In the words of Staind...

It's been a while, so I will try to update you on things. This actually took place the weekend of March 20th.

Since I last left you, I tagged my 42nd state - Michigan. Somehow, I've been to 41 other states, but never the mitten state. Now, I have.

Mind you, I didn't go there to see Cabelas in Dundee, but I still got to visit it, and I must say that while it was a smaller store than Hamburg, PA, it still had some really cool attractions.

For example, the giant dueling bears were cooler than Uncle Tomahawk and the fur trapper dude.

Also, there were a lot more fight scenes, and they seemed to do more with the little critters of the woods than Hamburg did.







Then again, they have an exact duplicate of Angelina Jolie hanging on their wall. How they were able to recreate those lips, I'll never know.





What we really went to see was Ariel's sister since she just had her 2nd daughter.







Fortunately, the day before we got there, she finally had her, and it was a really neat thing to be able to get there that early to see the whole family with their new addition.











Thus, it was 3 full days of getting to spend time with her family in Ohio and just getting to be mellow and happy in that way that a new baby allows for a family.






Unfortunately, Ariel didn't get to make her quilt for new girl until after the visit, but it turned out awesome all the same.





The other purpose of our trip was to get to see the Toledo Botanical Gardens and where we were going to get married, and let me say, it was a good thing that we went out there! We had only seen the gardens in winter, and that time, it was covered with snow.

This time, it was prowled by a 50-pound swan. He was ferocious, and at one point he chased me around. Fortunately, I'm smart enough to stay out of his way!




The place where we were going to get married was the Grand Allee - i.e. the football field. With only 100 guests, we would have been dwarfed by the size of the place. We would have been exposed to late morning heat or weather, and well, we just opted for the pond gazebo.

All in all, I think it's a good choice. We'll be getting married in front of it on August 15th at 11am.

That's only a little more than 4 months away!

Time flies, but here's to the future.