More Wedding Pictures

Hey everyone! I figured I'd post a few more pictures from the wedding... I might throw on some more when I get them from the photographer, but this will be it for a little bit. The wedding was on Sunday, Oct. 8 at Whitney Manor in Kingston. It was the most perfect Thanksgiving weather... sunny and something like 18°C, although the wind was a bit cool in the shade in a strapless dress!

I think i'm just happy to be off my feet!

This is in the "Chapel Suite" - the room my parents & grandma were staying in... where we got ready before the wedding and where many of the pictures were taken... I may post pictures later just of the rooms and the building itself. I love this picture of my little ring-bearer Cole and my second dad (Tom Sr.). This was honestly one of the few times Cole stood still on his own! Wow that little guy has a ton of energy... This is my adorable flowergirl Ali. She was extremely cute the whole weekend and very excited about getting our hair done in curls, wearing her pretty dress and carrying her own bouquet (3rd time she was a flowergirl - and she handled it like a pro as well!)

Wedding Pictures - Round 1

Here's a couple of wedding pictures! More to come!!

GEMSTORM!!

Tom and I went to Gemstorm this weekend!! Unfortunately (kind of) we got a bit carried away when we hit our favourite dealer - Russian Stone. We picked up a couple of trilobites (top 2 pictures). There's a couple of pretty rare ones there - still waiting for them to send the official names. These are composite plates - I think it would be impossible to get these all occurring together naturally... and I'm not sure of their ages. I'll post the trilobite info when I get it from the dealer. The third one down is a couple of Eocene fish from the Green River Formation. The last one is a piece of red coral - i have a necklace made from the stuff so it was kind of neat to get a whole chunk of one.

In other news... Tom and I got married on October 8th... I'll post pictures when I get a few more... and also the promised polar bear shots from Tom's field season on Devon Island this summer. Stay tuned!

Racing side-lined

Hey all, I haven't been very good at keeping everyone posted on the adventure racing front. Unfortunately training has been shaky lately. Since beginning I was off sick for a week or so and just last weekend I sprained my ankle so I'm not wondering if the race is going to happen. I was playing with Kali in a field and stepped in a hole. She thought it was a great game, pouncing at me and running around in circles and I sat wailing in pain. Of course nobody was around to pick me up, but fortunately I was able to hobble home, and after a bit of ice, drive out to the Dr. I tried a nice after hours clinic first and got in after waiting only 10 min!... but then got sent to emergency anyway for X-rays and waited there for about 2 hours (brought a puzzle book so at least i was occupied). Once I got in to see the doctor he pronounced that it was a sprain and I didn't need an x-ray after all, gave me some crutches, and sent me home. Thankfully I've had some super helpful friends (thanks Kyle & Wanda) that have come by to take Kali for a run and met me for puppy play-dates. I guess it had the effect of making for a super productive work week school-wise (although it would have worked out better for timing if I could have used that saturday *shrug*)... but after more than a week with limited physical activity I am now getting antsy for a run! Good news...Tom will be home in a few days and I'll be able to start posting some pictures to liven the site up!

Racing Update and other news

Sorry about the boring-looking entries lately. Tom's made off with the camera and is now flying around Devon Island with it, but I promise to post some polar bear pictures and scenery shots when he gets back.

We've found a third adventure racer, and possibly a fourth. Unfortunately I've been off hard-core training for a week and a bit because of an annoying summer cold that keeps relapsing whenever I do something fun. Hopefully I'll be back in the game by next week - as long as a full weekend of softball play-offs doesn't knock me down again (we have 3 games saturday and up to 4 on sunday depending on how we do). Our first race sounds like it's going to be the Sea2Summit race on Aug. 26/27 in Quebec.

Wedding plans are progressing nicely. My wedding dress finally came in last week!! Only 2 months late, but still with plenty of time before the wedding. I got to go see it and try it on again... and now have managed to find all the accessories I'll need except shoes. Not to worry though (so far) because I'm in the process of making them! I'll post pictures when I get my camera back, especially if they work out. Basically they're going to be a combination of cork from a corkboard, cheap orthotics for shape (mostly just because i had them kicking around... not necessary), crocheted jute twine for the sole, and crocheted fuzzy white yarn for the upper. No shoes are allowed in the post-dinner reception room so they're going to be a sandal/slipper kind of idea.

Adventure Racing

I'm now officially on an Adventure Racing team! Okay, so we need a name and we're still sorting out our 3rd & maybe 4th team member, but we had a training session last night doing sprints up the steep side of Fort Henry. Keep tuned for trials and tribulation of training (and we'll see if it actually goes anywhere!... hopefully it doesn't end up like all of my K-town Triathlon training and end up just as training for fun while never doing a single race!).

Cephalapod Cache

I'm pretty excited - just got to hide our first geocache AND use geeky geology knowledge to do it! We found a nice spot with cephalapods so decided to use it in the name of the cache and expound a bit of Kingston geology in the description. Now we also have a nice spot to start our travel bug race. We've got a little stuffed "kali-roo" and now we need a little grey kitty for be "mookie" and then we're going to race them... maybe if Gnat the Brat were to take up caching we could race them down that way!

Crochet Sweater

Just thought I'd add in this picture of the sweater I crocheted at Christmas since I finally got around to putting Tigger on the blog. It took a couple of months and I still need to put a zipper or some kind of closure on it.

