Good Times : )

We just got home from a 30 hour "holiday" in Dauphin, Manitoba. I know, I know, how much fun can you have in Dauphin? What were we doing way up there? Well, that's why I'm posting, now isn't it?

Okay, so some background info. Jer got asked to play drums for Stephanie Nicole (aka: "Steph and the Duck" from CHVN Radio 95.1 fm our local Christian radio station). He's friends with her brother Mike. Steph just recorded a cd and she was asked to play at this Christian music festival, Jesus ManiFest, in Dauphin this weekend. So, 3 weeks ago she put together a band consisting of her brother Mike on bass, Jer on drums, Mandy on Djembe (now also Mike's girlfriend), Steph on vocals and keyboards and Steve on guitar. For only practicing together 3 times (twice with all members), they were GOOD!! Stephanie has an incredible voice and is seriously talented. It was scorching hot and there wasn't a lot of people this year at the festival, but regardless, we had some serious fun!

Our trip began at 1:00 in the afternoon yesterday. Kids were with Granny and we escaped to our 30 hours of freedom : ) Yay!!! I'd love to say the trip was uneventful, but alas, it was not. About half way there, we heard a large KAPOW! and we both knew that we had some serious trouble. Our tire had blown out. Fortunately we were only a mile or two out of Gladstone (also known as "Happy Rock"). So Jer put on the spare and we hobbled our poor car back to the gas station only to find out that we had to drive 25 minutes to Neepawa where they had a tire store. Thankfully this happened while everything was still open, we weren't in the middle of nowhere and Neepawa and the tire store were directly on our route to Dauphin. We got to said tire store where Jer inquired about a tire. The guy didn't think he had any that would fit our car, but he'd go check. We were in luck, or maybe not so much luck as blessing, he had ONE. That's all we needed and we were on our way, $99 later and an hour lost, but we had no schedule, so it was all good.

We saw some nice scenery on the way. For instance, this...probably one of the largest hills in Manitoba, lol : )Okay, maybe not the largest, but we are flatlanders so that was pretty exciting to drive up it! We drove around one of our many provincial parks, Riding Mountain (huh, mountain?) which is a large plateaued piece of land with forest and lakes on it. It's the closest thing we have to mountains around here, so it's cool. You can see the "Mountains" in the background of this picture.When we got to Dauphin we settled in our room (dropped our bags on the floor) and off we all went to Pizza Hut for supper. Then we decided to do what I'm assuming is about the only fun thing to do in Dauphin, go to Walmart : ) This is where I met my laughing buddy. I used to laugh uncontrollably. At the strangest things. In the last number of years things either haven't been that funny, I've gotten too serious, or I'm not with anyone who has the same sense of humor or ability to laugh as I do. Well let's just say that Mandy does. For some reason or other, everything was funny to us. The fact that we both laughed so much was funny. It set us off just thinking about how we laughed. The more she laughed, the higher her laugh would go and she'd squeak. I actually was crying from laughing so hard and both our cheeks were cramping from laughing. It felt really good. Here's us laughing while Jer's taking our picture. Not sure what was funny, but it was (and no, I'm not pregnant, my shirt was just being all weird).Perhaps it was seeing Mike and Jer together, which in and of itself was quite comedic.
Maybe it was that every time Mike opened his mouth something funny would come out. He's even funny when he's driving. On the way home he slowed right down to 30 Km/hr (they were in front of us) and we were wondering what he was doing. Suddenly this arm shoots out of the car and he's taking a picture of us (or our car).

Anyway, here they are in concert (sorry they are so small, it was a pretty big stage and they were all over the place).One more kind of funny story. Being that Steph was a radio personality and she has a cd and she's quite mature and VERY confident, I was under the impression that she was older than me. I got around to asking her right before we left how old she was. She says, "guess." So I did. I was going to poll you all to see what you thought, but the picture doesn't really take into account who she is or how she acts. So anyway, I said, "hmm, 29?" I was actually thinking 30, but you never know what's going to insult people. Everyone started laughing. Huh? Nope. She's 23. Well, she's turning 24 on Wednesday. Jer and I both didn't believe her. In fact, Jer asked to see her driver's license, which she handed to him and we inspected. Yup, she was born in 1983. Maybe it's because her life experience seems so far out there from mine that I just assumed she was older. She is a brilliant musician and a very, very sweet person. I am blessed to have gotten to know her a little bit and spend time with her.
So we made it home safe and sound, had lots of good laughs, played some awesome music, didn't melt in the heat and I made 2 new friends. What a great thing to do on a weekend!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I couldn't help but giggle when I saw this guy...