Yes, Another Wedding

No sooner did we arrive back in Iowa, then headed back out again, this time to West St. Paul, Minnesota, for my cousin Shelly's wedding. Good thing we really like weddings, right? RIGHT?!

It was a nifty outdoor picnic-style wedding and everyone sat on either blankets or folding chairs and the dress was casual, so that's alrighty by me.

Shelly and Andrew had an awesome wedding and the weather was perfect. It was a scenic spot, too, right next to a lake. Not a bad spot, seeing as how there's not too many lakes in Minnesota, eh?

Their wedding cake was made of DOUGHNUTS:

So that was pretty great. We stayed in Rochester for the night and then went back home, set the car on fire and burned all of our suitcases.

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Pt 3

Here are some pics from the wedding day. Cynthia had the hairstylist do up her hair in a 40s style. Cool!

Cynthia practicing her song before the ceremony:

A rehearsal pic I forgot to put in the previous post:

The wedding day! Saturday, June 13th:

After the ceremony they took off for Maui and we drove to the exotic town of Pearland, Texas. We rented a house there with my folks and stayed for a little while.

Before heading back to Iowa, we spent a good part of a day at NASA. We should've spent a whole day there because there was so much to see and do, but we had a blast checking out the Saturn V rocket, mission control (yeah, the REAL mission control where they talk to the astronauts on the International Space Station), walking through the displays with the Apollo capsules and walking through a space shuttle. The first thing you see when you arrive is the shuttle mounted on the top of the modified Boeing 747 that was used to transport it back from its landing area,

First we got on the tram to take a tour of the NASA campus and visit the mission control building:

A couple of older rockets:

This is a Saturn V rocket! It still remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever built and they were flown from 1966 to 1973. NASA built 13 of them to send astronauts up in the Apollo space capsules. The rocket is displayed in sections and you can walk in between the sections and see inside. They built the building over the rocket after setting it in place.

A glove from a Soviet astronaut that was given as a gift to NASA:

The inside of a training capsule:

The astronaut gallery was an impressive display and it made us feel as if we were walking through outer space:

Emily built an extraterrestrial!

OK, enough fun, time to go home...

Deep In the Heart of Texas, Pt 2

Our second day on Galveston Island we boarded a ferry to go check out one of the nearby islands.

We saw this ship crossing ahead of us as we left the dock. I looked it up online and found that it's a Norwegian utility ship that repairs oil rigs and was on contract to the Gulf area.

You can see a U.S. Navy ship and a submarine along the peninsula.

The rusty hull that is barely protruding from the water is the remains of a sunken concrete tanker. It's the SS Selma and it transported concrete during WWI, but it ran aground in 1920 and has been sitting there ever since.

We saw a lot of sailboats out on the Gulf:

When we got the the next island there wasn't much there, so we rode back. We weren't really headed anywhere, we really just wanted to ride the ferry, heh.

Leaving the dock headed back to Galveston:

When we got back to our hotel, we changed and hit the beach:

This is the view from outside our hotel room:

In the evening, we walked along the seawall and then went down along the beach to pick up shells. There were lots of crabs running around, which freaked the girls out at first, but then their curiosity won over.

Funny story about picking up shells... Rose and Emily collected a lot of shells and some of them were larger. On the trip back to Iowa, there was a face-melting stench like something crawled up into the car and died, came back to life and then died again. We dug through our luggage until we realized the smell was coming from the collection of shells. One of the shells still had a resident living in it when it was collected... only now he wasn't living anymore. On the way back we soaked 'em in bleach and that took care of the stink.

The next day we went to the Lone Star Flight Museum. It was a collection of mostly WWII aircraft with a few cold war aircraft as well.

The MiG-15 was flown by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was used during the Korean War:

There were some cool seafood places along the seawall, so we stopped at one and the waiter had a nifty routine of magic tricks that completely baffled Emily.

The following day we went into Houston to help get the church set up for Abby and Justin's wedding. After the rehearsal, the dinner was at Justin's aunt's house in the suburbs. Houston is a shining example of urban sprawl and very poor urban planning, so trying to get anywhere is kind of a nightmare. There is almost no public transportation, so the nearly 4 million residents have to drive. It took us an hour to drive 19 miles. So glad we don't live there.

Some pictures at the church:

I designed the wedding invite as well:

Stay tuned for Part 3...