The Kirk's - Boys-R-Us!

A Super Saturday!!

Full Agenda = Fun (& Fast) Day!

A Selfish Act Of KindnessSo we started the day with the task I was most excited for!! As you know Pierce's 1st is just around the corner and although I will take ANY excuse to celebrate, I'm just not that big of a fan of 1st birthdays. Don't get me wrong, I will come to your party & I will have a blast & I will be thoroughly impressed with what you did, I just feel like I am harassing the same group of friends and family and well it's my issue & I know I need to just get over it but. . . . . OK so I thought since we just got to see everyone in January at Pierce's Baptism (post pending completion) instead of doing another party I would take that money and spend it on balloons. Great Idea right!? Wait there is more!!

As I thought back on how Pierce's year started I thought about the families we met down at Egleston - and how when we were there I thought to myself I am never going to forget these times. And although I include them in my nightly prayers I wanted the families who are there now to know that those of us who have been there and made it out still think & pray for them. Egleston is an AMAZING hospital, the staff, the Dr.s the nurses, the volunteers, everyone is outstanding - but that doesn't take away from the reason why everyone is there - a sick baby which is extremely taxing and isolating. SO my thought was to get a balloon for each bed in each of the three nurseries Pierce spent time in after birth and his surgery.

UP!!!!
After calling down to each nurses station that Pierce had been in I got 'clearance' to bring the balloons and a bed count for maximum capacity each nursery had around 20 beds, but not all beds were full at that time. Then remembering filled balloons take up A LOT of space, and we needed 60+ I called Sashi who has a big SUV & a HUGE heart!! She was ALL too eager to lend a hand (she is the one who came up with a selfish act of kindness since she felt SO good helping out the kids, it really was uplifting!) mind you this lady is training for the ING half marathon which is next Sunday, so she finished up her morning run & met us at the Dollar Tree behind our townhome neighborhood just a few miles from the hospital. Luckily I had called ahead to order the balloons on the same day that the truck delivered new mylars and they were the most adorable flower balloons I have ever seen!So with the help of a few balloon weights and some gentle shoving, we smooshed the 60+ balloons in Sashi's car & followed Dave & the Boys to Egleston.
Sarah opened the back hatch and made a move for the weight because the wind was blowing which = not fun for untangling balloon strings.

Dave grabbed a bunch, Sarah got a bunch & Kaiden carried his three leprechaun balloons.

This is what 60+ Balloons look like! We were quite a spectacle to say the least!

Atlanta's St. Patty's Day Parade

Scratch that, between the busy morning with the balloons and the rain and traffic this years parade just was not in the cards - there's always next year!

Georgia Aquarium & A Visit With A Best Friend!!For months now, one of my best friends from college and I have been talking about getting the boys together and going to the aquarium. Since the tradition is to take the kids to the aquarium for their 1st birthday Mir decided she would pack up and head our way for the day - it was SO great to see her, but it went way too fast! The fact that the aquarium was PACKED, none of the boys had a nap in them, everyone was hungry (and did I mention it was packed?) and we didn't make it in until 2:00 - it made for a hectic visit to say the least. Luckily we had both decided to purchase our tickets online in advance, Mir got there about 15 minutes before we did and got in no problem, we on the other hand had misplaced the first page of our print at home tickets. The teacher in me had chosen to print the pages two pages per page - so we lost both of our general admission tickets - we still had the deepo 4-D passes and our parking pass, we figur ed no sense stressing it we'd get in. I had the email on my phone but my blackberry doesn't read .pdf attachements (if you know how to make that happen please let me know!) but double lucky for us was that Dave had both charged and remembered to bring his iphone and they could scan the bar code from the screen - SCORE - we're in!! Good Start!
Kaiden and Pierce really enjoyed the school of fish at the entrance, little did we know that we should have spent the whole day right there - we could have had more face time with the fish! We met up with Mir, Sam and her parents figured out our plan of attack then Dave & I took the boys upstairs to get in line for the 4-D Deepo movie. It was really great to watch a 3-D movie, haven't seen one of those in years, but in hind set I'm not sure Kaiden was quite ready for that kind of interactive experience, plus they play that show SO loud, it was a bit much with the boom the vibrating seat the bubbles flying out plus the video flashing. Overall I would say Kaiden did great with it, he decided after the first few fish 'flew' out at him he didn't want to wear the glasses to keep seeing that, we made it all but 5-7 minutes to the end. Dave and I didn't see any reason to force him to stay if he was done so we left when he asked and beat the crowds back down to the bigger crowd in the gallery!

We met up with Mir again, decided to give the boys a snack and let them recharge a little before hitting the halls. We headed down Ocean Voyager first since, well that was where we had paused to for snack time and there wasn't a line to get in - this is the hall with the tunnel under the water, which is AWESOME, Kaiden loved it as much as he did last time and Pierce who typically seems to be more of a 'people watcher' was interested in those giant goliath gourper and the whale sharks were hard for him to miss, plus for some unexplained reason the tunnel was relatively empty so Mir and I got to spend some time catching up. We headed from there to the Tropical Diver hall which was our second favorite place from our last visit and it was a good as we remembered. Sam loved when the waves would roll in and out and Kaiden loved the touch screen display computers in the back, he liked the actual fish and would weave his way to the front too and Pierce got up close and personal with the fish & he really liked that, which was SO fun to watch. The hardest thing for me was trying to get pictures of the boys in a super crowded space, towards the end of our time there it had thinned out some and I got some video of the boys together sitting in front of the wall and Kaiden was pointing out fish to Pierce, so sweet!