Visit to Georgia

Claudia and I flew Saturday morning from Salt Lake City on a United flight to Denver. Michael kindly picked us up and dropped us off at the airport. In Denver we changed planes and continued on to Atlanta. Both flights were uneventful, which is basically what you want when you're tens of thousands of feet above the ground.

Ken Kieffer met us at the airport in Atlanta and took us to his home in Sugar Hill, which is located northeast of Atlanta. We so appreciate the Kieffers' generosity. Mary Lou is visiting in Kansas City and will be back on Tuesday. Kathryn was still at work. We waited awhile for her return, but she was delayed, so we drove over to see Paul, Eliza, and Peter, who live in nearby Duluth, about 25 minutes by car from the Kieffers' house. They have a nice two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with a generous amount of storage space in a large gated apartment community that is just off I-85. They are on the ground floor of a three-story building and are right near the rear gate that comes into the complex.

We are basically sleeping at the Kieffers' house, but Saturday night we stayed with Paul and Eliza so that we could go to their early church meetings Sunday morning. They are in the Lawrenceville First Ward with meetings from 8:30 to 11:30 in the morning. Shortly after we found their place and were given a little tour of their apartment, we went with them to their church to attend an ice cream social. They seem to live in a very friendly ward. After returning from that, we stopped at a grocery store to buy some stuff for the salad we are contributing to Sunday afternoon's meal with the Kieffers. Then we watched some of the Olympics on the new HD TV that Paul and Eliza had bought just that afternoon. Their old TV got broken during the move from Utah.

Sunday morning we attended church. Their ward has sacrament meeting first. Peter successfully went to the nursery, allowing all of us to attend Sunday School without his cute distraction, and allowing Claudia and Eliza to attend Relief Society and Paul and me to attend priesthood meeting. The previous week, Peter's first in the ward, did not go as well.

After church we returned to Paul and Eliza's place, ate sandwiches for lunch, read, took naps, took a walk through the apartment complex to feed bread crumbs to the ducks in the little lake and to see the swimming pool, the exercise room, where the garbage is compacted, etc.

The reason we were able to sleep at Paul and Eliza's on Saturday night is that Paul's dad and sister have not arrived yet. They spent all day Sunday trying (they are coming standby) and ended up at John Wayne airport in Orange County, California, based on the advice that they might have a better shot getting to Atlanta from California than from Utah, where it appears every single flight was filled. We have not heard as of this writing on Monday morning whether they made the final flight last night at 9:30 California time (12:30 a.m. Atlanta time), which would have put them arriving here sometime around 5:30 or so this morning.

Sunday evening we went to Kieffers and enjoyed a delicious chicken and salsa meal Ken had cooked in the crock pot, served with rice and corn and the salad we provided. An enjoyable meal. Even more enjoyable company. We watched some more of the Olympics. After Paul, Eliza, and Peter left to return home, we visited more with Ken and Kathryn, talked on the phone with Camilla and Sam in Everett, watched more of the Olympics, and finally went to bed.