PUR Atlanta Trip

Let me just start off by saying this weekend was absolutely amazing!! 

Our college Bible study group, PUR, left Friday afternoon to head to Atlanta for the weekend. Allow me to take you through our journey. :)

Friday:

Friday was just our travel day. We met at the church at 4:30pm to leave and ended up rolling out around 5:00pm. We rented a 15 passenger van and a mini van to travel with, and we had 17 of us go on the trip. We stopped at Moe's in Montgomery to eat dinner and then arrived at our hotel in Atlanta around 11:00pm.  Our hotel was literally like .1 miles from Six Flags. The roller coasters were in our backyard; it was awesome, hehe. I apologize for the lack of pics on Friday; we were all pretty tired from traveling, so I spared everyone my compulsive picture-takingness (at least for the night anyway, haha).

I did manage to get a quick video though. Check out the Backstreet Boys jam sesh we had in the van on the way up:

Saturday:

Yay, now time to head to Six Flags! The park didn't open till 10, but we wanted to leave our hotel by 8:30 to get a good parking spot and to be one of the first ones in line. We all gathered and ate the yummy continental breakfast first though. 

Here's what I ate both mornings...

Making a homemade waffle is what I look forward to most about staying in hotels, hehe. 

So delish!

Then it was off to the park we go, woo!

All the boys ready to head into the park! :)

 All the lovely ladies!

SO excited for a great day!

After several of us rode the Georgia Scorcher, a few of the boys wanted to go sign up for the Sky Coaster. Lee, Cole, and Jourdain were the first three to brave the 10 story free fall. 

Their before pic:

We were all nervous for them! Haha, that thing was HIGH!

Check out their video:

Then Meagan, Courtney, and Josh signed up to go! I unfortunately didn't get a video of them. :( But I did get a few pics!

Sorry these two are blurry; my camera was NOT cooperating, haha.

The whole time the others were going, Monica and I were contemplating going ourselves. We were like, "You wanna go? I kinda wanna go! Okay, let's go!" haha. And then we enlisted Brittany to go with us after she had been contemplating going herself, hehe! We had to pay extra to ride this thing, so it ended up being $15 a person since we had 3 people ride. :)

Here's our before picture... SO nervous!

As you can tell... haha!

Let me just tell you about our little experience on the dear 'ole Sky Coaster...

So we get all strapped in, and the workers are explaining what's going to go down, what exactly we are suppose to do, yada yada ya. As we were getting geared up, we had to decide who would be in the middle and who would pull the cord. Brittany and I refused to be the one to pull the cord to release us once we got to the top, so thank goodness Monica didn't mind, haha! (I was afraid I would freeze up and be too nervous to yank that cord, lol.) 

Once we were all ready to go and they hooked us in, we were on our way up to the top, eek! They explained that we would hear "3, 2, 1, Fly" over the intercom once we got to the top and that would be our cue to yank the cord... okay, got it. I'm not afraid of heights by any means, but I got a little woozy as we were going up because you have no choice but to look down as you are laying flat, haha. 

We thought we made it to the top, so we were waiting on the cue to yank the cord. (The other 6 of our members pulled the cord immediately once they reached the top.) 15 seconds go by, then 30, then a minute, then a minute and a half, and still no cue to pull the cord. So then we are getting quite apprehensive that something is wrong, and I had all these scenarios in my head that I was about to die (Jesus, I'm a comin', hehe). 

Our group (who were watching from below) then proceeds to chant "Pull the cord! Pull the chord!" They thought we were just chickening out, haha. Then the man comes over the intercom and says, "Do NOT pull the cord! Raise your hands out in front of you, and we are going to lower you down immediately." Okay, so now we are all REALLY freaking out. 

We get to the bottom, and they said, "Oh, it just didn't take y'all all the way up, so we are going to raise you up again. Routine maintenance, no big deal, happens all the time." Uhhh, no. There is nothing routine about this to us, haha. 

So anyway, we go back up again (EVEN HIGHER), and we are all BEYOND freaking out at this point, lol. Thankfully, we finally heard the cue to pull the cord and off we go... Oh my goodness!

Check it out (from left to right, it's Monica, Brittany, me):

And our victory walk, yay!! WE MADE IT, praise the Lord! :)

Still alive and well! Thumbs up, haha. :)

After that we rode a few other roller coasters: the Ninja, Skyscreamer, and Superman to name a few.

Next, it was time for a photoshoot. :)

Brittany and Cole, sweet couple!

