These Days

The Dunwoody Nature Center hosts a butterfly festival every August. The first and last time we attended was in 2014 , before Ela was born. We decided to go again this year for Ela's first time, and my parents', too.

A few pictures from downtown Helen - Georgia's own replica of a Bavarian town. We walked around town before heading to the Unicoi State Park to view the eclipse.

A few days before the August 21 total solar eclipse, Richard and I were still trying to decide if we should drive up to north Georgia to be in the path of totality or just stay where we are since the moon will still cover ~97% of the sun... Day before the eclipse, we decided to go. Neil can be released from school at 11AM, and it will take 1.5 hours (on normal days) to get there so we should have enough time to catch the eclipse at ~2:30PM. In the morning of August 21 we decided to just let Neil skip school and drive as early as we can. We left the house around 8:30AM and it was surprisingly normal traffic. We walked around Helen, had lunch, then drove to Unicoi State Park to find a good viewing spot. We chose the beach area and were glad to see it wasn't too crowded. Even in the peak of the eclipse, it still felt like an intimate gathering. If you haven't seen a total eclipse before, nothing prepares you for the actual experience. As it was nearing totality, people were al...

We went to the High Museum of Art two Saturdays with my parents and the kids. They have a temporary Andy Warhol exhibit which was reason enough to go. We saw his most famous works (Campbell soup, Marilyn Monroe and Mao screen prints) but there were many other artwork that surprised me like the endangered animals prints and so many cat illustrations.  It was an afternoon well spent.

We rarely find ourselves in downtown Atlanta, so it's good to have visitors -- we reacquaint ourselves with the attractions as we show them around. We checked out the CNN Center, Centennial Olympic Park and the area where the Georgia Aquarium and Coca-Cola Museum are located.