October 10, 2008: Joe and Nikki’s Wedding

42 Days to Baby Day! (34 Weeks Pregnant)

15 Work Days Left for Dominica; House closing scheduled in 11 days.

I was very, very exhausted this morning when the alarm on my BlackBerry went off alerting me that it was time to log into the office and get started on the day.  I am covering the early shift this morning so that I can go to Joe and Nicole’s wedding this afternoon in Rochester.

Howlett Wedding - About to Exchange Rings

The drive from Newark to Peoria went pretty well last night.  About as good as we could hope for.  The weather was nice and there was almost no traffic once we were out of Newark itself.  We stopped at Dunkin Donuts at Exit 27 on i80 and got flatbread sandwiches for dinner.

Tonight was the first time that Dominica and I got to drive the new northern extension of Interstate 99 (running alongside US 15) connecting the rest of 99 up into New York.  What a difference the new road makes.  We have been watching them build this stretch for years; it has been a really ambitious project.  The new addition to the highway is really spectacular.  It saves us quite a bit of time and makes the drive quite a bit easier.  It shaves five minutes off at a minimum and easily ten to fifteen.  It is enough of a difference that if the GPS unit knew that the road was there it would switch the recommended route from the i81 corridor to the i99 corridor.  They are so close in time that this swings it over the edge.  As it is the GPS thinks that we are driving on an empty hillside and freaks out for quite a while.

It was six minutes past one in the morning when we pulled into dad’s driveway.  We sat up talking until two thirty or a little later.  It is so hard to get to bed right after having driven for so long.

I didn’t get to sleep in at all.  Three hours of sleep is about all that I was able to get.  I was up at six thirty and logged into the office to start my day.  Wow was I tired.  Today is going to be quite long.

Dad and Dominica went over to the Omega Grill in Geneseo for a really late breakfast and brought me back lunch.  I was so busy that there was no way that I could leave the office for any amount of time.  Also, since I am working an early shift today and knocking off on the early side I didn’t want to also disappear for lunch even if it wasn’t busy so I worked through my lunch.

My day ended up being insanely busy.  I was on the phone for much of the day.  At one point I was trapped for almost three hours trying to just get in to use the restroom!  It was a crazy day.

I worked right up until three in the afternoon.  We had to literally run out the door to get up to Greece for the wedding.  I was on the phone right up until the last second and on instant messenger telling people that I could no longer keep working.  It was just a really busy day.

We ended up arrived at Hope Lutheran Church on Vintage Lane in Greece, New York at three forty – twenty minutes early for the wedding which was far more leeway than we guessed that we would have.  We are never early to weddings so this was pretty amazing (Dominica was very late to Phil and Kate’s wedding when we met so it kind of set a precedent I guess.)

We sat with Nate, Tammy, Eric and Peggy Parker.  Jeff Simpson made it to the wedding but sat in the back on the other side so we did not know that he was there until after the service.

The wedding was very nice.  Hope Lutheran is am amazing venue for a wedding.  What a great facility.  We were surprised when Jeff found us after the service.  The five of us (Jeff, Nate, Dominica, Tammy and I) hung out at the church for about half an hour.  We had a little time to kill before the reception at six thirty (it was about four thirty at this point but there was some driving to do) and Jeff needed to drive home to pick up his wife, Danielle, before the reception.  So Nate, Tammy, Dominica and I drove to Tim Horton’s on Lake Avenue next to Kodak Park and got some coffee and visited.

The reception was at the Burgundy Basin in Pittford, New York on the east side of Rochester.  The church was in Greece just a few blocks from where Joe’s old house used to be but he and Nikki have just recently completed building a new house in Farmington much closer to where Joe works.  The Burgundy Basic is a rather famous wedding reception location in Rochester although I have never been there before.

We had a really good time at the reception.  It was really nice to get a chance to hang out with Nate and Tammy and Jeff and Danielle as we almost never get to see any of them.  Dominica and I didn’t do any dancing.  Between my back and her being so far along there was no way that we were getting up to dance.

We stayed at the wedding until around elevenish which was much later than we had anticipated on being out.  We were having a really good time and didn’t want to leave.  Instead of a DJ, they had a live band, Unlimited, who happened to be the same live band that Jeff and Danielle Simpson had at their wedding.  They were excellent – quite impressive.

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