Love her! :)

The precious Lauren! So happy we got to see her and Danny and SO excited that they are expecting a sweet baby in February! Doesn't she look awesome?? She's glowing!

My awesome twin! :)

Love this sweet guy! Poor Chad doesn't ride roller coasters, so he deemed himself as "the ground crew." He was an awesome bag holder though, hehe. :) What a trooper!

Time for lunch! I had BBQ, yummy!!

Check out Lee's yummy foot-long chili cheese dog!

Chad and I enjoyed our BBQ. :)

After lunch, the lines were SO long, and after waiting in line for Goliath for an hour and realizing we still had close to two hours more till we could ride, we decided to call it a day. We all headed back to the hotel, showered, and rested for a few to head to dinner and a movie.

We traveled about 30 minutes to the Phipps mall in Atlanta. That place was SO nice; it was huge!! I wish our mall in Mobile was half that nice, lol.

We ate at Johnny Rockets and walked around the mall for a bit before our 9:20 movie.

Handsome man right thur. :) Hehe.

Chad being our photographer. :) Love my twin Brittany!  

Brittany, me, and sweet Hillary!

Precious newly engaged couple! :)

So let me just tell you... this movie theater was AMAZING!! See for yourself...

Um, hello recliner chairs!! So cool! :) We all loved it!

I may or may not have fallen asleep... twice... during the movie, haha. They were beyond comfy! Thankfully I had already seen Despicable Me 2, so I didn't miss anything and got a nap in, hehe.

Another cool feature: outside the theater, the walls were covered with famous movie quotes.

We then headed back to the hotel after a fantastic day!

Sunday:

This was a day I had been looking forward to ever since they announced we'd be going to Atlanta for our trip... the chance to visit Passion City Church. For those of you who don't know Louie Giglio (the pastor there), he is absolutely amazing! He is the one who heads of the Passion Conferences each year, which Chad and I attended this past January. 

Passion City is an old Home Depot building turned into a church. It is so cool on the inside! Nothing fancy or ornate but just an amazing place of worship. Oh, and guess who their worship leader is? Just some guy named CHRIS TOMLIN!! Hello, how awesome it that? 

We were welcomed by each and every person we met there. Their greeters, who they call the "Door Holders," were amazing; they welcomed us with open arms and made us feel loved and at home. One man, his name was Jim, made sure that we were able to sit on the SECOND row... like 10 feet away from the stage, eek!! Thousands of people go to this church, and we got the second row, too cool! I was like a kid on Christmas Day... beyond excited! :)

We weren't allowed to take pictures once the service started as to not distract anyone from worship, so here's the few I got (I just had to sneak a pic of Louie Giglio and Chris Tomlin, hehe). 

Here's the cool stage!

 2nd row love. :)

Shelly Giglio, Louie's wife!

Mr. Louie Giglio himself :)

Here's a little snippet from Louie's sermon:

What a great sermon it was! 

 Chris Tomlin, yay! Sorry the stage was too dark for a good pic, hehe.

 Christy Nockels (another well-known Christian singer) is to the far left, and Chris Tomlin is on the guitar to the far right.

Here's a little bit of a better picture of Chris Tomlin. :)

 They had his CD along with David Crowder's CD and the Passion live CD all for $20, so of course I had to get them. 

After Passion City, it was time for lunch! Yay!

Here's me and my pretty roommate and riding buddy, Monica! :)

Our van says cheese!

Our awesome driver (Chad) and the man with the directions (Jake)!

My Chadwick. :) And an awesome photo bomb by pretty Meagan haha.

P.F. Changs for lunch, holler! :)

Mmm, fried rice with chicken, beef, and veggies... get in my belly. :)

Lunch photo shoot!

Geese in the parking lot, haha, totally random!

All the boys dressed up nice! :)

Love these pretty ladies. :)

After lunch, it was off to the Cheesecake Factory for dessert. My favorite! Check out all that yummy goodness. :)

Chad and I split an oreo cheesecake piece and a red velvet piece. Both were divine! :)

That ended our awesome Atlanta trip, and we arrived back at the church at about 8pm.

I could not have asked for a better weekend! Six Flags was a blast, and Passion City Church was amazing! I love love loved spending time with my PUR family. They are a fantastic group of people, and I love hanging out, laughing, and worshiping our Savior with them. What a tremendous blessing they are to my life! Praise the Lord.

I can't wait until next year's trip!! :)

Love & Blessings, 

Claire

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