Brews, Zoos, and Fireworks!

I wish fireworks rhymed with brews and zoos. The end.

While I originally thought I had nothing planned for Memorial Day weekend, it turned out to be quite the adventure! And I'm glad - one more weekend of sitting (and steaming) in the apartment wouldn't have done me much good. Although it could use a little unpacking attention, but oh well. This was more fun.

Friday after work, I headed down to Atlanta with Molly, dropped her off at Heather's house and took MARTA down to the Braves game! I was meeting up with two friends who I  haven't seen in quite literally at least twelve years. We all went to elementary school (Jeff and I), junior high and high school together (all three of us); Jeff moved to the Atlanta area after sophomore year of high school, and Christine moved to Washington after freshman year and now works in Atlanta. Talk about a mind trip! So it was great, finally getting to a game, and reminiscing and catching up! So crazy! And of course, the best part... it was Firework Friday! Yippee!

Saturday, of course, Heather and I woke up early to head to the Mama Bear 5K, not far from her place. Again, given my lack of training lately (and sincere lack of consistency), I'm pretty happy with how I did. 31:39 for a brutal hill; and looking back at some other 5K times, it's pretty consistent with what I'm able to pull out, whether in the middle of training or not. I would call that a success!

 Afterwards, we headed to this fabulous place for pancakes - oh so delicious and oh so deserved. Yum! We also stopped at Pet Supplies Plus to play with the puppies for adoption. Bad idea, and yet great idea. I fell in love with a beautiful 5-month old blue heeler mix and Heather got trampled on all over by a sweet hound she nicknamed Ms. Beans. Adorable. And fabulous.

Later on Saturday, we met up with a random assortment of people - co-workers of Heather's, their friends, some family, and other folks for Brew at the Zoo. Basically, they shut down the zoo early that day, and after 5 pm you had to be at least 21 to get in. Scattered all over the zoo were 40+ wine and beer tastings, so you could walk around and see the animals and drink as you walked around. Genius? I say yes!

Pandas, tigers, lions, kangaroos were out in full force and definintely provided us some amazing entertainment. The kids' area was still open to us, of course, so we got to ride the carousel to our heart's content and the train around the area as well! So much fun!

Check out some of the shenanigans amazingness:

Love me some zoo animals!

 

Sunday we slept in, and went for a run around Piedmont Park before Molly and I headed back up to Athens. Beautiful morning, but we definitely felt it from the 5K and 4+  hours on our feet at the zoo the night before. The Atlanta Jazz Festival was kicking up, so it was fun running through and checking out all the cute booths - that we had intended to go back to and never did!

Molly and I got home around 5 on Sunday, and I promptly got to work and finished moving all my stuff from the old apartment - finally! Not fun. Monday we lounged around, unpacked, and took a vacation day from the rest of the vacation weekend. Fabulous!

Hope you all had a great weekend too! What did you do on your extended weekend?