Visit to Atlanta....SUCCESSFUL

We headed out Thursday for Atlanta where we had an appointment to pick up our new Pensioner's Resident Visas at the Ecuadorian Consulate. We left plenty of time, having booked a reservation (free, thanks to points) at a Best Western less then an hour from where we needed to go. We did a little shopping along the way, had lunch & dinner courtesy of Subway.

The sunset coming into Chattanooga was gorgeous and I took a bunch of photos with my phone. Hope you enjoy some of them...

Our trip down to the Consulate on Friday morning was hectic, it is Atlanta after all, but not unbearable. We easily got parked in the parking garage and wandered into their office about 30 minutes early. We filled out a basic information form, handed over our documentation letters and passports, then our payment for the Visas and less than 90 minutes later we walked out! Painless...mostly thanks to our wonderful facilitator, Maite Duran.

From there we grabbed some lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse and then went to see the movie, "Thor", which we thoroughly enjoyed. Oh, if you go to see it - do NOT leave before the credit end. Honest!

From there we drove to my youngest daughter's house and the next 48 hours are a blur of grandkids and dogs. Some of the highlights....

• playing balloon volleyball with my middle granddaughter, Amanda
• meeting Boone the Mastiff and Samson the Great Dane, both rescue dogs
• watched Stu lean over to pet Boone and have the chair break underneath him
• watching "Pitch Perfect" and "Man of Steel" with the family
• getting my FIRST EVER pedicure with my daughter, a little enjoyment time

On our way home Sunday we decided we wanted to get iPads before going to Ecuador. Stu wanted the new iPad Air and I wanted the new Retina Mini. Well, after several false starts at the Sam's Club in Chattanooga (power off, waited almost an hour to get in to find out they had none even though online it showed that they did), Walmart in Chattanooga (waited 20 minutes for someone to wait on us, gave up) - we lucked out at our local Sam's Club in Cookeville and Stu walked away with not only his 32GB iPad Air but a great cover with a Bluetooth keyboard from Kensington.

Once home, before the bad Sunday storms rolled into our area, we unloaded and I went online to order my iPad Mini from the Apple Store (the only place it seems to be available right now) and am getting it shipped to our friends in Florida.

Tomorrow we visit a local attorney to get our wills redone here in Tennessee and start on the now growing TO DO lists. We will get it all done...we have to! We leave here on Monday! Yipes!!!