Julie's Shower! (and travel horror stories)

Colleen was supposed to fly to St Louis on Thursday evening to help Jen set up Julie's shower for Saturday. Well, it was quite an adventure getting there. Her flight was supposed to connect in Detroit. However, the weather was so bad in Detroit that they had to circle over Ohio for 2 hours. Then when there was no opening for them to land in Detroit, they had to divert to Waynesville, Indiana to re-fuel. After waiting for 2 hours in Waynesville, they continued on to Detroit. When she landed in Detroit she ran to her connecting gate to try and catch the flight to St Louis. The St Louis flight was delayed 2 hours so there was a chance she could make it....well they closed to the door to the gate a few seconds before she ran up. It was backing out when she got to the gate. Why they didn't hold the flight for connection is a mystery! So, she was stuck in Detroit for the night. There were no hotels taking reservations because the storms knocked out power for most of Detroit. Jim tried calling from home also, to no avail. No hotel was answering their phone! So she was stuck at the airport overnight with no carry-on bags. She couldn't lie down to sleep because she was wearing a skirt. By the time her 7am flight came, she was dead tired with blood shot eyes. When she landed in St Louis, they ultimate salt on the wound happened when they told her that her bags were in Madison Wisconsin. Julie was nice enough to drive over PJ's so she sould sleep for a few hours on Friday until her bags arrived later that night!

(Jim arrived Friday night with no issues!)

Anyway, it was still good to be in St Louis to see family. Jim's dad and step-mom from Vegas were there, as was all the St Louis family and some family from Illinois.

Julie and James are due to have a baby boy, here is the mom-to-be-Julie with Ted:

Here is Colleen with Jen before the shower started:

Here are pictures of some of the food and decorations before the shower started:

After the shower when all the guests left, the family stayed around to swim in Jen and Phil's pool:

After we got out of the pool, little Lauren wanted to dress just like her Aunt Colleen. It was really cute that Lauren wanted to dress just like her!

Then later Saturday night we had a birthday party for Jen's 34th birthday! We ordered lots of pizza for all of us and had a cake for Jen:

Before bed, Colleen read to the girls, they were all very in to the story!

We then flew back Sunday morning on a very un-eventful non-stop flight that was only 1 hour and 45 minutes long!

Bachelor Party

Jim is the best man for his friend Kevin's wedding in October. He planned a white water rafting trip in West Virginia on the New River for the bachelor party.

They had a cabin for Thursday night before they headed rafting:

They rafted on Friday, camped along the river Friday night, and rafted again on Saturday. The river was running at 3 times the volume as normal from lots of rain. The river was above flood stage and into the forest on the shore:

Here are some pictures of them rafting:

They stayed back in the cabin again on Saturday night after the 2-day white water rafting trip.

Near the cabin was a lake with all kinds of slides, zip lines, etc. Here is Mike Pozsgay going down a zip line into the lake:

Before they headed out on Sunday they drove to the New River Gorge Bridge, the highest vehicular bridge in the western hemisphere. (There is a pedestrian bridge in Colorado that is higher). The bridge is over 950 feet above the bottom of the gorge. Here are Jim and Kevin with the bridge in the background:

The old bridge can be seen in this photo down below. It consisted of 8 miles of winding switch-back roadways before the new bridge was built:

Another view of the gorge from near the bridge:

Colleen was so excited to see Jim come home because she missed him a lot. She made some nice cup cakes to welcome him back:

Surprise find near our house!

We were randomly driving through some of the historic neighborhoods about 2 miles from our house when we ran into a neat surprise! We turned into a little city park only to find out there was a small river with a old dam from a mill that use to exist 100 years ago! It was called Lassiter Mill. All that's left is the dam and some stone foundations from the mill:

The houses on the far side of the river had their own little docks and access to the pool above the dam and to the stream below the dam:

Notice in the picture above, the house backed up to the stream and there is an old bridge pier from a railroad that used to cross there. How cool is that!

The lower part below the dam is a mixture of rocks and sand. At one point the owner of the mill added a sandy beach for people to come visit his restaurant attached to the mill:

You can see the sand is starting to be replaced by the stream's rocks, but it is now part of the City Park and people can come down and relax to the sound of the waterfall and swim in the water or follow the greenway trail that parralles the stream downriver:

Here is Colleen walking along the lower stone wall below the dam:

It was a neat surprise to be only 2 miles from our house!

Then we came home and made a homemade pesto pizza! We made the pesto from scratch (using basil that Colleen grew in her garden!), grated the mozzerella cheese, sliced the tomatos, peeled the garlic cloves, and it was really tasty!

Weekend Fun!

We started off last weekend by going to Brightleaf Square in downtown Durham on Friday night. We loved the old restored brick, with black iron and the green trees. It was an old abandoned tobacco wharehouse area that was recently restored. The place is neat, however the Mexican restaurant we ate at in Brightleaf Square was not nearly as good as the ones in San Diego. Next time we hit up Brigthleaf Square we'll try a different place to eat!

There are free concerts too outdoors every Friday night.

The next day on Saturday we went to Falls Lake near us to go swimming! Falls Lake was only 11-12 minutes to drive to from our house, including stoplights, etc so it is really close! It is a big lake with three separate swimming beach areas. We went to one and had a lot of fun hanging out at the beach and swimming. Colleen says it reminded her of being a kid again and swimming at the lakes in New Hampshire.

On Sunday we went for a hike on the Greenway Trail around Shelley Lake which is only 1 mile from our house. We took Kylie with us too.She enjoyed the part where we went next to a stream that she could jump in!

We walked the trail around the lake

The even have a boat house and dock where you can put in a canoe, kayak, etc. We really want to get a canoe so we can just go over to our neighborhood lake and paddle around!

And we saw a whole family of geese (which Kylie really wanted to chase)

And after we got back Kylie did her favorite thing: drink from the garden hose!

Then Sunday night we went to Goodberry's to get some frozen custard, just like we did when Jim lived in St Louis!