Pre-Wedding Week

My plans had been to go ahead and settle in ATL for the week before the wedding to be available for getting things done. We had reservations at the Emory Inn near Emory Hospital/University, a beautiful area but nevertheless unfamiliar. When I checked in, I was told I would be on the 3rd floor and that there was no elevator. What?! I was seeing my car crammed full of things and trying to lug them all up 3 flights of stairs. But that's all they had for my early check-in. I made sure the other folks were on the 1st floor though!

  It really wasn't so bad. These are the stairs to the 2nd floor and after making my way through a maze, I was able to find the stairs to the 3rd. Not bad at all. Except following the arrow saying Rooms 301-309 did not take me to 304. Odd numbers were one way and even numbers the opposite way. I finally did find my way, but every trip up and down was an adventure. There were 2 or more sets of stairs, and they kept changing on me so I never knew where they were.

The room was okay - nothing special. The bathroom was tiny, which was okay for 1 person, but I worried about the SD visitors who would have 2 adults and 2 children to each room. I gave them the option to change to the conference center, but they stayed in the rooms and still enjoyed the indoor pool at the conference center down a little path. I took this picture from my balcony the first morning. It was so quiet on a Monday afternoon, in fact all week.

Emily said it had character, and I guess she was right. The bed was still lumpy though.

None of us had much time to kill, but we all enjoyed sitting out in the little courtyard in the mornings after breakfast and just enjoying talking and planning. Millie and I did a lot of looking at each other and saying, "I can't believe it's actually here (the wedding week). The kids all enjoyed both pools, the one here when the weather was nice and the indoor one when it rained.

  This is the only picture with parts of all 6 children. I have nicer pictures of them at the wedding and at the dinner on Friday night. They had quite a vacation in ATL. I'm not sure all the places they visited, but I know the went to the aquarium, the Coca-Cola museum, and to Stone Mountain for the laser show, and maybe White Waters water park. They were quite busy. We lived an hour away for 20 years and never went to any of those places.

On Monday, I met Emily in the afternoon, and we found Trader Joe's, although it was the wrong one thanks to the GPS lady, and got excited about what a good variety of beautiful and reasonable flowers they had. It seems like we went somewhere else, but I've probably blocked it out if it involved much driving. We ended up with sushi and hummus and crackers back in the hotel room for supper. This was one of the few days when I had some time on my hands to read or watch TV. It was funny seeing the news people that we once were familiar with when we lived in GA - 12 years older. Except for the lumpy mattress pad and the sirens, I got a good night's sleep.

Tuesday was our worst day, and it was so un-fun, I'm not even going to say anything about it except it rained, we couldn't find anything and kept going in circles, and we just struck out on almost everything we tried to do - except getting on each other's nerves. Here's Emily when I picked her up at the guest house. Her first words were, "I can't explain it, but I'm not feeling good about things right now."

 
It all worked out in the end, of course, beautifully, and we might laugh about it later, but right now it's not funny to remember.