Saturday Night - Special !!

We had a very full weekend, so I have lots of photos to share! And sorry I wasn't on here over the weekend, I did have several people asking after me since I blog every day. But we really were that busy.

When James got home from work on Saturday afternoon, we put the top down on the Mustang and went out for a few hours, starting with lunch over in Ashley Park. We made our way to downtown Newnan to Market Day, held on the first Saturday of the month during the spring through fall. There were a few dozen vendors, and by the time we got there it was winding down. But we strolled the sidewalks looking at all the handmade and homemade desserts, soaps, children's clothes, pottery, photography, woodworking, potpourri, jewelry, greeting cards, popcorn, even a few vendors selling plants and trees. It was a beautiful day, maybe in the low 80's, very sunny with clear blue skies.

It was so nice we hated to go home but we couldn't think of anything we wanted to do, so we headed towards the house but stopped in a few of the nearby neighborhoods just to ride around in the sunshine. One neighborhood not far up the road from us is Lake Redwine Plantation. This is a gorgeous, exclusive community of over 1300 wooded acres, built up around a 300 acre lake private to the community. They have a marina, pools, playground, club house, tennis courts, an annual bass tournament- they even have a full-time manager on site to run everything. It's the type of neighborhood I call a budget buster for us- there were a few homes in there we could have afforded if we wanted to go broke, but most of the houses are out of reach for us. It's a simply beautiful neighborhood, and we enjoy driving through it and just looking. Here are a few of the houses- and no I didn't jump out of the car to take all these photos, I took them from several websites (some of these houses are currently for sale- the first house below is only 1.3 million!). It should probably be a gated community to keep out riffraff like us!!



























After getting enough of the sunshine, we went home for a short bit, so I could watch the Belmont Stakes. We relaxed in the shade on the new patio, talking about our long term plans for our landscaping, and not long afterward James said to get dressed up because we were going out for the night, a totally unplanned surprise. We took the scenic route up through the country to get to Buckhead (a section of Atlanta), and drove through a few incredible neighborhoods with estate-sized yards and homes which is, of course, what Buckhead is all about. The area where we went in Buckhead seemed to be going through a lot of construction. We were looking for the Trader Joe's, but I forgot to bring the address, and it wasn't coming up on our GPS. So we went to our other destination, the ESPN Zone. We had a nice dinner, while watching a zillion TV sets tuned in on just about every sporting event going on, except the one James wanted to watch (the Nationwide race). But we watched the Braves play, as well as game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals.





After dinner we headed upstairs to the game area, which also had no shortage of TV sets, but at least had the overhead music pumping loud enough to drown them out. As I've posted before, we both love competitive games like the ones at Jillian's or Dave & Buster's. The ESPN Zone was no different, although all of their games were of course sports related. We played several different golf games, below.







Then James took a few passes throwing the football, below. After that we played air hockey, which James always whips me at. We tried to get on the basketball challenges, but they were popular that night and we never managed to get a chance at them. We played foosball hockey until our arms and hands gave out, and although we ended with a score of only 1-1, we had a blast.





We moved over to the bowling alley, since we both love to bowl (James used to be on leagues). This one was a little different, the "bowling ball" was very small and, with no finger holes, it was as heavy as a large stone, very much like a bocce ball. The alley was much smaller, and the pins were hanging by strings! I didn't catch the name of this particular game, but if you had a gutter ball or a bad miss, a mysterious cackling laugh of derision came from the game. Check out this shirt I am wearing- I bought this a few years ago but was never able to fit into it, so I tried it on for the heck of it. Not only did it fit, but it's already almost too big on me! And no, I am not the hot-looking tan chick in the bright orange tank top with nice boobs- although my husband IS the one who took this photo! :)





We did play a few video games, including a bowling game called Slide-It (I think it was made for kids because I won on it!), a car racing game where the seat moves and bounces in time with your on-screen car, and this game below which was a motorcycle racing game. We were both on a "Harley", as you can see James here. You ride the motorcycle, and by riding it you control the little video version of your bike- it sways to the left or right in the same motion as the motorcycle you are riding on. A lot of fun, although we were terrible at it. I think by the fourth game, James was starting to get the hang of it.



We ended the evening with a little target practice. I played against James for two games, where he kicked my butt, then he shot at the targets by himself for awhile. It was an interesting game, I've not seen anything like this one before. I should have done better, but to be honest my hair was in my eyes, and I was frankly tired at this point and could barely hold the surprisingly heavy rifle. The targets were on the wall before us, and hanging fairly high, so I just couldn't muster the strength to do this game for very long.





We were there late, and way too late to go looking for the Trader Joe's (we'll have to save that for another adventure). We left with over 80 credits still on our gaming card, so I know we will go up there again one day soon, and I'm looking forward to it.

We headed for the bright lights of downtown Atlanta, still in the Mustang with the top down, and looked on in amazement at the throngs of people outside of hip restaurants, or the crowds of dressed-up "kids" waiting to get into clubs, some of the lines all the way around buildings. We joked about when we were in our 20's, and we could hang out all night long. This was the latest we had been out in quite awhile, and I can say it was one of the most fun evenings we've had together in a really really long time.

We finally hit the road home, and it was super late when we pulled into the subdivision. The strangest part of the evening? When we got to our driveway at a little past midnight, we found our "Sunday" morning paper already there!! What??