So Lemonade Farm is a couple hours out of Atlanta, GA. Stacey and I left early Friday morning and flew to Atlanta and then drove out to the farm. Traffic was crazy and it took us over 3 hours to drive the hour and a half to get there! Crazy, I guess there was a lot going on in the city. The farm is awesome. Cecel has turned an old horse barn into a bed and breakfast place and then she paints in the barn on the right. The room/stall that I slept in had the cute, Spare the rod... spoil the child painting she had done in it. We had pizza for dinner that was super yummy. We chatted with Cecel and her mom for a while. She told us that she had been an accountant before she had to have heart surgery for co-arctation of the aorta. The same surgery Ana had after we adopted her! What are the chances. She was 26 when she had the surgery, she's just a couple years older than me. We were told it's pretty rare to live to 30 with co-arctation of the aorta. So crazy. They cut a nerve to her vocal cords or something like that and she lost her voice for 2 years, she had just had a baby and had to find something else to do since she couldn't speak. She started painting. Such an amazing and inspiring story. Then we hit the hay so she could get ready to the class on Saturday.
The next day we had egg casserole and apple fritters for breakfast and it was all very yummy! Then we headed to the big barn with 4 other women who came to take the class too. One woman was from South Carolina, we were right by the border, another from Athens, GA where Cecel lives and a mom and her daughter were also in the class. Cecel was great. She's really a great teacher and her style is so forgiving, in fact she would just say add more paint every time I questioned something I was doing! In fact I thought we were pretty much done at our lunch break, but no... we came back and sanded the paintings down and then added more paint. It was good because I became braver with the colors as the day went on :) We sanded again, stained and varnished our works of art and then everyone said good-bye and headed home. Stacey and I stopped back over night in Atlanta and the next day, after sleeping in a little bit, we toured the Martin Luther King Jr. Historical properties. Very interesting. I'm still amazed that people who try to bring change for peace are so persecuted. Like MLK Jr., Ghandi, Joseph Smith, etc. We as a people will follow people/leaders into war, but we fight against peaceful changes and acceptance of others.
Anyway, we stopped at Walmart to buy bubble wrap and boxes to wrap up our beautiful paintings in and we loaded them on the plane and flew home. They made it safe and sound and already look lovely hanging in our homes! Fun little trip. I would totally do it all again. And who knew I could paint anything?? Amazing :)