Tigger Scarf

I was going through the pictures on my digital camera and remembered that I had wanted to post this scarf. I spent a month or so crocheting it for my 3 year old niece for christmas... finishing it minutes before getting in the car to drive over for the big Hamilton Christmas dinner... In the midst of unwrapping gifts she discovered it... and gave a squeal of delight!... but so many presents to look at left it soon forgotten. Later in the evening she refused to even try it on so I could see how it looked on her... who knows if she's ever worn it since... so here's to the tigger scarf. I thought it was cool.

Silence of the Rams

This weekend was a pretty successful time for geocaching for team Kali-roo (me, Tom, & Kali). We managed to find 10 caches, including 1 multi-cache and a travel bug! Travel bugs are these neat little tags with bar codes on them. Basically someone sends them off with a mission to travel the world or to get to a certain destination. You attach something interesting to it and give it a name... in this case it was a broken bit of RAM. Here's a picture of Kali modelling "Silence of the Rams". This is a close-up of the "Silence of the Rams" travel bug. It started in New Zealand, flew to B.C., came through New York and up to Ontario. Click the post title to see where this bug has been.

Geocaching

Tom & I have recently taken up a new hobby - geocaching! It's basically a big treasure hunt using a GPS. You download sites from www.geocaching.com onto your trusty GPS and head out to find it, sign the log book, trade items in the cache, and then log it as found on the geocache site. There's a special extra category for geologists - actually two (check these out at http://www.waymarking.com/ click directory, then Earth Science). If you look under The "rockhounds" category shows locations to collect fossils and minerals, and the "earthcache" category shows the positions of interesting/educational geologic sites. Not many exist now but we hope to start adding to them!

Spiffy Furballs

What can I say? Tom was wearing a tie a couple of weekends ago... when he took it off Kali got really excited... I guess she thought it was a collar and she was going for a walk so she got to wear the tie for a little bit... and we didn't want Mooks to feel left out!

Wedding Dresses

Well, I've been trying on all kinds of wedding dresses lately in Kingston, Napanee, and Belleville. Feel free to ring in with suggestions on your favourites! So far I just have the web-site pictures, but Simply Elegant in Kingston/Napanee will let me take pictures of me in the dresses for better comparison. Access the link above to check out more dresses.

This dress is from the Venus Informal collection, dress I0219. If I decide on this one it will be in white with cranberry accents (since the wedding colours are burgundyish)

This Venus Angels & Traditions collection (dress AT018) is one of my favourites. It's simple with lovely white embroidery. I thought it looked a bit better on me than the model makes it look (especially the front view on the Venus web-site).

The Sincerity 3021 was also a nice looking, simple dress with a bit of the cranberry colour for flare...

This Sincerity 3068 also looked really good on... just a little bit of pink in the embroidery at the bodice, but not too much (since I'm not a "pink" girl)... and the back was amazing!

This Venus Angels & Traditions gown (AT178) was also another favourite (okay, so all of the ones on here are!)

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I had other favourites on the wedding dress web-sites but haven't been able to find them in stores yet.

A few more wedding pictures

Lan and Andy's wedding party

Lan and Andy (Lan's in the process of sitting on Andy's lap)

Andy after Lan got off his lap (& stepped on his foot)

Spiffy new shoes

I know it's kind of silly to post this, but i'm super excited about the new running shoes I bought. I'm one of those people who gets really tired of plain white running shoes. Since I heard my model of choice now had pink accents instead of red (I'm definitely not a "pink" girl), it was with some trepidation that I ventured forth to buy a new pair... finally giving in to the shin splints and knee problems that were developing from wearing the treads into the ground. To my surprise I found the baby blue and silver Nikes that fit amazing... I'm sure to be super fast now! It's a fact that flashy shoes make you run faster.

Congratulations Lan & Andy!

Last weekend Kali & I drove up to Thunder Bay for Lan & Andy's wedding held on Saturday, August 6. I took a bunch of pictures, but my digital camera ran out of power and the ones i did take mostly didn't work because it was too dark. Fortunately i brought my handy manual camera (a nice old Pentax Spotmatic) and was able to take at least a few pictures. This one was my favourite.

Critter Pics

Can't have a site without putting in some critters. Mookie is my 5 year-old half persian/half siamese fuzzball... pretty timid but adores being brushed.

Here is my ridgeless Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy. Kali is only 4 months here in my absolute favourite picture of her, but now closing in on 2 years old her "Lambstaro" is as big as her snout. She's a friendly out-going puppy who is now more into her stuffed "Blue" toy (from the kids' show) than "Lambstaro".

Wedding Stuff

Tom & I are getting married on Oct. 8, 2006. I'm hoping to post wedding news and info here for family and friends, as well as any other stuff that comes up. The wedding will be pretty small... so far the guest list is around 25 people, pretty much just immediate family, the wedding party, and a few close friends. We've chosen Whitney Manor http://www.whitneymanor.net/ for the ceremony, reception, and photos. This place is awesome! The interior is done in fabulous light grey limestone, rich dark woods and great colour. Each "room" is actually a self-enclosed suite with kitchen, bathroom, living area, and bedroom. It also doubles as an awesome art gallery featuring paintings by a local artist (sister of the owner).