Planes, Trains, and Weddings

Yes, we do still exist in the land of Texas...for those few of you that actually are still checking in from time to time here, we've been pretty busy lately. Since the weekends serve as are our main "blogging" time, and we've been out of town the last few weekends, we haven't had much time to keep the site updated. Our apologies! The past few weekends were spent either at an airport, on a plane, traveling to and from a wedding by car, or attending a wedding. The bulk of the time however was spent at a handful of airports. The first wedding we attending was Jeff and Marcy Russell (Chris' cousin). To better understand the experience let us present a time line...

Emily: Got up nice and early Friday morning. Ran some errands, happy to have plenty of time to spare before heading to DFW for her 10:00am flight. Arrived at the remote parking around 7:55, walked 10 minutes to the pick up site and was shuttled to the airport (current time 8:10.) Did the kiosk check in and was perplexed to see that her boarding time was 8:20. Come to find out she read the arrival time as the departure time and now had to book it to catch her flight (which then included a rush through 1st class security and a race down the terminal). Made the flight to the layover in Kansas City, only to be told after sitting there for an hour and a half that the plane she was to depart on had a broken navigation part that would need to be flown in from none other than DFW. Fast forward 3 hours, part fixed, boarded plane, part broke...yes...again! ...again fixed and arrived in Chicago nearly 5 hours late. On trip back to Dallas, flight late 45 minutes leaving Chicago, resulting in narrowly making layover in Tulsa. Arrived back home on time.

Chris: Worked all day on nasty teeth, drove an hour in rush hour traffic (current temp. outside=102F, no air conditioning in car) to DFW and parked in express parking because remote was full. Took timely shuttle to airport and breezed through security with plenty of time to spare before his 7:55pm departure. Overhead announcement states that the plane that he was to take has a flat tire and they need approx 15-30 minutes to fix it. An hour later, still looking for replacement...only to cancel the flight! He was able to get a red-eye in the morning and was even upgraded to 1st class (he flirted with the booking agent). Finally arrived a day late and with only 2 hours to spare until we were to leave for the wedding. On the flight back, arrived with plenty of time (again) and ended up with a 5 hour delay which was blamed (this time) on Newark, NJ. (funny...that's what they told Emily as to why her flight out was delayed...hmmm...) Chris, who was to leave 15 minutes before Emily and arrive home 3 hours before, ended up arriving a 1/2 hr after Emily. Home sweet home.

Who says you can't make the best of a layover?

Finally the weekend began. We drove to Rockford, IL with Chris' parents for the wedding. It was beautiful and well done and quite possibly served the best Italian beef ever in the history of Italian beef at the reception. Lots of family time had by all.

The newlyweds...

1) One happy family 2) Seems like we were just at one of these recently... 3) Who's the growing boy? 4) Anya pulls a fast one on Emily

A snippet of what has kept the romance over the years for this couple

Sunday we left bright and early for Middleton, WI. For those of you wondering where we might end up one of these days, if still in the Midwest... we're seriously considering this great "suburb" of Madison. We heard about it from Money magazine as it was rated the best place to live this year. We surveyed neighborhoods, hospitals, parks and the cities themselves and loved what we saw. Only drawback...winter! More family time spent grilling in Middleton...can you tell how much fun we were having?

In summary of the weekend. Great time spent with family...horrible time for travel.

And 5 days later....we tried our hand at flying again...this time to Zach and Amanda Dannenbring's wedding in Sioux City, IA.

Saturday morning we got up at 4:30am to make it to the airport early enough for our 8:00am flight. (yes...we know...completely unnecessary to get there so early, but Emily was fearful of missing the flight) Surprisingly...no problems with this flight!!! However, our ride to the wedding was with Chris' dental friend Nathan and his girlfriend Stephanie who were driving from Denver, CO. So, although we had no technical layovers, we ended up at the airport for 5 hours anyway. But, at least this one was planned and we had plenty of reading materials. We had a great trip to Sioux City catching up with them. While Nathan was excited to see us, he wasn't too happy about the bugs that littered his brand new Honda CR-V...however Chris could relate to this mentality. We made it to the wedding with 5 minutes to spare, and had a great time that evening. Their wedding was unique in that they had the ceremony in the Sioux City Arts Center downtown. It was beautiful and well planned out. Another great reception followed but most of all we had a great time catching up with friends. And of course dancing...

1) The Dannenbrings 2) Zach & Nathan with Chris 3) Emily and Stefanie laugh at Chris' dance moves 4) A happy couple the next morning at Perkins 5) Nathan after 5 beers

Sunday, we headed back to Omaha at 10am to catch the return flight. This wasn't until 3:20pm, but the time was well spent waiting because Emily's family drove from Des Moines to meet Chris & Emily for lunch and spend some time catching up before we had to check in. This was an unexpected bonus since it was planned last minute on Saturday during the 5 hour wait. Yippee!

However, our elation regarding the great weekend was suddenly put to a halt...you guessed it...our flight back to Dallas was delayed 3 hours! Dallas apparently was deluged by storms and flights were halted in and out of DFW. But, we made it home safely, albeit late.