Adventures of a Seattle Dad

It is funny how things change as you move through life. On a sunny, summer afternoon in my bachelor days I might have done any number of things for fun. Now, as a home owner and family man, a big time is had in a trip to the dump - and I'm not joking. I met my wife when she purchased the house next door to mine. She bought it from her great-aunt and great-uncle who moved into assisted living. They just took what they needed for day to day living with them, and since it was being sold to someone in the family, everything else was left behind. This included some nice things as well as expired food, crumbling flower pots, a dead lawn mower - everything. Over the last year or so, we have been taking truck loads of miscellaneous items to Goodwill and the dump. It always starts innocently enough. I don't think that we have ever set out with the plan to take a load of stuff to the dump. We start cleaning some part of the house or garage or shed or carport, etc. and we fill up the

Amber and I decided to have our wedding in Wyoming. Her (very large) extended family is already there, or was already planning to come to town for an all-class, class reunion, a birthday, an anniversary, etc. With so much family in town at nearly the same time, it made sense to have it there, and it is also close enough to my family in Denver and Kansas that several of them could make it, too. Wyoming it was to be, then, and everything went well, but road trips and weddings are always an adventure. The first step was to get to Amber's parent's house which is located on the Thunder Basin National Grasslands just outside of Osage, Wyoming. To put it in layman's terms: you can't get there from here. You can fly to Rapid City, South Dakota and then drive two and a half hours west through the Black Hills , or you can fly to Denver and then drive six hours north. With three of us flying out, we could save a total of $900 by flying to Denver. Amber's Mom very generou