Wedding - The Rehearsal

I do not have the pictures back from our official photographer because I need to get my rear in gear, but these are pictures that my wonderful friend, Josey, took of our day. Today is the anniversary of our engagement, so I guess I have wedding on the brain. Enjoy.

Grandpa Taddiken passed away about 6 weeks after our wedding. We were so thankful to have him there on our special day. I love this picture of Janelle and him.

And here we are, ready for the big day tomorrow ...

To be continued...

Liked or Disliked? I'll let you be the judge.

Russ got up this morning to start the coffee before chores, when I hear from the living room ... "OH MY GOD!" As I yell, "What?" and get out of bed, I round the hallway corner to find our tree in the front yard covered in toilet paper. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I have officially been TP'ed.

And although this is not my house and my yard looked no where close to this extravagant, I thought I would let the blog world decide ...

Does this make me a liked or disliked teacher? My sister weighed in this morning when I called to consult on another family matter. She chose liked. I could put $50 on what our good friend 'anonymous' would say about the whole ordeal. Probably something along the lines of ... " you got what you deserved for setting a horrible example of all humanity to the future of our country."

Post a comment - Liked or disliked?

St. Lucia, Part II

So, like I said, the next day, we went zip lining through the jungle. However, my husband didn't really explain to me just how terrified of heights he really was. I could tell he was a little nervous when we were getting our gear on. Don't we look nice? And as we were waiting to jump off the first platform, a lady a couple people ahead of us, was about to cry, she was so afraid. That's when I realize Russ is about ready to turn around and head for the hut. But, being the strong willed person that I am and knowing how much money we spent to do this, I insisted that he would live and to just get on with it. I made him go first so I could push him off the platform if need be. Here was what we saw on our first leg of the adventure. Beautiful right? It was so lush that they literally had to cut away the jungle where we would zip line.
Here is another view from one of the leg's. There were 11 in all.

Russ did very good but he did scream like a little girl the first couple of lines.

That night, we went over to the Regency - another Sandals resort on the island. We met some very nice Canadians who were so kind and gave us lots of great tips. For example, they said to go up to this point before dinner because the sun set was suppose to be fabulous ... and it was.
The next day was our last at the resort and here we are at lunch.

Then, on the way home, we booked a helicopter ride back the airport, instead of the 2 hour taxi ride up and down the mountains.
This the view as we took off. Oh boy, do I miss that blue water!!Here's a picture of us crossing the rain forest.

And here is a picture of each of with our helicopter gear on.

We had a great vacation and enjoyed every minute. Over Spring Break, we are going to Vegas!!

St. Lucia - Part I

We got on the plane very early. Our flight left Kansas City at 5:30 so we stayed in an airport hotel the night before and got a few hours of sleep. When you have to leave for the airport by 4:15, it makes you wonder why you slept at all. The flight down to St. Lucia was uneventful (thankfully). Our transfer in Atlanta was no problem and we even got an inflight movie. However, there wasn't a meal, only two snacks and with a 5 hour flight that boarded at 10am we were very hungry by the time we got off the plane at 3:30 in St. Lucia. When you get off the plane, you exit like the President of the United States. You know, with stairs that come out to the plane. I thought of waving but resisted.

The fanfare quickly faded as we had to wait in a customs line for a would guess at least an hour. Once through that line, we had to get in a taxi to ride to the resort. Well it took about two hours of curvy, mountainous roads with our crazy driver. We needed up hitting rush hour traffic in the capital, Castries, as there is only one paved road (highway) that goes around the island. Sooner or later, we made it to the resort but it was 6 or 6:30 now and by the time we got to our room, we were starving. Remember, our lunch consisted of Delta Airlines cookies and coke. Of course it was dark by this time so we had no idea what the resort looked like until the next morning and woke up to this view.

Our room faced the caribbean side of the island and our resort was on a pennisula so the other side of the resort faced the Atlantic side.

This is a view of the Atlantic ocean.

The next few days consisted of waking up around 9:30 or 10, putting on our swimsuits, walking down to the beach, cocktails by 11, lunch, more laying out, more cocktails, then naps at 4, showers and then dinner at 6:30. Rinse and repeat for the next 3 days.

This is a view of the pool, but we decided to spend a lot of our time on the beach.

This was a morning (yes, morning. It was a very warm temperature by 10 and no problem to lay out.) where it is raining over in the rainforest across the bay but on the beach, it is sunny. They did have passing showers there where it would rain for 10 minutes or so and then clear up but what do you expect from an island with tropical rainforests.

The 4th day, Saturday, we went zip lining through the rain forest.

To be continued ...

St. Lucia Preview

I am just now uploading our pictures from St. Lucia. More to come - I promise.

It is on cold days like today that I long for the sunny beaches and for someone to bring me a daiquiri at 10am. This is the view from our room at the resort.

It is such a constant temperature (75 at night, 83 during the day) that most of their hallways are breezeways and their lobby is what I would consider outside. This is the fountain as you pulled up to the resort.

Ding Dong the Tree is Dead

Here's the story of the ugly tree that blocked our beautiful home. It was very large and very blue sprucey. I really thought something needed to be done about it. And being the non-tree hugger that I am, I had no remorse when I told my husband to cut it down.

So he called some friends to help him with the fun task. I'm not sure they knew what they were getting into.

Here they are standing under the tree inspecting chainsaw work.

Here is one of our volunteers helping put the chain around the tree. Note that this person volunteered to put the chain around the tree.

While another person is making the final cut on the tree, another volunteer is in the tractor, pulling on the tree so it knows what direction to fall. If you look really hard, you can see the mailbox.

And the tree is down. It is a little difficult to see that because there is another blue spruce in the background, which you can see now, that is between our house and our neighbors. Speaking of which, I'm sure everyone in the neighborhood thinks we are a bunch of hicks, with the chainsaw and tractor and dueling banjos and all.

Here is the prize being drug down the street to it's final resting place.

And here is the final product. Remember the mail box. Yeah, it's in the gutter. When they drug off the tree, it was the only casualty. My husband and I spent yesterday cleaning up branches and the big leaf and needle pile that was waiting for us under the tree. We would like to put something in that space with a nice stone mailbox but it will have to wait until the spring and the post - stump grinder.

We are leaving on our honeymoon today to St. Lucia so this is the last post for 2008. Have a great time ringing in 2009.

Unto us a Savior is Born

There are several reasons why I didn't write a Christmas card this year.
1. The thank you notes from the wedding really said it all. We got married. The End.
2. The same people that got thank you notes would have been the people that got Christmas letters.
3. That would require those same people to get another picture of us within 3 weeks and they probably would be on Taddiken overload and not know what to do with their own children's pictures.
4. What is there really to say?!? I've thought a little about this. So here are some possibilities of what I would include in the Taddiken 08 Christmas letter.

Greetings from the Taddiken's new residence. We've been in this new home for a few weeks and this is what we have learned about each other.
Snoring is a problem that must be dealt with. In our family, a fan is very helpful. We'll let you decide if it's Paige or Russ.
Both of us have woken up in the middle of the bed and decided that the other person was just going to have to deal with it because we had just warmed that spot up and it's a little chilly outside the blankets.
Guns have began to spring up in unusual locations for Paige. For example, the butler's pantry - apparently that's a gun safe?!
Laundry has multiplied - there's like twice as much to do. Russ has discovered that clothes can be folded AND put back into drawers.
It is really difficult to decide where everything goes. (example: our second bedroom on the main floor)
We have a Southern Living buffet stand that we still can't figure out who gave to us for the wedding. Do you know who it is? And if it's you, can we have the plates that go with it?

Merry Christmas to you and your family!