Roadtrip #3: Back to Houston!

This is why I went missing for a few days. :)

The Accident
Unfortunately, the Friday before I was supposed to head down to Houston my driver's sideview mirror was destroyed. All I really saw was the truck in front of me kick up a very long pipe and that pipe flying through the air. At the last second I threw my arm up to cover my face because it was headed straight for the windshield. But instead of a crash I heard a thud and to my joy glanced up to find absolutely no damage to my windshield.

And then I tried to change lanes with my sideview mirror.

Also, alas, the hood was scratched so deeply it had hit the metal and was eventually going to rust away. So suddenly my car was going into the shop and I had to find a replacement if I was still to go - barring I could still go with insurance/rental issues - but my insurance company was really awesome and I was thrilled. So the plan was still in place.

(I realize I'm really, really lucky that nothing worse happened, so this fix was not.a.big.deal. Sideview mirror? Doable.)

The Rental & Eight Hours, Going Once
I've never rented a car before. So when the lady asked me whether I would like a mid-size or full-size sedan, and explained that my Altima would essentially be a full-size and that I would probably get one, I decided to go with what I knew. However, in the back of my head there was this constant nagging doubt that I should've gone with the mid-size.

When the driver came to pick me up in a Mercury Sable, I suddenly felt all those doubts rise to the surface. It was an older model, so the thought of gas mileage alone scared me, and it certainly wasn't something I wanted to drive in Houston traffic. (I learned to drive in my grandfather's Buick, and I've just never been a fan of driving that size of car. I have trouble judging distances anyway - and once nearly backed into the fence early on - so I don't need any extra length added.)

Finally though, after being told that this was all they had, a nice lady popped up in the back and said there was a mid-size Ford Focus if I was interested.

Yes. Yes, please.

All that to say: go with your instincts.

The car was great and I managed to slide through all the big cities without traffic, so the drive down was perfect. I was really nervous about taking an unfamiliar car all that way, so I was really grateful this turned out so well. God is good.

Everything is all taken care of now, though, and my car is back in my possession looking great. If you ever need a body shop in the area, I have one to recommend.

Houston!
Yay! Houston!

Wednesday night Will had an unsuspecting Travis & Dave come over and I think everyone enjoyed hanging out the rest of the night.

And then on Thursday, poor Will got sick! Pretty sick, actually. :( Poor guy. (For those concerned, he seems to be doing fine now.) We did spend a lot of time catching up on various Nostalgic Critic episodes (who, by the way, is hysterical but very R-rated and language heavy, so be aware.) Also, I had the chance to see a taped rendition of his Pinocchio that I had been itching to watch and was glad to finally have the opportunity.

On Friday morning Kim graciously dropped Robbie & I off at the Zoo (where the OKC Zoo membership provides 1/2 off prices!) Although we did see lots of animals, I think if I totaled it up we spent about three of the five hours there in the children's zoo alone which was pretty funny. Robbie ran around in circles on the playground. Considering it was over 100, that's some pretty intense stamina! And he wasn't quite ready to go at the end either, but it was getting hot and late and he had to be getting tired, so we rode the carousel and headed home.

As for Issac, he is cuter than ever and has this grin that you can't help but return.

Travis and I actually got to catch up at Barry's Pizzeria which was nice and Kim & I were able to watch the latest Pride & Prejudice movie which I also enjoyed. Having never read or watched any of the movies, I went in without any idea of what it was really about and it was really funny.

Also, in the midst of all this, I did manage to finish reading Hunger Games, which I really enjoyed. For some reason, I kept fighting the first person point of view for the first part of the book, but was over it by the end and really enjoyed the bits that became more stream of conscious. And the story was great. Fast read, great story. Now I'm (probably) going to launch into Game of Thrones 2.

McKinney & Eight Hours, Going Twice
On the way back I arrived in McKinney at the perfect time for dinner with Philip & Kelly at Paoli's! Yum. World Market. Good time with more friends.

