Monday, May 26, 2008

35 Years - from KFC to the Brown Bottle

This Memorial Day weekend was quite a whirlwind - unfortunately for many, a real whirlwind. The system that dropped the tornado on Parkersburg and New Hartford yesterday went three miles north of my parent's homestead farm. Everyone (hooray!) was home for the weekend for my parents' 35th wedding anniversary, which was today. However, we were in Cedar Falls at the time watching the new Indiana Jones movie (spoiler alert - skip the next line if you haven't seen the movie). Just about the time when the alien ship started sucking everything up in its' whirlwind, a tornado was traveling north of Cedar Falls. The only thing we knew was that the lights in the theater flickered a couple of times. When we came out after the movie, we heard the full story from the outside world.

Natural disasters aside, my favorite story from the weekend was one that my dad told after the movie, when we were out to dinner at the Brown Bottle for their anniversary. Exactly thirty-five years before on that night, my parents had their rehearsal dinner - KFC chicken served by my dad's cousins out at his parents' farm! Hey, he said, KFC was pretty classy back then. Riiiiight. :)

But all joking aside, it was great to have everyone home for the weekend. Here's to thirty-five more years of wedded bliss for my parents! Congratulations, mom and dad!

Monday, May 05, 2008

Denver CLA Conference


Last week I went out to Denver for the Community Leadership Conference and I had the opportunity to revisit the Great Dunes National Park. Emma and I had visited there last summer, but I was so intrigued by it last time that I decided to drive the 3.5 hours down to see it again and do some dune climbing. Needless to say, afterwards I was covered in sand but the views are surreal. Enjoy this glimpse into the crazy world of 700 ft sand dunes at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range!