Lastest Yard Sale Find: Plant Stand

I have been waiting for a plant stand to dress up the front porch. I also found the wooden plant boxes at a yard sale awhile back, and had been trying to grow some flowers in them from seed. It was not working so well, so when I saw the flat of flowers for ten bucks sale at a local nursery, I bought them and set up the front porch with tons of petunias.

The Long Awaited Wedding Post

I (Cathy) spent last weekend in Maryland at the wedding of her friends from grad school. James and I shared an office when we taught at the University of Northern Colorado, and Carrie had the office down the hall.

I got there on Thursday, and would have made it to the rehearsal if I had not gotten off on the wrong exit and spent the next hour touring Baltimore. I think I'm meant to be lost in Baltimore, as the last time I was there (July 1999) I got horribly lost with Justin. At least this time I had a car with me, and it was not raining.

Anyway, I finally got to my hotel and made it to the very end of the rehearsal dinner at Carrie's parent's house. (Carrie lives in Alabama now where James is working on his Ph.D at Auburn.) It is one of the most beautiful houses I've seen- right out of Country Living or something. Very pretty!

On Friday we went to Washington, DC. I drove the group to College Park, MD where we hopped on the Metro to DC. I love subways. If I lived in a place with more reliable public transportation, I would take it everywhere. It was nice to not have to deal with parking (they had a park and ride lot at the station in College Park) and it ran every few minutes. It was also very inexpensive! Once in DC, we went to the National Zoo, and we were going to go hang out on the mall, but the zoo took to long. We met Carrie's college roommate at a really yummy pizza restaurant called Matchbox.

Here are some of the zoo pictures:

Carrie petting a statue of some lizard thing.

They had pandas!

This is the tallest escalator in the US. You can't really tell how very, very tall it is.

Everything else after Friday was getting ready for the wedding. On Saturday we all had our nails done, and Carrie did a practice run on her hair. The salon does wedding stuff on Saturdays, and it was fun! It included bagels and champagne. Also, we were forced to wear veils and be photographed.



It was a pretty busy day, and I did not sleep well that night, because my hotel caught on fire. It was about 2 AM, and I was dreaming that my house was on fire and nobody was doing anything about it. In my dream, the fire alarm went off. I woke up, and realized that it was not my dream...it was my alarm clock! After a few moments of batting at my alarm clock and trying to turn it off, I realized that it was the real fire alarm! I got up, put on my PJ pants and the easiest pair of shoes to deal with, which happened to be my wedding shoes. I got my purse and cell phone, and even remembered my key to the room, and left. I was not worried. This hotel had a kitchen and I figured that somebody had burned some microwave popcorn or something. That was often the culprit for fire alarms in college. After a few minutes of hanging around on the lawn and watching the fire trucks screech up, I started to think it might be more than popcorn. First of all, I could smell smoke! Second, there was a bloody guy with his shirt wrapped around his head. He had jumped out his second story window! Later I found out that the fire was on the third floor, so I have no idea why he did that. The EMT's took him off pretty quick.

I realized that I had my purse, keys, cell phone...but I had left my bridesmaid dress upstairs. About this time, the sprinklers went off in the hotel. We could see the windows getting wet on the third floor. My heart just about stopped. I had a vision of telling Carrie I could not be in her wedding because my gown got ruined by water and smoke damage! We stood on the lawn for about an hour and a half, and were finally let back in...except third floor guests. The third floor was wrecked because of the sprinklers. Luckily I was on the second floor, so my dress was saved. I was very tired and had to be up early the next day for my hair appointment, but at least my stuff (and I was) okay.

The wedding was on Sunday at one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Because of my bridesmaid duties, I did not get very many pictures, but here are a few of them:

Carrie's dress from behind. I love the colored sash! If you look to the left, the girl in the yellow dress is one of the other bridesmaids. The dress was really cute.

Carrie and James were really good at dancing!
Carrie and James


A terribly unflattering picture of me, but it's the only one I have. I wish my hair were more in the picture- it was really cute. It only required 32 bobby pins and about a gallon of hairspray!

Beautiful (and YUMMY!) cake.

James and Carrie trying their wedding cake.

It was a lot of fun, but it is good to be home!

Scary Stuff!

Somebody was murdered last night a few doors down from us. They don't know why or who did it yet. It's been kind of interesting (and scary!) to watch the police and the crime van and the house marked off with police tape. I think we've even met the victim. They have a dog named Buster who ends up in our yard every few days- their fence does not do so well at keeping the Buster in- so we get him and take him back home.

I'm glad we always lock our doors, even when we are home. Things like this remind me of why we do that.

Sarah and Buster. Buster looks big and mean, but he's remarkably mellow.

Sarah the Scardy-Dog

Sarah the Wonder Dog is terrified of thunderstorms, and we've been having a lot of them lately. In Kansas, most thunderstorms seem to happen late at night or in the very early hours of the morning. Sarah freaks out and wants to sleep in the bed with mom and dad. This would not be such a big deal, but she is a bed hog and during thunderstorms she shakes and gets up to pace all over Cathy's back every few minutes. After being woken up by Sarah at 2 and 3 AM a few nights in a row, Cathy finally moved her dog bed to right beside her to see if it would help any. Thankfully, it did. It seems like she is less likely to panic when Cathy is right beside her, and ever since her bed has been moved, she does not even try to climb in bed with us during the storm. She still wakes Cathy up with her whimpering, but a quick pat soothes that, and she's not walking all over her back anymore!

What We're Reading This Week

Click on the links to read more about the books we're reading this week!

Cathy is reading Forever and Ever, Amen by Sister Karol Jackowski. She can hardly put it down, and thinks Linda should suggest it for book club!

Kirk is reading Robot Building For Beginners by David Cook. Cathy is afraid that soon the dining room table will be filled with robot building supplies, although if he can design one that will clean the house, she won't complain...much.

Jeremy is reading Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

New Garden Discoveries!

Here's some new stuff we found in our garden over the past few days!

We did not know this was a rose bush until a few days ago. They smell wonderful!

Another clematis vine I did not even know was there until I cut down some of that giant grass (Pampas grass?) that is in the corner of our yard. It looks like it is going to have a lot of flowers!

Tornado Update

We have had a surprising number of calls checking up on us to make sure that we are okay! Thanks for your concern, everybody! The town that was hit was not near Wichita, and while we've been experiencing thunderstorms the past few days we are not anticipating any tornado weather right now. The story is very sad- the whole entire town that was hit is gone. We are very happy to have a basement now, just in case.