Sad News

I received news yesterday that a long time friend and neighbor passed away due to a blood clot to his brainstem. He was only 53 years old. He was a husband, father and grandfather. I have many great memories of Randy and his family. Especially him as our childhood soccer coach for BVAC and playing old school nintendo with his kids at their house. I also remember him building a storage shed that had a play room on the top. This will be a tough time for his family and ask for kind thoughts and prayers for them. My heart goes out to them.

Bachelorette Party

This last Friday a group of us headed down to the Lake of the Ozarks for a weekend of fun before Amanda gets hitched. We rented a great condo complete with a tub overlooking the lake. Friday night we went out to dinner and then hit the Poopdeck. Nice name huh! I heard that one of my charge nurses at work met her husband there! Saturday a group of us hit the outlet malls. Aw, JCrew Outlet! Need I say more. We headed back to the condo and met up with the rest of the ladies at the pool. Amanda's mom made us a great dinner and then we threw Amanda a surprise lingerie party. I think she loved it! It was a fabulous weekend and I can't wait for her and Chuck to get married! Will post pics later.

Wanna House??

Many of you know that Russ and I have a couple of rental houses. They are soon available to all of those out their looking for a place. You can check out the adds on Craig's List or contact us if you are interested. Here are a few pics of the Waldo house. Please feel free to contact us!

Wedding

Saturday night we attended our friends Tara and Richard's wedding. It was alot of fun and it was great to see so many familiar faces from college. It also was quite the international gathering. The groom is from England and the minister from Australia. Congrats to Mr and Mrs Betts!

Segways at the Zoo

For our Mother's Day celebration for Sue, we went to the Zoo to ride Segways. Sue loved it and started zooming around the second she jumped on. Carolyn and I not so much! I still had fun even though I didn't quite pick it up like some others :) We got an hour long tour of Australia while on our Segways. Sometimes I felt like we were the attraction. Liitle kids in their strollers would be pointing at us and saying, " Wow, look!" Russ decided to feed the goats while standing on his Segway. One of the zoo workers came bustling out because she said #1 She wasn't sure if the animals would buck him off and #2 She didn't want us to run over the animals. All went well though, no one was harmed in the feeding process.

We ate our picnic lunch and then walked around looking at Africa. It only drizzled a little bit and Russ only had to be a little bit mortified over us wearing our ponchos :) We had alot of fun and thought this was way better than buying gifts! Happy Mother's Day!

Vivace and Friends

Friday night we went to dinner at a great little place in the River Market called Vivace with our friends Mike and Kelly. I had received a very generous gift card from a very sweet nursing student I had worked with. Thanks Ashlie! I felt like we were pretty adventerous and had all seafood for dinner. We had escargot, mussels, lobster ravioli, salmon and scallops. Then we headed down to the Power and Light District. I was the only one who had not seen it yet. It was pretty cool and really did feel like you were in a different city.

Carolyn's Birthday and a Higher Calling

I have been really bad about updating our blog lately. Sorry!

This last Friday night we celebrated Carolyn's birthday at the Cheesecake Factory. Yum! She got some great gifts and it was fun to hang out. Hope it was a Happy Birthday, we love you!

Saturday we traveled up to Marshalltown, IA for my mother-in-law's ordination to an Elder. Basically this means that Sue has many great and wonderful talents to share with others so God had called her to a responsibility to do so with her fellow church members.

Russ has a big family (well, compared to mine anyways) and it is a lot of fun hanging out with all of the aunts, uncles and cousins. We enjoyed eating out, celebrating Carolyn's birthday and Sue's special service.

Russ's family is very musically inclined and shared their talents at the church service on Sunday. I actually agreed to stand up front and sing with the group since their was only about 6 members in the church! It was a beautiful and touching service.

We enjoyed a spaghetti potluck and then wrapped up the weekend. We got some group photo shots in before we each went our separate ways. I thought it was pretty amazing how far some people traveled for this occassion. We had family members there from Conneticut, Wisconsin and Missouri. We had a lot of fun and look forward to the next time we all get together!