And then back on the road. A different route this time - up 1-77 to avoid the awful construction I ran into on 35 last time- buuut, 1-77 scared me a bit when I realized just how desolate it was. While I did like that it went straight into Shawnee, I didn't like that there were essentially no streetlights anywhere. And, although I knew it going in, no towns. So that meant no gas stations or ones in tiny towns that close way too early. That's potentially nervewracking.
So it's back to 35 for me.

And also bedtime for me.

But since I left Houston with this song stuck in my head, I now leave it with you:



It's a monkey!!

The Wojahn Visit #2: Arbuckle Lake

Truth be told, for the longest time I couldn't remember what happened between that first couple days involving the cemetery visit and the lake (which was near the end). Which....is sad.

Although the other day I thought "Wait, what was the world's longest word again? ... ... Ha, it's totally MANILAPINYATAPEI!"

But that's not accurate. Because I can't find it on google. And I can't remember how to spell it. Because its terribly long. And apparently its not the world's longest word anyway. SO I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER WHY IT WAS IMPORTANT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
But I do remember it means when two people look across a room, catch each other's eye and think the same thing. And I can sort of pronounce it. Because there's an entire song written about. BECAUSE IT EXISTS. I KNOW IT EXISTS.
So. There.

Eventually I did remember what I believe those four days entailed. And it was fun. My family came down a lot and we played canasta. Lots of kids. Lots of silliness. I walked into my room to find my almost-four-year-old niece button mashing my new laptop. This had happened several times, but it is always on password protect when they're down so its no big deal. But somehow this time the screen read "Continue system restore or delete all data? Ha, and she was still smashing keys! So after leaping to Jon's protection, I was pretty impressed. Not that I wanted my data deleted, but that's some mad button mashing skills. Someone give her a game controller.

Anyway, so that Monday Brent, Diane, Brian & I loaded up in their car and began heading towards Sulphur. My cousins make an annual summer trip to Sulphur and we were joining in. If you've never been there it's a natural spring (that is COLD) and goes out to form lots of deep pools of water, small waterfalls, creeks, etc. So imagine our surprise when my cousins called to let us know it was dry. Sulphur was dry. That still leaves me sort of speechless. I started watching ponds along the way and noticed most of them contained very little water, if any at all. This drought. Something's gotta give.

Well, we were already over halfway there so we kept heading that direction when Sam & Kris called back with the solution: Arbuckle Lake.

Arbuckle Lake is beautiful. And it was really perfect. Not only was the water blissfully warm, but it was clean (I totally admit: the thought of swimming in a dirty, stagnant lake makes me shudder.) But no, it was huge and the wind was constantly working the waves and the entire time was lovely. I had a massive sunburn for three days and Charlie started calling me Red. But it was worth it. We should totally go again.

So I guess this became less a post about what we did at the lake, and more about well...everything else. But y'know. We swam. We ate. It was a good time.

Thanks to everyone who made my birthday wonderful! Thanks to Phyllis, Amy & Betty for lunch & all those beautiful girls for making me feel super special with handmade birthday cards. Grandma & I went out for dinner to Red Lobster and I've done nothing the rest of the evening. Watched some Lost, listened to some music. It's been pretty lovely. :)

Only because its so true.

I am so sleepy. And going to bed. We had an awesome evening celebrating Holly's birthday at Red Robin. Several of us hadn't seen in each in a few weeks so it was HYSTERICAL.

I actually should post quotes from that. Sadly, I would probably get them wrong. Which would be a shame.

But that makes me think of this: tonight Eric pulled up a video clip that had me in hysterics with this line and I have to share it.

"I watched an anime once - dude pulled a gun at the start of the episode, fired it at the end and everything in between was angst! I wouldn't mind, but he MISSED."
- The Escapist

(Don't misinterpret- I love anime.)

Happy birthday to my beautiful friend, Holly! Thank you for always being the sweet sister that brightens my day and makes me smile. I love you dearly and hope you had a most wonderful day.

The Wojahn Visit #1: Cemetery Hopping

For some reason lately, late at night, I've been having huge energy surges. So I'm trying really hard to write, but my mind has been going from a shattered bits of wild thoughts to suddenly nothing. Rar.

I started this a few days ago, so maybe I can at least settle down enough to finish it.

