Happy Valentine's Day

Brant and I made some last minute plans for our Valentine's Day weekend. Brant had Monday off for President's Day, so we decided it would be the perfect weekend to leave Anchorage, since we haven't been had time to travel much inside Alaska yet. We made reservations at a bed and breakfast in Talkeetna, AK and scheduled a guided snomobile tour from Trapper Creek, AK to the entrance of Denali National Park. We had heard a lot of people talk about how neat the town of Talkeetna was, but we didn't realize exactly how small it was until we got there. I'm talking smaller than Lakeview, MI -- for any of you from MI reading this :) There are only 1000 people who live there year round. This is the "welcome to downtown" sign for this little "hippie" town. There is 1 street considered "downtown" and it had probably 4 small restaurants and a few places to stay.

We rented snow shoes from the base and took them with us. We had a little time on Saturday when we got down there before it got dark to go on a short little hike. Brant thinks we saw Bigfoot tracks :) We ate dinner at Mountain High Pizza Pie - yummy! And we found out that our waiter went to Clemson!! It was really weird to meet someone that far away that went to Clemson - he probably thought the same thing though.

Saturday night, the entertainment in town was a Valentine's Day show put on by the Denali art's council called "The Complexities of Love." It was packed - I guess it was the only thing going on in town. It was a cute little show with a variety of people singing, dancing, playing the banjo, acting, etc. We were a little worried about what we were in for, but we both really enjoyed it.

On Sunday, we drove to Trapper Creek, about 30 minutes away, and met our snowmobile guide, Bob. We had a total of 7 people in our group. We rode about 3 hours north to the opening of Denali Park, and out in the middle of nowhere to a little cabin that served us lunch. You can only reach the cabin by ferry (when the river isn't frozen) or by snomobile in the winter. And people live there. We had awesome homemade turkey and dumplins, homemade bread, brownies, and hot chocolate. After we warmed up, we headed back a different route and arrived back to the cabin just as it was getting dark. It was a really awesome trip and I had a sore back for 2 days afterwards :)

Brant had Monday off, so we went to Hatcher's Pass with our friends Richard and Lori to hike with our snowshoes. We hiked up some really steep hills and around Hatcher's Pass to an old mining village. The snow was really deep - no way we could've hiked it without snowshoes! We had a great weekend and enjoyed being outdoors for most of it. And it is finally starting to stay light longer!!!

Amanda's and Ryan are gettin' hitched!!

Brant and I were fortunate to be able to travel back to SC at the end of January for Amanda's wedding. I got to go home a week before the wedding and have fun at the Bachelorette weekend. There were a total of 12 girls and we all spent the weekend in Knoxville, Tennessee. We had a


honkey tonkin' good time at Cotton Eyed Joes and lots of memories to share (or not to share :) The highlight of the weekend was that Amanda rode a mechanical bull. And we have video that we're not sharing :)

I got to spend the week before the wedding with Amanda in Kingsport and we drove to Charleston on Wednesday before the wedding. It was really nice to be able to spend a few days with some of my family members from out of town and help with last minute details. It was a beautiful weekend and everything went perfecty as planned. Brant flew in on Friday late afternoon while we were all at rehearsal, and was just in time for rehearsal dinner at The Boathouse (http://www.boathouserestaurants.com/) We enjoyed a nice dinner together and a memorable slideshow of Amanda and Ryan. After rehearsal dinner, we headed downtown to The Saloon with Amanda and Ryan and some of their friends for one last night of fun. Again, we have video that we are not sharing :) The morning of the wedding was an early one. All of the girls in the wedding party, moms, grandmas, and aunts met at Poogan's Porch for a wonderful breakfast at 8:30am (http://poogansporch.com/). Brant was excited that he got to spend time with a few friends that lived in Charleston. Shortly after breakfast, we all were on our way to get ready for the wedding at 2. The girls took a trolley ride from the hotel to the church, and we got to take some pictures just across the street since the weather was so beautiful! The wedding was at St. John the Baptist Catholic cathedral (http://www.catholic-doc.org/cathedral/ ), and everything went perfectly. We spent the rest of the evening at the reception at Magnolia Plantation carriage house at the reception (http://www.magnoliaplantation.com/). Brant's parents were also at the wedding, so we got to see them too. Amanda and Ryan had an awesome band that played and we all had tired feet from dancing all night. The night was finally over, and we went back to the hotel to hang out with our family and a few friends that we have in Charleston stopped by. It was a short night, as our plane left to head back north at 7:30 am. We tried to get some sleep on the plane, but was difficult as our seats were not together :( We were whipped when we got back, only to find Brant's truck had a flat tire at the airport :( We repaired it as quickly as we could as we were greeted with snow and 5 degree weather! I was fortunate to have Monday off, so I got rested up, but Brant had a quick trip weekend and had to be back to work at 7am Monday morning. We were just very happy that we could make the trip. It was a wonderful weekend.