All Aboard!!

This weekend was a lot of fun! Grandma-Great and Grandaddy-Great came down from north GA to see us and we all went on a train ride! Our church reserves a car on the train and we go as a group. This was our second year (me and the kids first!) It is an all day event so we had to get up bright and early Saturday morning and be ready to drive to Cordele (1hr.) at 7am :-D If you live in Middle GA the SAM Shortline is a great thing to do with the family!! They even have Thomas the Train come every October! We went last year and had a blast!! Here's Hailey, Jack and Grandaddy-Great right after we arrived! "Where's the train?" I loved all the buildings...so southern and old...

We got a quick picture with "Sam" the engineer before we boarded. (As you can see, we're missing Daddy...he had to work this weekend)
"All Aboard!" We got to get on first since we were the "special group" That's the conductor that Hailey is walking with...there's a special story there...I'll tell more later :-) Jack was driving his train as everyone got seated. The boys sat together. Papa, Jack and Grandaddy-Great. And the girls sat on the other side. Me and Grandma-Great!
Grandma (my mom) and Hailey-B. I made goody bags for the kids to keep them busy. I filled it with things they picked out at WalMart the day before. It held them over pretty good.

Tom and Auntie-Joyce came and so did Sarah and Larry (with the boys) I didn't get any pictures of them :-(


So here you can see the boys side! The conductor is sitting with them. He is my Grandma's 1st cousin!! His name is Ernest. He has been volunteering on the train for about 5 years. We saw him when we rode on Thomas too. It was so much fun to have him there. We weren't sure if he'd be working that day or not so it was a big surprise when we saw him get off the train!!This is Lake Blackshear it is an 8,000-acre lake in the GA Veteran's Memorial State Park. The picture wasn't that great because 1. the train was moving and 2. it rained the whole day ;-)Here is a map of our trip. We started at the right in Cordele and went all the way to Archery and back. It was a 9hr. trip!! Our first official stop was in Americus. We got to get off for about and hour and 1/2. You could ride a little bus downtown and see the sights and eat lunch. We however had an insider! Our conductor called his wife and my Grandma's other cousin and her husband and they met us and we all went to lunch at a little hole in the wall restaurant! We knew all the main ones would be busy so this was nice! It was called Granny's Kitchen.
This was my plate!! I had fried chicken, green beans, cornbread casserole, and a biscuit!! YUMMY!! Talk about filling your tummy :-) And it was all home cookin'
This is my Grandma's other cousin Joyce.
Here she is with Ernest (he is Joyce's brother)

While we were waiting to get back on I took some pics of the train. Here are my little wet ducks!! They had so much fun playing in the rain :-D Now this lady was our car hostess. Her name was Ms. Anne and she was a riot!! She was there to help you with whatever you needed and remind you of all the safety things. The train had a little gift shop and food court. It was really nice. And when they would pop fresh popcorn is was so hard to resist!! Not sure where this was but I thought the trees looked cool out in the water like that.
We made it to Plains, GA next. I grew up going to Plains. We used to have our Gattis family reunion here every Mother's day weekend. My Grandma's Grandma was from here and had a big house where we would all come together. Now that house has been sold and we have our reunions all over the place...where ever someone wants to host one. Plains was a cute little town. It's the home of Jimmy Carter....another story there...that cousin Joyce that was in the picture above...her husband Julian is 1st cousins with Ms. Rosalyn Carter (the First Lady). I guess everybody is related to everybody down here :-) She was there that day eating lunch. I didn't get her picture but my Grandma did.
We stopped here and got a taste of the famous fried peanuts. They were very good. But the best thing was the peanut icecream!! I didn't think I would like it but it was delicious!! So worth the rain to get the icecream!!

We went "nuts" in Plains Georgia!!

Then we got back on the train and headed on down to Archery. That's where Jimmy Carter's boyhood home was. There is a big farm there too.

This is a picture of the house that I took from the train door. We didn't want to get off and walk around because it was raining so much and you couldn't go in the house at that time because Jimmy Carter was there giving a little speech of some sort!! He waved to us as he got back in his SUV with his secret service guy :-)

This is what we did on the way back :-) They turned down the lights and we took a little snooze! The kids cuddled with Grandma. It was a wonderful day even though we got wet. We slept so good that night :-D