Last night I picked Kim up from work and we headed over to Dominique and Bianca’s house. We talked with their mom for a little bit and then the four of us headed back over to our place to pack up a picnic lunch (or dinner). We took our food and drinks down to the park and ate near the big fountain. Afterward, Dominique and I tossed a football while Kim and Bianca walked around the park. By the end of that I was feeling pretty tired so we then headed down to the Discovery Channel Store on plaza. There we all played with the remote controlled cars and other toys. After that, it was already getting late, so we took the kids back home and relaxed for the rest of the night.

Kim decided that I was feeling good enough to start running again. We have been trying to train for a 10K that we are supposed to run on September 17, but haven’t run more than two times a week. We should be running at least three times a week and that should include a five mile run this week. I ran four miles this morning on the treadmill and about died. I’m not sure I can do another mile, or another two miles plus to finish a 10K. This should be interesting…

There are now over 700 pictures taken both by my mom and by Nancy on the Pig-Fest site. I think in total I took 4 pictures over the weekend and they were all of our keg in the back of the Jetta. So if you want to see pictures of the party, check them out here.

I’m still trying to recover from the cold that I caught over the weekend so not much exciting has been going on. Hopefully that will change tonight…

The drive Thursday night was alright. The party and show on Friday night was great. The party and show on Saturday was great as well. The drive yesterday sucked!

So back to Thursday night, we got into Cincinnati at the normal 3AM or so. We headed straight out to my parents to rest up. Kim left early in the morning to visit with her family. Mike and I stayed back to help out with some setup stuff for the party. Eventually my buddies Joe and Will showed up and we headed down to Liam’s place. We partied for a few hours and eventually took some cabs over to the show. We saw some of Glen Phillips and all of Broussard. His set was short but good. Afterward we headed over to Habit’s for a few more drinks. It was a good night for sure.

The next morning, we all woke up on Liam’s hardwood floor and decided it was time to head back out to my parents. After a couple of stops along the way, we were finally there and ready to party. And party we did! It was extremely hot out, but there was still a good sized crowd during the day. A late afternoon shower cooled it all down for a great set of music from Greenstreet. The cops came a time or two, but that’s to be expected. After the music was shut down, we hung out until late in the night until we could no longer keep our eyes open. It was definitely a great party!

The drive back yesterday was horrible. It seemed like it would never end. The only good thing was our record setting license plate game. You know the game where you try to see a license plate from every state. We ended up with everything but Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, North Dakota, North Carolina, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. We also saw Washington DC along with 4 Canadian provinces: Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. This is a combined list from both drives, although most of them were found on the drive into Cincinnati.

I’ve got another day off work tomorrow! These four day weeks are awesome, I just wish that I could do it year round. The good news is that I still have one more shortened week next week. I’m taking a half day on Friday so I can meet up with my buddy Steve Christy and then get to the airport. Back to this weekend though, we are driving overnight again back to Cincinnati, again. Our friend Mike is coming along with us to the fest. He is the lone KC’er with the dedication it takes to attend. He will come back with stories that make everyone else extremely jealous. :)

As of right now we have 129 confirmed guests from the evite and more keep pouring in. A reminder email went out so all of those slackers are finally accepting their invitations. One of those slackers is none other than Kim Hais. Sheeeesh!

Lots of my “internet friends” are coming into town tomorrow so that we can all go to the Broussard show that night and then trash Liam’s apartment after that. From there we will make an early arrival at the Paff Entertainment Complex on Saturday to help out with any last minute preparations. Once those are taken care of, the beer will start flowing!

In case you missed it in the comments from yesterday, my pictures from the weekend are up. That’s pretty much what I spent a good chunk of last night doing. I had about 250 pictures on my camera and I chopped it down to just under 100. There are some really good ones in there but unfortunately none of those are from the wedding. I also put together a panorama shot from Devou Park that is really sweet. I wish there was a better way to display it, but so far I haven’t had any luck. That’s about the only productive thing I got done last night, so much for the free night.

Pig-Fest is just around the corner and everyone seems to be getting really excited. My dad informed me that the site had almost 1400 page loads coming from 47 unique visitors to the site! The event has also been found on jambase.com, hopefully we don’t get too many random visitors. In the past couple of days I’ve also thrown together a little logo that we are going to use for some shirts and stuff. If you can’t tell it is an alteration of this years bonnaroo logo.

