The announcement! The date is set too!

The set up this cute pic to tell the family their news.  I loved it!

They are getting married on March 19, this year! We couldn't be happier.  That sounds fast, but it's been in the works for quite a while.  Now things are falling into place and they are rolling with it❣️

The rings turned out great!!

John bought her stone (top hand) and designed the gold band to go along with it.  Then our jeweler friend hand crafted it.

The stones in his ring (bottom hand) are from Julie's grandma on her mom's side.  The setting and band were made from a custom wax mold and then hand finished.  

The gold is all from other family pieces including Julie's Dad's wedding band, a necklace of her mom's, and one of Julie's old rings.  It all turned out great, saved them some money, and has great sentimental value❤️

They are using them as "all-one-rings". They will serve as both engagement and wedding rings for each of them.  A cool idea!

We even managed to have enough remaining gold, and other rings (my original wedding bands for example) in case anyone else ever needs them)…

Guess who’s engaged??!!

John and Savannah! 

This is Julie and me on FaceTime finding out it's official!  It was down to the last minute whether he was going to be able to pull it off or not.  He was trying to surreptitiously recreate a fun early dating moment of SpeedWay, hot chocolate, snow, and a parking lot.  It worked, and she said yes! We're thrilled for both of them and happy to them taking this next step in their lives.  Our daughter in-love is set to become our daughter in-law :)

And speaking of weddings… What’s this?❣️

The lighted box was a perfect finishing touch to these custom crafted rings made using gold and stones from family wedding bands and some from Julie's mom's rings…

Ivan’s wedding pics are in!

This was a pretty fun day for all involved.  

Zoe just waiting for me to finish lunch❣️

Storm chasers are getting crazy footage these days…

Julie found this video that captures a terrible tornado really clearly! It's worth watching!  These guys are crazy!  Even worse, is watching how the storm just destroys whatever's in its path… I grabbed this freeze frame that I thought captured the mood pretty well…!

Crazy tornado footage! 

https://youtu.be/ekBMI5T3GbI?si=DXhRvF7mVAf3AvZT

I like the three perspectives…

We came across a washed out piece of the trail (basically the ravine running through the driver mirror in the top pic. Nobody was going to make it through that, so we had to take the improvised bypass.  That wasn't much better.  The group guide said, "I think pretty much everybody is going to have to winch up that last bit".  That is where I am sitting in the top pic just above the driver mirror.  

There was ZERO traction coming back up onto the trail after the bypass, so we ALL winched.  I like the perspective from inside my rig where I can see them hooking up my cable from both through the windshield and from my front bumper/winch cam. It was a good time having everyone help.  We all got to make sure our recovery gear was all in working order.

I got to practice changing a wheel on the trail…

Somehow, I managed to catch the inside of one of my tires on the sharp end of a culvert.  I got three rotations of the wheel before it was completely flat.  Everybody chipped in and 20 minutes later we were rolling again. 

What goes up must come down…

Somehow, I deleted a few of my "to blog" pics from a few weeks ago.  This was our Hollerwood trip from the end of January.  We all went up Holiday Hill (white Jeep in the top pic), then ended up turning around to avoid all the mud bogs. So we all went back down.  It was a fun little climb that looked a lot easier than it was.  If you remember a couple weeks back I posted a video clip.  It was on this same obstacle.  Only a couple made it up without winching. In the bottom, one of the guides is watching me walk it back down one of the areas below the main obstacle.  

Always fun seeing what Andy’s up to with his tools

And his marketplace exploits!

Cool early morning shadows

The moon and the snow combined to make a nice bright 3a photo.  Not sure which is more creepy, the shadows or me being up wandering around at 3a hahaha.

It sure was cold when we woke up last weekend!

NOT feels like temperatures, these are real temps, Alaska style.

Oh yeah, don’t forget the nacho helmet!

I decided to splurge for an evening and feast on this helmet full of loaded nachos. I eat around the chips and thoroughly enjoyed the multiple kinds of meats and fixin's.

What a fun hockey giveaway night

A weekend ago, we had quite the souvenir weekend. First, I picked up an autographed puck from the points we get in the Cyclones app.  They also handed out savings banks that night.  The next game, they handed out trading card packs and the frenzy of trading ensued.  We enjoyed ourselves in spite of the meh performance of the team of late. 🤪