Visitors from the East

This weekend, my nephew Travis and his wife April stopped by on their way from Texas back to North Carolina. He's a U.S. Marine, and will be shortly shipping out for his second tour in Iraq. They arrived Friday night and left Sunday morning, so we basically had Saturday to spend together.

There are a lot of things to do in the Atlanta area. It's rich in history and quite metropolitan in culture. Plus, the countryside itself is beautiful But we decided to have a low pressure, low cost, no agenda day. Here's what we did.

We started out with pancakes with blueberry syrup and bacon. Yum!! After our late breakfast we loaded up in the family truckster and took a short driving tour of the area we live in. I showed them where I work, our cool downtown area, etc.

We drove down Mt. Paran Road, which winds through the north part of Atlanta, and has some of the most beautiful homes in the area.

After our home tour, we headed to the Varsity. The Varsity is the world's largest drive-in restaurant. It's right across from the campus of Georgia Tech. On game days, they serve 30,000+ people. That wasn't a typo. You read it right: 30,000. It's been around since 1928, and can service 600 cars and 800 people dining in at the same time.

We had some "strings", "rings" (the best onion rings I've ever eaten, BTW), and some other things I can't remember the slang for, all served by our car hop that had been an employee for 34 years.

When we finished up there we headed over to IKEA. A pretty cool store, I must say, even to someone like me that doesn't like to shop.

After that we did a little more general site seeing and then stopped by the house for a few minutes. We played around on our laptops, played a little Xbox 360 and rested. Then we went to my Pizza Hut (I don't own it, I just work at it) and had breadsticks and a large pan Meatlover.

After stuffing ourselves, we came back to the house, relaxed, watched some TV, played around on our laptops, had some ice cream, and just enjoyed each others company.

It was the first time in years I had really had a chance to hang out with my nephew and the first time I had ever gotten to hang out with my niece-in-law for any length of time.

What did I learn? I like them. I enjoyed spending time with them.

It's always nice when you like the people you are supposed to love.

It was definitely a good day.