Country Stampede

Every year Manhattan, Kansas prepares for its huge 4-day country concert on Tuttle Creek Lake. This years headliners were Rascal Flatts & Taylor Swift. When Trav and I moved into town it was all we heard about and it just so happened to be June 26-29.

Being that those two bands happen to be my favorite country bands, Trav secretly did all that he could to score us some Saturday tickets and coverage of his 5pm-midnight emergency work shift at the hospital.
The Thursday night before the concert,at dinner, Travis pulled out a card for me and surprised me with the tickets - I was so excited, my first Kansas concert! What a husband!
Tuttle Creek Lake is only a 10 minute drive from where we live, but with all of the traffic it took us an hour till we were parked (it was chaos). Taylor Swift played at 7:15pm and we arrived at 7:10pm, just in time to find a spot to lay down our blanket. The bummer about Kansas is that until about 9pm it is still sunny - so the entire concert I had to hold my hand up over my face to block the sun so that I could see her perform (but it was worth it-she was adorable!)
After Taylor we had about an hour till Rascal Flatts so we wondered around. Let's just say that people warned us about the Stampede, everyone calls it 'The Woodstock of Country Music,' we now can understand why. Everyone was drunk and falling all over the place, both males and females were half dressed, etc. It was nuts! Nothing compares to this event in Arizona (Kansans are much crazier, believe me).

Rascal was about to start so we decided to stand for their concert on the side of the stage. We were in a crowd of crazy college age kids. Bad idea #1. Once Rascal opened, a bunch of girls jumped up on the shoulders of the guys they were with. Everyone behind them went nuts, including us - due to the fact that they were blocking the stage and the screen. People started pulling the girls down, yanking their bathing suit tops off, cursing at them; they would do anything to get them down. I politely asked the girl in front of me to get down and her father of about 50 years old decided to chew me out and chest bump me out of his way... Travis had to grab me by my back pack to yank me out of a potentially dangerous situation. Boy was that man lucky I was a christian woman, every other girl there would have hit him right back.

All in all we had a wonderful time, and Rascal Flatts can really put on a fabulous show! We loved the concerts and we are really glad we got to experience the true Kansas country spirit!

We Followed the Yellowbrick Road... to Our New Home!

My parents and I left our house in Peoria, AZ about 3:30am on Thursday, June 19th. We had spent the prior two days packing up my suv, Trav's truck and our rented 12x6 U-Haul Trailer (I guess I should clarify, my dad did most of the packing of the vehicles, my mom and I were more assistants).

Our goal was to make it to Manhattan by early Friday, due to not planning on stopping at a hotel/motel on the road. We figured that since we had 2 vehicles and three drivers we could do it. The main hazard of our perfect road trip was the U-Haul Trailer... the hitch was put on our vehicle wrong, so once we attached the filled up trailer the hitch was only about 1 inch off the ground (no exaggerations). Every bumb in the road, uneven pavement... you name it we felt it and scratched it - sometimes even created sparks! This little situation created a slow ride for all of us, at some points I could only get the vehicle up to 45 miles per hour... Semi Trucks were passing us. When we would fill up at gas stations people would ask us if we were stuck!

The states we visited along the way were: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma & of course Kansas. New Mexico was hot, boring and filled with construction zones (slow driving there). Texas was exciting... we hit some pretty rough rain storm in Texas and guess what it turned out to be, that's right a Tornado - we missed it by about a half and hour (thank you God).

The only times we stopped were for gas fill ups, (believe me there were plenty of those with my gas-guzzling trailer) bathroom breaks and snacks (of course). During that storm in Texas we decided to stop for our first meal at about 10pm - Dairy Queen. While we were there the building lost electricity - how exciting. We decided at about 2:00am to stop in a little town on the outskirts of Kansas for a short nap - so we slept in a hospital parking lot for about 3 hours.

We finally made it safe and sound to our apartment at about 9am on Friday! Now that is driving. Instead of sleeping, the 3 of us spent the whole rest of the day unloading the vehicles and setting up the rooms. A special treat; Travis asked around and got 4+ men from our new bible study to come at 5pm and help us with the heaviest of loads - what a blessing for my dad.

My parents stayed and helped Trav and I unpack the boxes, hang picture frames and essemble furniture until Sunday, when we had to take them to the Kansas City, Missouri airport to say goodbye. It was hard to do, but man were we greatful for all of their help.

Our 1st Manhattan T-Storm

On Wednesday, June 25th T-Storm warnings were all over the tv. I was home alone waiting for Travis to get home from work. I am not going to lie, I was a little frightened by the news, I just didn't want the storms to turn into another Tornado. Luckily, Travis got home around 6pm and the storm hadn't hit yet.

About 7:30pm thunder and lighting lit up the sky of our balcony... it actually was pretty sweet - it wasn't colorful like Arizonas', but it definately was the loudest thunder I had ever heard (it rattles everything). We had never seen a sky like it before, a huge black cloud was covering our entire apartment complex. Then without any warning rain started beating down (I am talking a down pour). It was about 85 degrees with 70% humidity - how is that possible, right?

Within minutes the rain turned to hail droplets, which turned into hail balls (as I called them) about the size of a quarter, shooting down in all directions. Travis was worried that they were going to do some damage to our vehicles, but they didn't.

After about an hour of sitting on our balcony, amazed by what we were seeing - it stopped suddenly and all was humid and calm again.

Honeymoon - Crusin' the open seas

Travis had never been on a cruise before so we decided to honeymoon on the 7-day Carnival Conquest. We cruised through the Westeren Caribbean stopping in: Montego Bay, Jamaica; George Town, Grand Cayman Island; and Cozumel Mexico.

We loved the never ending food, the caribbean atmosphere, our spacious balcony suite, the beautiful sunsets and the lively-nightly entertainment...we couldn't get enough.

WE HAD A BLAST!!!

At our specific ports we: zip-lined through the jungles of Jamaica, relaxed under an umbrella on the glorious 7-mile beach in the Caymans and swam with Eva the dolphin in Mexico.

Each activity was amazing!

Travis' favorite memory of the cruise was when we won a dance contest, the last night of the cruise. We utilized our swing dancing abilities, and I guess you can say 'we danced into the hearts of the crowd' for first place. (As it was happening I wanted to kill Travis for dragging me up to the stage, but once we were handed the golden cruise-boat trophy and the bottle of champagne, I too was excited!)

THE NEWLYWEDS!!!

On 6.7.8 Travis and I were married at 6pm in the evening

at Troon Country Club, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

It was perfect; we were surrounded by all of our closest friends and loved ones, everyone looked gorgeous, the weather was beautiful and the scenery was spectacular!

We danced the night away and every detail of my 9+ month planning went off magnificently.

It truly was a dream come true!

Dr. Travis, D.V.M.

Travis graduated in May, 2008 from Washington State University's Veterinarian Medicine Program...

after 4 years of hard work!

His parents, mom, grandma as well as my parents and I all flew to Pullman, WA to celebrate with him. We had a wonderful time site-seeing around town, going out for meals and meeting all of Trav's close friends.

It was an exciting (and long awaited) week.

At age 25 -

Travis is now a VETERINARIAN!!!