed by naps, and then headed to Zoo Atlanta since the weather was perfect and we all love zoo trips, especially Maddie Grace. She legitimately cried at one point when I made her leave the elephant exhibit. She could stare at the animals all day long – as long as she had snacks of course. Afterwards we grabbed dinner on Piedmont Park before heading home to attempt a family run to work off all the food we ate over the weekend.

Now it’s the final countdown for our trip though and I’m beyond stressed about getting everything done. I just realized that it’s going to be cold (like really cold) and I have no cold weather clothes that will fit either me or Maddie Grace so I foresee several last minute shopping trips this week. Also my giant suitcase that I’ve been using since a trip to Europe in 6th grade is completely broken so that would be a good thing to go ahead and invest in. So here’s to Monday morning blues after a great weekend and hoping I survive this week in one piece and get us all on that plane Friday!