Baby shower, BBQ and Layla's mom

This past Thursday, Andy and I loaded Layla into my car and took the 11-hour trek to Georgia to visit for a few days. We got there just in time for dinner Thursday and left mid-afternoon Sunday. It was a relatively quick visit, but nice nonetheless.

Friday we got up early and drove to downtown Atlanta. We went to Turner Field to get a few T-shirts. Not surprisingly, Braves shirts are kind of hard to come by in Maryland. I wanted McCann, and Andy got a Francoeur shirt. We were sad the Braves weren't in town -- would have loved to have caught a game while we were there.

We drove around for a bit and then met Bonnie (my first buddy at the MDJ, who also gets a lot of the credit for my meeting Andy there) and her sister for lunch at the Vortex. It's touted as the best burger joint in Atlanta and was even featured on Rachel Ray. It's good stuff.

Saturday we headed back downtown to Little Five Points for a baby shower for my friends David and Tonya. I met David at Domain and we still work together from afar. The shower was at a cute little place called Grandma Luke's Bakery, and if you're in the Atlanta area and in the market for an excellent cake, I highly recommend this place.

As I suspected, Tonya is one of those disgustingly cute pregnant women. No seriously, she's adorable, and I'm so excited for them!

Grandma Lukes . All the baby shower pics are thanks to Joye's dad, Bob Ross.

Mommy- and daddy-to-be -- that's gonna be one cute baby, huh?

After the shower, we sped back to Woodstock for Muffin's family's annual BBQ -- and I don't mean hotdogs and hamburgers, folks. It's real BBQ -- good, old-fashioned Southern-style pulled pork. And with 20-some years perfecting the sauces, it's delicious! After a few hours of eating all the pork we could stand, we met Amy and Amanda and their boys at Taco Mac to catch up. (Amanda's getting married in 2 months!) Muffin and Sean joined us a bit later and it was almost like old times :)


We left Sunday, but not before my mom prepared a huge brunch (which was more like a feast) to send us off with. While she was cooking, we took Layla outside to play with my brother's dogs -- one of which is Layla's mom, Wishes. Wishes must have remembered Layla and what a pest she was as a pup because she wanted nothing to do with her. It was actually kinda sad -- she just kept snarling. At least this was one unsuccessful puppy playdate that wasn't Layla's fault.

This is about as close as Layla and Wishes could get without the snarls.

Layla's mom -- Wishes. The resemblance is uncanny.

After the mother/daughter dog reunion letdown, we went in to eat. Stuffed with bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, eggs, hashbrowns, and fresh fruit, nobody left hungry. It was a nice way to end the trip.


And 12 hours later, we were back in Maryland and happy to be out of the car.