Our time in the US wouldn't be complete without a visit to Amarillo to see our female offspring unit. The timing was good as she was moving to her new apartment and could use some help. I had planned to hire someone to move her stuff from point A to point B, but as usual, we decided it wasn't that much and we could do...

We imposed on family for an extra week to experience a total eclipse. Brenna wasn't quite ready for us to come to Amarillo to help move her to a new apartment, so we figured why not stick around for the eclipse? Total eclipses don't happen that often and we happened to be in the band that would experience it. Yep,...

We spent way too much time eating out (weight gain), but had a great time catching up with everyone. We even managed a side trip down to see my aunt in Tennessee. Here are some highlights. Spending time with family (also see the total eclipse page) Melissa and our nephew ...and niece ...and sister with new shirts My...

We attended our friends', Gene and Danielle, wedding (Congratulations!). I've known Gene for over 30 years and we've gotten to know Danielle really well over the years, so we wouldn't have missed their big day. The bachelor party Rehearsal dinner The Dr. Phillips house lovely venue ...inside and out The wedding party...

We went to Leu Gardens (Orlando) with the kids. We always enjoy walking the gardens and viewing the wide variety of plants. This time, we were fortunate to experience the "28 works of art with Dalle de Verre glass and steel" created by sculptor, Alex Heveri. Here are some of our favorites.

(disclaimer: Chuck likes to rant and tends to embellish events to make them seem far worse than they are. We take all travel tongue-in-cheek - stuff happens. First world problems, am I right? PMS - Poor Me Syndrome :p ) We came back to the USA to visit friends and family. We stayed longer than expected (until May 2),...

Back in our old stomping grounds - Orlando, Florida. We're gonna miss Oceania, we really liked it down under, but we got to see our son, Colin, and meet his new (to us) girlfriend, Kate. She's wonderful and we adore her. They're good together. We even spent a day at Leu Gardens with them. Of course, Melissa's first...

We said goodbye to St. Louis and headed off to Amarillo, TX to see our "peanut" (Brenna). We drove south from Missouri through Oklahoma to get to Texas. This page captures some of the interesting things we encountered along the way. We stopped at Redmon's Candy Factory because Melissa was jonesing for some popcorn, and...

While in St. Louis, we visited the Missouri Botanical Garden. This pages is a dump of the Chihuly glass on exhibit at the park.

St. Louis has a sculpture park near the downtown/arch area, so what better way to waste time on Independence Day waiting for the sun to go down.