Down South Pt. 2: "You've read about her online, now meet her in person. Here's Greta!"

First off, thank you to all you loyal blog readers out there, particularly my peeps in Flo-town. I had no idea that so many of you were online reading the posts. I'm glad - I though I was just writing to humor the grandparents. But, since there are so many Florentines reading this blog, it occurred to me that I should be doing some Shoals-based advertising to generate a little revenue. So let me pause to offer this word from the Florence, AL Chamber of Commerce:

Tyler says, "Whenever I visit Florence I love to eat atop the Renaissance Tower. The view is terrific and the food is even better. And if I ever need a colonoscopy, I always visit the friendly folks at Tennessee Valley Gastroenterology."

We got to Florence on Tuesday morning and pretty much got back in the car to head over to the hospital to meet the staff at the endoscopy unit. Greta felt very special getting to go in the back door and seeing the nurses' lounge. It was like having backstage passes to a Rolling Stones concert. But the highlight was seeing 'Bama Gramps proudly walk around showing Greta off to the staff. All the ladies at the hospital were very sweet and they all said nice things about Greta. From there we hit Trowbridge's for a bite. Naturally, Greta slept through the whole meal and then we went around the corner to First United Methodist to say hi to all the ladies in the church office. We were only there a minute and Greta had her first meltdown of the day. She was hungry and the ladies in the office ushered Eleanor into the associate pastor's office where she could nurse Greta. A few minutes later we were on our way again. We went to get Eleanor's hair cut and then to a new baby store near downtown that was painted bright pink and devoid of any windows. I told 'Bama Gramma that it looked like an adult bookstore and that I wasn't comfortable taking Greta inside, but she assured me that it was okay - and thank goodness, because we came out with a bunch of new things for the baby.

The next day was a quiet one. I worked on my sermon for Sunday and the ladies bopped around town some. Greta stayed home with me and I didn't get much done, but we had a fun time together. That night we went over to 'Bama Gramps' office to meet the staff. It was great because they all stuck around late to meet the Greta-boo. We had a nice visit with all of them and many said that they are hard core readers of the blog. We took the picture above and I promised them they'd be on the Web (thanks ladies! Great photo!). After meeting the girls in teal, we walked over to the church for the Wednesday night dinner and programming. Once again Great was a hit. We saw lots of familiar faces and had a nice meal. We went home exhausted, but feeling good - the week was only half over.