We didn't originally set out to find a cemetery. We originally intended to drive out to Tribbey to my...great-grandfather's property? (I start getting confused on all the great's. I think it was my great-grandfathers.) My aunt had grown up playing on the farm, my grandma had fond memories of the family being out there and I had never seen it before so off we went with my uncle leading the way.

Of course, the person who owns the property now has no idea who we were and it wasn't exactly friendly in appearance. My aunt and uncle tried knocking anyway - to let them know why on earth we were in their driveway and ask permission - but no one was home.

However, apparently the lady next door was married to the son of the man my grandfather originally sold the property to. So while she had no idea who we were either (not that we were really expecting her to) I think it still pleased my aunt and grandma that the property was still being passed down.

However, while waiting in the car my grandma mentioned that a cemetery where many of our relatives were buried was nearby.
"Really?" I said.
"Right down that road."

While I found ancestry mildly interesting - and at some point in my life I might be curious enough to dig a bit more - it's not necessarily something I currently go out of my way for. My aunt, however, is deeply interested in it and, I mean, we were right there. Plus we could take pictures of the headstones and have birth dates and death dates with easy access. So I said, hey, we should do that.

Which is how we found ourselves visiting cemeteries in 112 degree heat. Awesome.

Prospect Cemetery in Tribbey, one of two we visited that day. The other was Prairie View, also in Tribbey.

Heh, don't worry, I'm not posting the headstone pictures.

We did however come across this:

This street is apparently named after my family. Who knew? This was my great-great grandmother's land given to her by her tribe and when she married my great-great grandfather it became known as "Kime's Place" and here it is, still known as such. I thought that was pretty cool.

It was also really nice to see the cemeteries. I've never visited those graves before and some of them went back to the 1800's. Honestly, I never even thought I'd see some of them and figured they were lost. Also interesting, someone is still putting flowers on them. I'm not sure who's doing that (we left so spur of the moment we didn't even consider it) but I'm glad they are. That was nice to see. We couldn't imagine who on earth would still be placing them there.

So 112 degrees or not, I'm glad we went. Now we have the pictures - and more importantly (if I wandered around long enough) I could probably find the cemeteries again.

Yawning. Still sleepy.

Indeed, I am back. My family left out yesterday afternoon. :( It was sad. I miss them.

So tonight my plans included going to the RAWC and finishing up birthday shopping for one of my kiddos.

Instead I slept for two hours and then gorged myself reading Hyperbole & A Half. My evening was obviously productive.

Sometimes I hate telling people what I find amusing, simply because if I tell you how amusing I found it, and then you don't feel the same way, I feel like I've disappointed you somehow. It bemuses me how one moment you can read through something and dismiss it, and then come across it again months later and it happens to hit you in a certain that you find hysterical. That's basically been my relationship with Hyperbole.
Therefore, I've actually never read that much of her blog before, with the exception of flipping through one or two posts. I'm not even sure why I started flipping through them tonight. But they were pretty hysterical. Any of her posts about her dogs were awesome and then the one on The Four Levels of Social Entrapment just really got me. Well-Intentioned Social Terrorism had me in fits of laughter, if for no other reason than the "I'm going to go inside my house and sit by myself." And then she even posted one about how evil geese are and about one attacking her in her own house. Perfect. (Sidenote: There is language throughout her blog, just so you're aware.)

Anyway, family time was awesome. I'm sure I'll be elaborating on it soon.

Wedding, wedding, wedding

Dun dun dun.......THE WEDDING.

Okay, no need for that. But sometimes, you just have to. Yes, you do.

The reason you didn't hear much about this wedding prior to it was mostly because the bride hadn't settled on some details, and I finally told Pam to just catch me up the week of. So... I really didn't know a lot about it until the flowers were arriving.

But this wedding was a ton of fun. It was large, but still a fairly simple setup. Also, it was at a fancy schmancy country club in the city which was a lot of fun - and getting to interact with their wedding coordinator was fantastic because she was awesome. We also ended up arriving an hour earlier than we anticipated and just had tons of time to make sure everything was exactly what we wanted.

First off, here's what the back of my bosses van looked like:

And that's just the top half of the reception pieces, friends.

