My friend and I, along with our daughters, went to Atlanta last weekend to visit our friends, the Wildmans, who moved from here about a month ago.
Since my daughter's birthday was this past week, I thought it would be a fitting birthday present for her to visit her best friend.
We had some neat experiences while we were there. I thought them worthy of sharing.
First of all, our friend Lisa and her children did not know we were coming. Her husband knew, but of course, we had to tell someone of our plans. We couldn't drive all that way and drop in unannounced. With my luck, after 7 hours of driving, we would have knocked on the door only to find they had come to Mississippi for the weekend!
But I digress. We communicated with my friend's husband, Eddie, all week long via the e-mail at his work. We planned it perfectly and hoped he could keep the secret.
We got off to a late start on Friday, so we didn't arrive at their apartment until about 1 a.m. the next morning. Of course, traveling east, we lost an hour when we crossed over the Georgia state line. En route, we received several phone calls from Eddie, some of which were very muted tones from behind closed doors in their bathroom apartment. He kept wanting to know where we were and when we expected to arrive. He even convinced Lisa at 11 p.m. that night that he needed to go to the grocery store for coffee so he could call us and talk without being suspected.
During the trip, my friend Kim and I discussed a thousand ways to present ourselves upon arrival. Each idea seemed better than the rest. Of course, when we got there, we were all so excited that none of our plans came to fruition. We just burst in unannounced, found Lisa asleep on the couch and woke her with delight. She was shocked to say the least, especially since we had woken her from a deep sleep. It took her a little bit to get her bearings and let the reality set in that we were actually there. Then the girls ran to the bedroom to wake their friend. When they finally woke her up, she was speechless. She looked like a child on Christmas morning. I thought she was going to cry. It was priceless.
Of course, we stayed up visiting until about 3:30 in the morning. We sat out on their back patio on a futon couch and enjoyed a luxury we had not experienced in Greenwood: no mosquitoes and cool temperatures in the low 60s.
As we discussed what plans to make for our visit, we talked about Stone Mountain, Six Flags, the zoo and the many other exciting things to do in Atlanta, but we opted to keep this visit low-key because we knew all the girls really wanted to do was just be together.
On Saturday, we went to the Mall of Georgia, which is the biggest mall in the southeastern United States. It was, I'm convinced, the equivalent of visiting a theme park. Before you even enter the mall itself, there is an outdoor area that features restaurants, a pavilion where concerts are held every Saturday night and various activities for the kids, including a simulated bungee-jumping activity that the girls engaged in. There were stores surrounding the entrance to the mall that you could access from the outside, such as the FAO Schwarz toy store, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, Restoration Hardware and other well-known stores. There was also a place called Van's SkatePark, which was an indoor maze of jumps, ramps, trails and half-pipes for those interesting in roller-blading or skateboarding. It was as big as the Leflore County Civic Center.
Once inside the mall, I noticed the second floor featured a movie theater that I think was showing 20 movies at any given time. They even had an IMAX theater. The food court offered dozens of choices.
We decided for a birthday treat, we'd take the girls to a unique store called the Build-A-Bear Workshop. This was the neatest thing I had ever seen. When you walk into the store, you veer to the right and find bins and bins of various animals, including horses, bears, rabbits, dogs, cats and leopards. The animals are not stuffed yet, just simply the outer shell. You pick which one you like, then move on to the next station, which allows you the option of picking a sound to put inside your animal. You could pick from dozens of pre-recorded messages and songs or you could record your own.
Once this is done, the store attendant places the sound button inside the animal's paw. The next stop allows you to pick a small red satin heart. You then make a wish, kiss the heart and the store attendant places it inside the animal. They then attach your animal to a machine that fills it with stuffing. They sew up the back for you, and it's off to the "fluff bath," where you can "blow dry" and comb your animal to get off all the excess fuzz.
The next stop is a row of computers where you must sit and fill out a birth certificate for your animal. You must pick out a name for your new friend and answer a few questions. Upon checkout, you are presented with a piece of paper documenting the "birth" of your very special animal. Then it's off to the "dressing room."
The left side of the store is filled with hundreds of clothing and accessory options for your animal. After agonizing for what seemed like hours, my daughter finally decided on a poodle skirt, a white top, pink sweater, scarf and black and white saddle oxfords for her bear. It was truly worse than trying to buy clothes for ourselves. They had racks and racks of shoes, shirts, pajamas, undergarments, Halloween costumes and many more clothes and accessories, such as purses, backpacks, golf clubs, various sports balls and bags, hunting accessories, cheerleading, gymnastics and dance clothes, and just about anything else you could imagine.
When you get your new friend "dressed" and check out, they hand you the birth certificate and pack your animal in a neat little house-shaped box with a handle on top. The whole experience was really something. There was even a group of girls inside the store having a birthday party. What a neat idea!
The whole concept was just amazing to me, and I had never seen anything like it before.
It was a lot of great fun for my daughter and her friends to be able to participate in such a memorable activity that allowed them to bring home a new friend. She sleeps with "Muffin" every night.
