Hurricane Ike, A wedding, and Kansas City Part 1

As you can see from the title, I'm not really sure what 'story' to focus on. We have had so much happen in the last week and a half its hard to even know where to start--but I'll try. Here goes...
Wednesday evening, Sept. 10th, before Hurricane Ike was to hit, we had tickets to fly out to Kansas City for my dad's wedding . It was a strange coincidence to be flying out right before a big storm (or maybe providence?!), but we were thankful to be out of harm's way. I was so excited to be there! I got to see my sister, who I had not seen in a very long time. In fact, we stayed in the same hotel just two doors down, so we got to visit (i.e. send the kids over to play) quite a lot. We had a ball staying up late snacking on junk food and letting the kids jump on the beds. Is there anything better than that?! We even got a chance to do some shopping the day of the rehearsal wedding and even got our nails done (yep, amazingly enough my nails are long for once in my life!) Here's Jackie and I all dolled up before the (very interesting!) wedding.

What made it so interesting you might ask? Well, for starters there was a tornado not far from where the wedding was held. For those of you who have spent any time in the Midwest, the way people know about tornado warnings (beside radio and television) is through a very loud tornado siren. Well, you guessed it, the tornado siren was going off the ENTIRE wedding! You could even hear the rain pounding the roof and thunder booming in the background--probably not the most romantic backdrop. Not only was the weather bad, but a few other interesting things happened. When it came time to exchange rings, they couldn't get the ring off of the ring-bearer's (Carson's) pillow, Susie couldn't get the ring on my dad's hand, a little boy fell over in his chair during the wedding and not to mention my sweet Ashlyn was still throwing rose petals on them while they were standing at the front. It was definitely amusing! Susie and my dad, though, just kept a great attitude throughout the whole wedding and laughed along with everything. (I guess after all that, what else could you do?!) My dad even surprised everyone by singing 'You are so beautiful' to Susie during the reception. Completely unexpected, but touching in a slightly awkward way--I mean he is my dad after all.

Here's a pic of Susie, my dad and all the grandkids. Bill's (Susie's oldest son) kids were also in the wedding with my kids--Lainey(age 5), Carson (7) and Drew(3). Don't they all look so adorable? :)
Here's a pic of Susie with her two sons, Nathan and Bill, my new step-brothers. Its still kind of strange to think I have new step-brothers. They are both so nice though, and their wives (and children) are so sweet!

Here's a picture of Bill's wife, Leah (on the far left) and her mom and sisters. (Yes, she really is as gorgeous in person as she is in the picture!) Leah and her family are really the sweetest, most down-to-earth people you'll meet. Its so funny, because her and her sister, Rachel's relationship reminds me a lot of mine and Jackie's. In fact, our two sisters are even due around the same time. It turned out that her mom and sister (in the middle of the group) were from Tomball and also stranded in KC until the airports opened. (OK, maybe stranded is not a good choice of words, since we were in such a nice place and surrounded by family and friends.) But we all got to spend a lot of fun time together!

We are so lucky that our new family are such wonderful people. In fact, we spent some 'bonding' time playing ultimate frisbee (if you haven't played that before, you will definitely need to be in shape to play--its pretty intense!) and spent some time visiting. I definitely wished we lived closer, because we get along so well Of course, we'd never get anything done, because we'd be talking so much! ;) (Right, Leah? ;) But all in all we had such a good time! More pics and stories about our extended stay in KC to come in a later post...