And that also explains why I ended up driving up ALL the glass vases...when it was the one thing I repeatedly said I didn't want to do. Ha! So much for that. (Actually, it turned out great. Everything was so tightly packed they couldn't go anywhere anyway. I just thought it was really funny.)

The big uncertainty for us on this wedding is brought to you by the letter 'W'. That's right, a 'W' was taking us down. No, we just simply hadn't made one before and with the our well-known state winds, we simply didn't think this would stay:

The Ceremony Site:

YEAH. Our W!

Haha, it actually didn't take us that long and it didn't turn out to be that big a deal. We were mostly concerned about the rose petals blowing away and they never did (even with an unexpected storm brewing...I told you, DUN DUN DUN.) But it did have to be pretty funny watching my boss and I stand there and debate whether we had it in the right shape. ("Sherri, somethings wrong!" "No, it looks great!" "No, something's really wrong!" "You're parano...oh wait...the center's upside down! The center's upside down!") Ahahaha, and we even had a stencil. It was hysterical.
200 roses, folks. That's about 200 roses right there.

What's that? You want a close up to admire all those pretty shades? Of course:

Oooo....aaaah....

Okay, now the rest of the ceremony site:

There were two of these pieces, one on either side with all that gorgeous ruskus draping and curly willow adding so much pretty height, and green dendrobium orchids and hydrangeas and pink callas and sweet william and.... aww... I really, really liked this color combination. Green is is a perfect color on its own, but it really makes all the others shine as well.

The Handhelds:
Bridal bouquet on the left, bridesmaids on the right. All callas. In a bit of a role reversal, my boss made the bridesmaids and I made the bridal, as much to my surprise as I'm sure it is to yours. Blush blush...


The bridesmaids wore black dresses, so those black pins were perfect to tie all the colors together. And my, isn't that a pretty handle wrap! Those suckers are harder than they look (at least for me. I get glue EVERYWHERE.) After all our weddings this year I'm just now getting...um...a handle...on them...can't.figure.out.any.other.wording...ahhhh! PUN NOT INTENDED. Lets move on.

If I were to talk to you about flower detail and what about this picture makes me weak at the knees floral wise, I would point out those stunning green tips on the white callas. Love. Gives them such a natural, yet incredibly elegant, appearance.



Reception:

I really, really love this style and this is partially what made this wedding so fun for us. This style is super popular right now in the wedding world, but we haven't had many opportunities yet here to apply it. The reception centerpieces were in two parts: the bottom half is a glass cylinder filled partially with black rocks and then the rest includes curly willow all wrapped up with a few mini callas. The top half includes pink asters, callas and alstromeria, with fuchsia sweet william & carnations and green dendrob's & hydrangea. And that's curly willow giving it all that fantastic height. (Yes, those are airplanes in the curly willow.)

Seriously, I just couldn't get a picture that would do them justice. My boss created the design, it was really lovely.


Top Half:


Lower Half:
If I were to try and pick a signature style, I think I would automatically tend towards this look. I really, really enjoy the submerged or flowers tucked inside the vase - especially for weddings. In fact, a lot of receptions now use this look without the top half - just a few callas & rocks down inside the cylinder. I'm a big fan of that too.

The only thing was it was HOT. We actually only had to be outside about 40 minutes, but that was long enough. We hadn't had enough (any) water that day and by the time we finished up and I was leaving I immediately hit a gas station for some water.
And an hour before the wedding suddenly we noticed this storm clouds starting to move in...and then while we were having our what-does-a-W-look-like debate, we started hearing thunder, and seeing more clouds. But, happy ending, they made it without any bad weather.

I love working on-site with my bosses. There's so much I can pick up while we're out there that you can't learn in the shop. We've got one more big wedding in September that should be really pretty, and then we're out of it for a little while. Which makes me a little sad. Especially when you've just come off one this enjoyable.

In other news, my family arrives TONIGHT! Yaaay! Woo wooo woo!

(Also, a short interview with Tom Hardy aka Bane on Dark Knight Rises! A slightly disconcerting comment regarding the ending, gah! But no spoilers, obviously.)