Hi all,

Since I was MIA all summer, I thought I would share what I was up to all this time, in case anyone was interested.

One of my (too many) hobbies is photography, and I took a lot of pictures this spring/summer of things that happened.

First up is the Tornado that hit my Mother-in-law's house. EF-5 up in Parkersburg. We worked for 3 days searching the debris, and I had 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my neck from the sun.



After this, and shortly before my sunburn healed, my Uncle and I built a new lake wall on our family's lake property. It took a week of hard work, but we got it done. We had to back fill with spades, because it was all wet clay, and a spade was the most productive tool to use. It rained a lot this week too.



When I returned from building the wall, I picked up another cat. It's an orange male named Marvin. He is the only male of the first litter of kittens from our female shop cat at work. He's good company, and a companion to our other cat, Izzy.



Then came the great floods. I had an aunt nearly lose her house, and my parents were very close to losing theirs. Ames had flooded the week before, and came down quickly, luckily for us.

Parents-


Ames-


Then in early July, my Wife's Grandma turned 90. We took a trip to Wisconsin to help celebrate. We welcomed a new baby into the family, when the Wife's brother had a baby boy. Unfortunately he had some major unforseen birth defects, and only lived about a month. No pictures here...

August came pretty quickly, and back to school I go.



The weekend before Labor day weekend was the weekend I finally had my inherited truck road worthy enough to take the 2 hour jaunt to my place from my parents. My uncle Keith helped me make the last preparations, and the next morning, he died of a massive heart attack.

Here's the truck-


And lastly there was the wedding.



So my summer was full of ups and downs!

Anyone else care to share? I thought it might be a neat way to catch up with each other.

Regards,
Andrew

btw, you can see more pics of mine at www.flickr.com/akope