Adventures in Amarillo

Thursday evening we began our adventure… our 10 hour adventure to Pampa. On a typical day our drive is only about 5 hours but today Jonathan and I had the chance to enjoy some true quality togetherness. STUCK. Stuck on Highway 287. Surrounded by semi’s in the middle of nowhere. There was no turning around. No moving forward. And for about 1½ hours, no knowing what was even going on. We had just driven through a fairly terrifying storm of torrential rain, high winds and green gloomy skies. When I say terrifying, I mean terrifying. Arms crossed, white knuckled, closed fists, nails digging into my palms – NERVOUS. I mean I had visions of cows flying through the air – a la “Twister.” Jonathan of course kept it together, always appearing like his calm and collected self. I admire and thank him for that. It truly eases my nerves when they are on end. So back to being stuck… come to find out about 15 cars ahead of us a tornado had hopped across the highway – overturning cars and bringing down power lines. Apparently, the power lines were on top of the overturned cars and crews were working hard to remove the power lines which had also caused a mass power outage through the area. NO ONE was getting by – not on either side. I guess I wasn’t so off with my flying cow visions! So we sat and we sat and spent 3 hours getting to know each other better, meet our stranded “neighbors,” and see stars like I have never seen before! Snoozing seemed like a good option but even in an SUV it’s hard to get comfy plus I kept having visions of serial killers attacking. HAVE YOU SEEN THAT MOVIE JOY RIDE?! It’s about a semi truck driving serial killer. I think Paul Walker was in it? Maybe it was Pacey from Dawson’s Creek? I digress…

Now why the adventure? We were off to Amarillo for our good friends - Matt & Michelle’s wedding. After the memorable journey we enjoyed a beautiful weekend celebration of love and friendship. Jonathan stood by as Matt’s best man – the two have been the closest of friends for 25 years! Pretty AMAZING! M&M’s ceremony was an inspiring expression of true, faith based love and the reception was perfectly planned down to each petal. I even had the opportunity to help set-up for the reception. How incredible to observe two groups of complete strangers come together and create not only a gorgeous setting for the evening but one where each lantern, votive, flower, and photo was placed with a tender hand full of joy and love. We boogied all night and stuffed ourselves on Matt’s mom, Anita’s famous cookies. It was a fabulous time had by all!

(we're in camera limbo and the disposable used that weekend has not been developed yet - here's a pic with us and the Harps' from the TX State Fair '07)