Last night we took Dominique and Bianca out once again. This time Dominique wanted to go to the mall and do some shopping. We went out to Independence Center which isn’t too far from their house but they had never been there. We ate some pizza in the food court and then split up. While the girls spent forever in Build-A-Bear, we were off to check out anything sports related. Dominique found a few things he wanted to buy but he didn’t have any money. We encouraged them both to save up anything they can and we can always go back out to the mall. They are supposed to be helping someone move today, so maybe they’ll make a little money from it. After an hour we all met up and then checked out the pet store. That’s always an easy and fun way to kill time. From there we dropped them off and then headed home to take care of some unpacking and cleaning. We are so busy that the apartment might not ever get clean. Kim is in Minnesota on a business trip so who knows what tonight will bring…

This weekend was a blast! We got in to Cincy really late on Thursday night, slept for a bit and then spent the next morning with Kim’s family. Soon enough it was time to start one of our busy days. I dropped Kim off to get her nails done and then killed some time. I bought tickets for the Marc Broussard show next Friday, which we’ll be at. I then went to the mall and picked up Emma’s baptism gift. I still had extra time after that so I spent an hour on UC’s campus checking out all of the new stuff they’ve built. I took some pictures, so I’ll have to get those up soon. I then picked Kim up and we headed out to my parent’s place. We visited for a bit and then got ready for the rehearsal. The time at the church went by really fast and then we headed down to the river for the rehearsal dinner. We had dinner and drinks on a three hour tour on a Celebrations Riverboat. It was a great night with awesome views of the city. Again I took some awesome pictures that I’ll post tonight or tomorrow hopefully.

The next morning I dropped Kim off to get her hair done and then headed back to my parent’s to relax for awhile. That was interrupted when I was alerted that Kim forgot her shoes, so I drove back down to where she was and gave them to her. After that I was running behind so I had to shower and get ready really fast. I made it to the church ten minutes before the ceremony started, but others were still arriving so it was ok. The wedding was nice and short. Afterward it was off to the Glendale Lyceum for the reception. This ended up being one of my favorite receptions to date, mostly because they had a live band instead of the standard DJ. The bands name is The Mistics and they were awesome!

Sunday was Emma’s baptism. The ceremony itself was much longer than I remembered or thought it would be, but maybe that’s because I haven’t been to one of these in a long time. There were two other babies being baptized at the same time so maybe that had something to do with it. My only job while there was to light the baptismal candle, which I did successfully. So far so good. :) From there we went over to my Uncle Andy’s house for the after party. It was nice seeing everyone again even though we had to leave just a short time after we got there. I think almost everyone that was there will be at Pig-Fest this coming weekend though…

Lately I’ve been addicted to Wikipedia, which is the free encyclopedia of the web. I’m not sure how many of you have already used it so I’ll provide this explanation from their welcome page. “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit almost any article right now.” The amount of factual information on this site is amazing, you can spend days reading and learning. I wish I had to write a term paper now, you could easily do so using simply this one site. Here are various places and events in my life:

Huntsville
Marshall Space Flight Center
STS-1: First Shuttle Launch
Huntsville Tornado
Cincinnati
Loveland
Kings Island
University Of Cincinnati
O.A.R.
Kansas City
Perhaps I’ll add the Ed Paff entry to their site…

In just a few hours we’ll be making the drive back to Cincinnati. Kim’s friend Julie is getting married this weekend and Kim is in the wedding. It should be a real good time, but likely very busy. Well at least Kim will be busy, I might have some free time so give me a shout if you are in town.

Last night we picked up Dominique and Bianca and brought them over to our apartment. We cooked pizza and also baked a cake for Bianca’s 11th birthday tomorrow. Kim forgot to buy the candles, so we had to use one of our large scented candles instead, haha. Kim did buy some dominos and a purse filled with makeup for her that she seems to enjoy. We tried to play dominos but soon realized that none of us had any idea how to really play. So instead we set them up a few times and knocked them all down, everyone knows how to do that! If anyone has any tips on real domino games, send them our way…

The time flew by and before we knew it we had to take them back home. They seem to be having lots of fun though and never want to return home. It must be all of the dedicated attention they get when with us. I never realized how spoiled we must have been growing up. :)

I snapped a couple of quick pictures of our party, check ’em out.

What possesses the birds on our street to dump all over freshly washed cars? On the rare occasion that I actually take the car through a wash I always awake a few mornings later to find it covered with piles of bird droppings, thus rendering the wash useless. Perhaps I should simply never wash the car, but that doesn’t fly with Kim. She kept the car extra clean up until the day I took it over.

The inside never really gets dirty since I really only drive to and from work each day, so I never really think to clean it. Well we took it through one of those car washes where you actually get out of the car and watch it go through a series of cleaning stages on Saturday. We had a little extra time to kill between the wedding and the reception. Anyway, I get in the car this morning to drive in to work and notice the back driver’s side of the car has large piles all over it.

Bunch of savages in this town…