This year I had the privilege of being an artist-in-residence at the GA National Fair and on the weekends I had a booth setup to display and sell my photos. Heidi and Trey came down on the last Sunday of the fair to enjoy the rides (it was one of the days you could buy a wristband and enjoy unlimited rides).
Here is my booth followed by some snapshots of the fair.
Our boy’s first day at “big boy” school. Here he’s is all dressed up for day one of first grade.
The last photo is of me on my first day of school in 1986. I was living in Bouaké, Ivory Coast and headed off to first grade at ICA.
After last year’s epic party & dinner at our little house, we were glad to simplify things this year. Less people, less food & planning, and in the big outdoors. We had some friends meet us over at Macon’s great Amerson Water Works Park to celebrate Trey’s big day.
My parents and my brother Philip came into town for the weekend and got to spend some quality time with Trey. I was still hobbling around on crutches but Heidi was able to run the show.
We went with a Star Wars theme since that is what Trey has been really into lately. That night he got to watch Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time and it really made the day special.
A friend in Macon told me he took his kids to Legoland one afternoon. It threw me off because I thought the closest Legoland was in Orlando. Turns out, they opened a “Legoland Discovery Center” at a mall in north Atlanta.
Trey had done pretty well the week before as I hobbled around on my new pair of crutches so we thought he deserved a special treat. We drove up to Atlanta and let him spend a whopping six hours running around the joint.
The highlight of the venue is the “4D” theater that rotates through three different films every 15 minutes. We watched all three and saw Trey’s favorite “Spell Breaker” two and a half times (1/2 due to a glitch in the projectors causing them to restart it).
Trey also attended a “Master Builder” workshop in which he got to build a space pod and then do a “show and tell” with the other kids. He really enjoyed doing that and got so excited showing off his creation that he smashed the teacher in the face. Thankfully, the guy laughed it off.
As for my impressions of the place, it’s a great spot for spending a long afternoon. The tickets are a bit pricey so next time only one of us will go with him. Plus, being so far away (87 miles each way), it isn’t something we’ll be doing often. We’ll probably plan our next visit around a time when we are up in Atlanta for something else.
Heidi had last weekend off so we headed up the road to one of our favorite local play spots – the dam on the Ocmulgee River at East Juliette. It was a perfect hot summer day to enjoy the chilly water for a couple hours.
This time we explored a bit more and ended up completely crossing the river and then walking back along top of the dam. Trey thought it was cool that we let him swim some on the other side of the dam.
Hard to believe Trey has graduated from kindergarten! The little guy is almost 6 years old and just a couple days after his birthday he’ll be starting 1st grade.
His preschool 5K class had a program for all the parents on the second to last day of school. They showed a slideshow with photos of all the kids and then they did a short musical about camping. Trey was very excited about a couple of the songs (in particular one about disgusting camp food). For most of the program he sang directly to me and Heidi and didn’t even look at the teacher conducting. Another funny thing he would do is not sing the main lyrics but instead sing the backup vocals on the CD that accompanied them.
My parents were in Tennessee for the week and made the trip down with Philip for the day to attend the graduation ceremony. Trey was excited to get to build Legos with this grandaddy and we ended the day with a delicious meal at Pho Saigon, Macon’s best ethnic restaurant.
