Wedding Extravaganza

The yucky weather kept us away from the wedding show on January 13, but we were undaunted by our lack of electricity and unpleasant forecast for the January 20 Wedding Extravaganza at the Oasis Inn and Convention Center. MOTB (Mother of the Bride) and I battled dark traffic lights and bad drivers to attend. It was a bit overwhelming - and pink - at first. MOTB described it as being "carnival like." She was right, except the carnies were well-dressed and appeared to have most of their teeth. We didn't make any big decisions, but found a few things we liked and sampled some tasty hors d'oeuvres involving bacon and olives. Most of the cakes were a little more ornate than either of us really like. We found a pretty one - plain with beads of icing around the bottom of each layer. Just perfect. Until we found ourselves looking at the other side - roses and icing made to look like draping fabric. All along, we'd be admiring the back of the cake. Wouldn't you know!? - ee

Ice Storm of ‘07

If you’ve been visiting this blog you’ll notice no new updates or changes in over a week. We’ve been without power since early Sunday morning Jan. 14th. I’m typing this late Saturday evening the 20th and the power has just come back on. There was not a tree in our yard left untouched by the ice.

Most trees just lost a few limbs; however there is not much left of our large shade tree in the back yard. Springfield looks like a war zone (or at the very least like a tornado has ripped thru) after last weekend’s storm. Trees and power lines are down across roads and traffic lights are still not working in some parts of town. Schools and universities were canceled due to the storm. The wedding show Erin was going to last weekend was also canceled.

We rigged-up a way to use a 12v DC to 110v AC inverter off the truck battery to run the blower on our fire place. This worked for the first couple of days but with lows dropping to single digits Monday and Tuesday nights, we borrowed a generator from Erin’s mom’s cousin in Kansas. We hooked the generator up to our furnace, a couple lamps, and the TV.

With electricity back on and some of the clean up started we are resuming our normal activities. I can still hear generators running all around us. You would only need to walk a block in any direction of our house and you would run into homes with still no power. For many people they are going on day 8 with no electricity. We feel very lucky to have lights at the flip of a switch and to have caught up on the laundry.

As you can tell – it was the pets who really suffered thru all of this. See how stressed out they are... :<) - dd

Life's Rocky Roads

Not all of our adventures have been "on-road." Reactions like this make it all worth while. dd

And So It Begins...

I title this picture “Kicking and Screaming” – dd

Photo was taken on a recent trip to Sin City… Wedding bells have been ringing for some time now.