Turkey Day

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Marden and I made a trek down to Shreveport, LA to visit my bro Tye, which is one heck of a long haul at 7 hours driving, especially with two dogs, one of which had to be in my lap the whole time. Lucky for me it was the small one which required the lap. But it was a good time...nice for a change to have a calm, quiet, lazy dinner and afternoon as opposed to our usual big-family-stampede-eat-like-cavemen Turkey Day. Which is nice, too...

Say a big "Yeeeeehaaaa!" for the Chief's win over the Denver Donkeys....er, I mean Broncos...on Thanksgiving night!

The Weddin' Party

Kendra, Kristyn, Me, Marden, Wylie, and Lynn

The Cakes

Jodie made this cake! Isn't it awesome! And our wedding wouldn't be
complete without a trout cake.

The Hitchin'

The ceremony at the overlook...Bull Shoals Lake is on the left, the White River coming out of the dam on the right...and of course that is Bull Shoals dam running right down the middle. Perfect sunshiney day! My youth minister from days of yore (hey, not THAT long ago!) Lance Green performed the nuptuals, while my best buds Kendra and Kristyn served as my attendants and Marden's buds Wylie and Lynn served as his.
Unseen to the right are Travis Eddleman and my cousin Brittney Engelken who did an awesome job of playing "Annie's Song" for the processional.

Mrs. Hooter Speaks

My apologies to everyone who actually reads this blog for my recent absence(there's got to be one)...I've no excuse to offer except that I'm lazy, and I've been busy lately being married. Yes...I'm now OFFICIALLY Mrs. Hooter. For those of you who didn't get to go, I'll tell you a bit about it.
FIRST - I think my wedding about killed my mother. I hope I have sons. Mom did a beyond awesome job getting everything together and enlisting help from others, and the rest of my fam also worked very hard to make it the perfect day. And perfect it was! We had a week of really crappy weather, including the day and night before, and magically for the big day it all cleared and warmed up. The fall leaves were the prettiest they have been in years and years, and everything just kind of fell into place. The flowers were awesome, mom did a fantastic job on the bridesmaid's dresses, and the sash she made for my dress was just perfect perfect perfect. Marden looked handsome in his dress blues, the food was great, the cake was marvelous (running out of adjectives here) thanks to Jodie, the decorations were superb, the live music wonderful (thanks Travis and Brittany)...pretty much everything I wanted in a wedding. Informal, but not TOO informal. Nothing out-of-the-ordinary even happened, which isn't really my pattern, and I'm happy for that. No nosedives down the steps, no falling and tearing of the dress or anything like that. The only small flub was that I got a bit tongue-tied and called Marden my "fartner" rather than "partner." But actually, that's pretty appropriate.

A HUGE loving THANK YOU to all our family and friends which made this day the best of my life so far!

Stay tuned for more, and for pictures!