Spring Stay-cation

We spent Spring Break in Atlanta and it's been a very restful week. Oh, we've been busy - no lollygagging for the Knitternall family.

We spent Monday at the Georgia Aquarium (thanks to a tip from John Heneghen, our tickets cost just $15 each!) and the World of Coke.

I worked half-days Tuesday through Thursday, so we did some adventure-dining for lunch. Happy Sumo and the World Peace Cafe were big hits, and the lunchtime prices were satisfying as well.

Friday was movie day for the guys and shopping for the gals.

Today, the teen and I hit the trails at Kennesaw National Historic Battlefield for his next 10-mile hike (almost there - just one more hike and the Scout badge is DONE). It was a beautiful morning, but the incline was brutal. Straight up. Straight down. Up to the summit of Kennesaw Mountain, across Little Kennesaw Mountain, Pigeon Hill, and Cheatham Hill, round and back to the Visitor's Center via an access road. Note to self: next time, take fancy hiking poles because the branches we used were evidently declasse. The hikers we passed (and who passed us) were well REI-d for the day. Not that our branches didn't work. They just weren't COOL.

We also passed throngs of volunteers working on the trails. To get to their posts, they had to climb the same rigorous incline we did. The assigned jobs involved pickaxes for breaking rock, moving 25-30 pound rocks to build water breaks on the trails, and hauling fallen limbs and undergrowth to gathering spots along the trail. Mulching the trails at Dunwoody Nature Center is a cake walk in comparison.

Spring Break has been nice. We're refreshed and ready for the insanely busy time between now and school's end. I have Preschool Phonics classes to wrap up, summer schedules to finalize (how did the teen get old enough for driving school?), and a never-ending to-do list at work.

Meanwhile, it's good to be home. It'll be wonderful to celebrate Easter at church in the morning. And I look forward to tinkering with the vegetable garden in the warming weather ahead.

But I don't want to see another mountain trail. Anytime soon, anyway.