Rebecca's sister's wedding in Tucson (and missle silo)

Rebecca and I attended her sister Katheryn's wedding in Tucson, AZ this past weekend. Kathryn was married to Chris by her father. It was a beautiful wedding held in a bed and breakfast in the older part of downtown Tucson. Rebecca went down early in the week, and I followed later (the morning after the pumpkin party).



Here is a photo of the happy bride and groom....



Here is Rebecca and her sister. Her sister generously picked out very nice dresses for her bridesmaids, Rebecca and Mead.




The wedding was held in the side garden, and the sit down dinner was held at the same place in a large, bricked atrium area. This photo shows the seats for the wedding ceremony. It was a very personal ceremony, led by Rebecca and Kathryn's father. The couple wrote their own vows and included their family and friends in the ceremony.



There was a fountain in the middle of the courtyard that the ceremony was held in with flowers floating. Here are some artsy pictures....




There was a very mellow and friendly cat strolling about that was a resident of the bed and breakfast where the wedding was held.




As a side attraction in the trip to Tucson, Rebecca indulged me and agreed to visit the decommissioned Titan II missile silo south of Tucson. The Titan II was a 9 megaton nuclear missile, and there were 50 or so of these silos scattered around the U.S. This one is the only one remaining and offers tours daily (except Thanksgiving and Christmas).

The tours start out in the visitors center where a 10 minute video presentation is shown. It talks about the history of nuclear weapons and the strategy of having the capability to blow countries off the planet.



After the video, there is a 20 minute tour led by a speaker where you walk around the facilities above ground and try not to get sunburned or step on a rattlesnake.



Then you descend into the below ground facilities where they do a pretend launch where two tour visitors sit in the command chairs and simultaneously turn the two keys required. Everyone then watches the lights on the control panel march towards nuclear winter.



Here are mannequins dressed up in the protective suits doing a maintenance activity on the rocket. This worker seems to have a broken leg.



Here is the rocket itself (no nuclear warhead is in it any longer).

Pumpkins 2007

The annual pumpkin carving party was last Thursday and was a great success. No blood was spilled, and the house didn't catch fire due to too many candles going at once. And, I successfully woke up in time to catch my early flight to Tucson the next morning. All evenings should go this smoothly.

Pumpkins seem to be getting bigger every year, many people walked in the front door claiming happiness that they were able to park near the house because they didn't want to carry the beast they have brought any further.



Everyone did a great job of keeping the pumpkin goop restrained and resisted the urge to start a pumpkins innards throwing war.




Here is the group photo (missing Rob, Sally, Sally's mom and their daughter).