License to Travel

Just a quick post, but kind of an interesting one.  Back from the honeymoon, where my lovely wife and I traveled to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  We stayed in a condo for a week, then traveled up NC 12 to Kitty Hawk and crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (turns out I get really claustrophobic in that tunnel, which is odd given I don't recall having problems with the Eisenhower Tunnel).  We then had about 30 hours to kill before we had to be in Raleigh, so Laura decided spur-of-the moment that we needed to go to DC.  We got there around 5:30 (rush hour, AAH!), went into the Smithsonian Institute of Natural Science, and saw the White House, Washington Monument, and WWII Memorial before leaving that same evening.  As much of our vacation involved driving, we decided to keep track of license plates starting from when we left the airport and culminating when we returned to the airport.  It was fascinating to see how many states we got!  Here is our list in no particular order (*=we were in that state):

Pregnancy, Or Why Stretch is Freaking Out

At the time of this writing, I am 22 years old, going to be married in 84 days, and following many of my friends on Facebook and otherwise as we graduate college and our future lives really start to take shape.  Of course, this means life-changing stuff.  My first shocker came freshman year when my roommate happened to be engaged.  That threw me for a bit of a loop, but this whole engagement thing became the norm and I eventually fell into the "trap" as well, becoming the first of my close friends to wind up looking at flowers while they were still enjoying the single life.  I managed to nail two stereotypes in one go; becoming engaged fresh out of college (something I did NOT think would happen just a few years ago until my wonderful fiancée decided to mess up my plans) and becoming engaged to someone at Doane.  Seriously, that college (and I imagine many others) has a ridiculously high rate of "inbreeding".

Graduation Card

Laura was very creative with my graduation card, so I decided to repost it here.  The lines in bold are the original lines on the card, and the not-bold lines are what she added.

Unforgettable College Memories

Libraries explored.

"Stay out of the dark."

Ideas exchanged.

"It's a Kakuna!"

Beliefs challenged.

Circuit City is great...wait

Questions answered.

"We need to talk!" (She wasn't interested.)

Answers questioned.

"Cornflower and emerald?"

Music cranked.

On the radio show

Wallets emptied.

Paying for gas

Grades sweated.

Grading students' papers

Finals crammed.

"tweet tweet tweet"

Laughter shared.

Crabby dance

Tears shed.

But you got through

Lives touched...

Who knew I'd be planning to spend my life with the dorky kid in the orange hat.

Goals achieved!

You must be so proud.

Congratulations on Your Graduation

All my love,

Laura