Happy Anniversary and an update!

Today is our 16th anniversary! Last year we celebrated with some of our Monaco friends as we were traveling to Florida! The year before that we celebrated with a few of the same friends while we were in Indio, CA at the western area FMCA (Family Motor Coach Association) rally!


This year we spent the day with Kim, Tim, Ashleigh and my mom! Ashleigh belongs to a cheerleading group called Upward Bound. They cheer at the Upward Bound Basketball games on Saturdays! It was the first time we have been to one of the games where she cheers and I have to say it was pretty cute and fun to watch! Today they cheered for two girls teams. The girls were very young and there was no score kept, but boy, did they ever put their hearts into it! The rules are fairly lax and it's not about winning or losing but about playing a fair game! The cheerleaders cheered during the game and then did a cheer at half time. Since there are two games playing in the gym at the same time...they cheered facing one way, turned and cheered the other! This was their very first cheer event and we thought they did pretty good! I'm sure we won't make every game (every Saturday until March) but I'm sure we will see a few more! After the game, we had a nice lunch at the "Mean Pig"!

Tess had her first haircut on Friday! It's kind of pointless trying to keep her clean at the house, but boy does she smell better! She had gotten pretty shaggy over the years and she really looks nice now! The first picture is her in the truck when they were delivering our cabinets! She always jumps in when anyone comes to deliver something! One day she may just get taken away if we're not careful! :-)


The garage doors are finally up on the house! For the past two weeks we have been helping to heat the outdoors! Since the drywall had been put up and they were "taping and mudding" it was important to keep the inside of the house from freezing! The exterior doors haven't been delivered so we put plastic up over the two outer doorways. Doesn't take too much going in and out before they get torn down so it wasn't really helping! The garage doors were supposed to be here the first part of the week and the plastic over the garage openings had been torn and blown so wasn't working very well either! We were VERY excited when they showed up and started installing them! **For those that know Don you can picture him looking at the gauge on the propane tank EVERY single day calculating how much propane had been used!**

You can check out the progress of the house at http://www.picasaweb.google/vickileith. Current pictures are in Emerald Isle, Greers Ferry, AR - Part 7!

We have been having the weirdest weather! Shortly after New Year's the temperatures dropped over night and we had a few nights of temperatures in the teens! One day it never got over 34 degrees! That was pretty darn cold! The first day we saw the fountain just inside the gate at Emerald Isle (our development) frozen I had to get some pictures! The next day I got out my new zoom lens and took some "interesting" pictures of the ice! It only took a warm day and a little rain and the frozen fountain was gone! (Another picture is some rocks that we drive past. They are always wet...this day they were FROZEN!) This last week we had some days that the temperatures reached mid 70's! (That's because we've been heating the outdoors) We even had a tornado warning and a tornado touched down a few towns over from us! We had a rude awakening that day when the owner of the RV park came to get us and told us we needed to come to the bathrooms! Don was just finishing shaving and I was still in bed! We got dressed in a rush, grabbed the dog, grabbed my camera and headed to the bathrooms! There seemed to be a lull in the weather and I headed back to the coach to put the slides in - just in case! Forgot how much "stuff" we had in the way but I got them all in! The tornado never got too close to us but it did hit ground here in central Arkansas!

So, back to our anniversary! I'm not sure how many people that read our blog know that Don and I were married on his parent's wedding anniversary! Don and I have both been married before but when we decided (after almost 6 years of living together) to get married I decided that I wanted to get married on their anniversary! They had (at that time) been married for almost 50 years and I figured if it worked for them...it would work for us! When Don's mom passed away they were almost to 60 years! In 2042 Don and I will celebrate our 50th! Think we'll make it? :-)

Sixteen years ago Don and I had a simple ceremony with our family all present. We had a few very special friends with us and then followed that with a BIG party with all our friends! BTW we couldn't have any more at the wedding...it was a very small chapel and not many more would have fit! :-) I thought it was pretty cool we had all four of our kids stand up with us! I can remember that they didn't seem too thrilled at the time, but I think it had more to do with their ages than anything else! They probably didn't like standing in front of everyone either! :-)

Happy 16th anniversary Don! I love you!