A long day of travel with a little time to celebrate :)

This morning we headed out on the road towards Hamburg Pennsylvania as there is a Cabela's there that we were trying to make it to last night but we stopped early yesterday. After the tick fiasco last night I searched the net for something to do on the way to Hamburg and found the Nolde Forest Environmental Educational Centre. It looked like a nice place to spend a few hours. On our way we passed through Amish Country near Honeybrook Pennsylvania...but I didn't get any good shots...too slow with the camera today!

When we arrived at the Education centre the the gate was closed??? Perhaps there is another entrance we missed??? We continued onto Hamburg but we expected to arrive within an hour which meant lunch time and it was way to early to stop for the day. We plugged in the next Cabela's into the GPS in East Hartford Connecticut and it said we'd arrive at 4:30 so we carried on to stay there for the night.

We however did not take into consideration that the GPS was taking us on the shortest route and avoiding tolls when possible. By the time we realized it was taking us right into New York, it was too late to turn anywhere else and we were stuck in traffic trying to cross the George Washington Bridge for 2 hours. Ontop of that they charged us $18 to pass! So much for avoiding big cities and we didn't even get to see the Staue of Liberty!

Absolutely no stopping! Ha we were at a standstill for
most of the time on this "expressway" to the bridge. Note the normal
highway to the right, they zoomed by us but we couldn't get
off the "expressway".

After leaving Delaware and passing through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York States, we finally arrived in Connecticut after travelling 600 km's (not our longest driving day), and taking over 10 hours to do it with traffic (but it was the longest day stuck in the truck), we ended up arriving at Cabela's at about 8:15 pm instead of 4:30...a slight bit later then planned.

I was not pleased especially since if we went the route we planned instead of the way the GPS told us we would have arrived a lot sooner, still had $18 in our pockets, wouldn't have sat in traffic, even though we would have traveled a little bit out of the way.

When we arrived at Cabela's we headed straight to their FREE dump station as we hadn't dumped since Disney (you learn to conserve water very quickly when living in an RV). Ian had the lovely task of dumping while the girls and I stretched our legs on their grassy area.

While doing so I noticed some not very friendly signs.

I went into Cabela's and told them we drove here under the assumption that we could park here overnight but the signs state we can't. The guy working said not to worry, we are allowed to overnight. He didn't say why they have those signs posted. I just left very thankful that we didn't have to pack up in search of some place else to go at 8:30pm after such a long day already, especially since today is our anniversary. Yes, in 2005 Ian and I were married after living together for 7 years.

Not quite how most people spend their anniversary but we were together none the less :) Ian cooked a wonderful Shrimp pasta for our dinner tonight. Hopefully we can celebrate with some Lobster in Maine on Monday or Tuesday. Tomorrow is Sunday and we have to hang around the Boston area to pick up some solar parts in Hudson, Mass on Monday am, then we are up the coast and almost to Canada.

All of our photographers photos are at home on our main computer but I did have a few from friends on our laptop so I will take you down memory lane with me :)

June 5th, 2005:

Mother of the Bride :)

Ian and his best man Jay (all the way from Toronto)

Julie holding Athene who was our ring bearer. Yes we were able to
have our dog walk our rings down the isle.
RIP Athene we miss you!

My mom walking me down the isle to give me away.

Our first kiss as husband and wife



The lovely bride and groom ;)



My beautiful daughter Meadow

At the reception

I so wish we video recorded the reception. It was the funniest wedding I have ever been to. There were so many wonderful jokes and heartfelt speeches throughout the night. Pictured below is part of a speech from wonderful friends Irene and Wayne. They are the parents of Damen, a very dear friend of ours who actually introduced us to eachother. Damen passed away before we got married so his parents came and brought this photo of Damen and Ian dressed up in drag for a Halloween party for their speech. Ian's in purple and is hard to see here but he actually looked quite good like a girl!

Later on in the night my Maid of Honour during another speech came up and had to give Ian a kiss and return our house key since she wouldn't be needing it anymore now that we were married. She was followed by every other single girl at the wedding dropping keys and last but not least...our friend Tom brought his by too. Perhaps not so funny to read about but it was halarious at the time!

After meadow's speech. Both hers and mom's speech were very heartfelt.
Sorry mom through the tears I guess no one managed to get a picture ;)



My neice Mila singing for us at our wedding...she sang "Oh Canada"



I like this picture...it was taken by Damens daughter Alexis with my camera
 (yes I took my own camera to our wedding) of me with a good friend Debbie.
 Alexis is following in her daddy's footsteps of loving to take pictures.

Our first dance...or should I say stumble trip..we both have 2 left feet :)

Ian's mom in front, directly behind her is Jay's (Ian's best man) parents Ron and June all the way from Toronto, and to the left is Ian's uncle Allen from California (Liz sorry I don't have one picture of you on this laptop). We were so happy they could make the long journey to BC to be with us for our wedding. We had a lot of family that could not make the trip for one reason or the other :(

Our mom's dancing

One of the main reasons our wedding was so funny is because of Ed our Master of ceremonies was halarious! The jokes between Ed, Jay and Ian especially throughout the night were continuous and halarious.

Ed and his lovely wife Heather from Toronto as well



Cutting our cake

I don't have a picture to show you of Ian performing Mission Impossible while he tries to remove my garter but it was funny too...and Jay..we got ya....RRRREEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee! (inside joke sorry)

For always and forever I Love you babe!

Our wedding was simple and elegant and perfect. A day shared with family and friends, filled with laughter, tears, and enough love to last a lifetime. Happy Anniversary babe. I love you!