Saturdays

I absolutely love Saturdays! They are, without a doubt, my favorite day of the week, and not just because it's the weekend and I don't have class. I especially like Saturdays in the fall. Aaron only works until noon and then we spend the day studying and watching football (and Aaron usually takes a few naps). It's so nice after the craziness of the week to just be able to slow down, relax and enjoy each other's company. And of course root on the Buckeyes and Boilers;-)

A typical Saturday:

Purdue's winning! Woot Woot!:)

Ramblings...

We have power! Yaay! We got it back sometime last Thursday afternooon.

I went home last weekend and found a veil! I can't believe the wedding's in only 7 1/2 months. We really need to get some planning done.

While I was at home I got to babysit for my cousin's 4 kids all day Saturday. I've been babysitting them ever since the oldest (who's about to turn 9) was born. I miss them so much when I'm at school so it was definitly fun to hang out with them. It's only been a month since I've seen them and the two babies seem like they've grown a ton. Makes me sad:(

Sunday my parents and I went to the Pork Festival in Enon. I got a few little things for the apartment. Nothing too exciting.

Then it was Monday and we were back to the usual, me leaving for class at 8ish and not getting home until anywhere between 5-7. Except this Monday we added a little excitement to the mix (and not good excitement). I was driving Aaron to class and we were attempting to pull out of the parking lot. Our street is always lined with cars, so it's nearly impossible to see the road, and we waited for a long time and when we thought the road was finally clear I started to inch my way out. Weeell, there happened to be a car coming (going way to fast of course) and he smashed into me. My car is okay for the most part. The front headlight is busted and it's a little banged up around my wheel, but nothing too serious. It's definitely still drive-able (thank goodness!) but the other guy's car is totalled. And now, because Oxford is a super cool city and likes to rip people off, I have to go to court to prove that I have insurance (which I already showed to the cop) and so they can issue me (or the other guy, who knows...) a ticket and the additional court costs.

That's all the excitement that's going on in our lives right now. Nothing really seems worthy of being blogged about after the excitement of hurricane Ike, but we'll try to spice up our lives a little. For the sake of blogging. ;-)

Level 1 Hurricane in Ohio... Seriously!

Aaron's in a study session right now, so I thought I'd tag along and sit in the dark, scary hallway and use the internet. I never realized how disconnected from the world I am without the internet! Aaron keeps saying he doesn't know how the Amish do it.

So here goes the adventures of Aaron and Carolyn in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
Sunday afternoon at about 2:00 I was cheering on my Bengals (who, of course, lost :( ) and Aaron was at work. All day we had been hearing reports that we were supposed to have 45mph hour winds with gusts up to 70mph so I thought nothing of the insane winds outside. I keep hearing what sounds like wood cracking, and of course, think nothing of it. All of a sudden, the power goes out. I am now very upset because I can no longer watch the game. About an hour later Aaron texts me to see if we have power and I tell him no. 30 minutes later he's home and telling me that there are trees down all over campus (hence the cracking wood I was hearing) and the farm where he works has no power either. We decide to take a walk around campus to see how bad it is. This is some (I took 47 pictures and made 2 movies) of what we found...

The entrance to our apartment complex.

Aaron decided to help out a little around campus..

Doing my part to help!

Yes, there's a CAR under that tree. They already got one out from under it and it just had a busted back window, but it wasn't under the tree as much as this one was.

A crowd gathered to watch them get the car out.

We weren't the only ones taking pictures!! And I found it quite funny this kid was wearing a hard-hat. I actually chased him to get a picture. Later we saw 2 more people wearing hard-hats.

Aaron was very scared a tree or a branch was going to fall on us.

When we get back to the apartment we decide to call Duke (the electric company) to see if they have an estimate of when power will be back. Their automated message informs us that there are 500,000 people in Ohio and Indiana without power and they're expecting it to take 3-4 days for everyone to get power back. Now I'm getting a little worried. A few days before we had gone grocery shopping and spent a TON of money on food (most of which went into the freezer or fridge).

Now it's about 5:00 and I have a study session with some of the girls in my program. Since it's fairly light out, we can study for awhile, but when it starts to get dark we realize we need to find light, plus most of us hadn't eaten since about noon. About this time another girl from West Chester shows up and tells us that she drove through Hamilton and there is power there. So I call Aaron and he comes over and 7 of us head to Hamilton (about 20 minutes away). We get there to find every open restaurant jam packed, plus there is a 2 block line of cars waiting to get gas. We decide on Golden Corral (because it's a buffet and who knows when we'll be eating next) and wait about a half hour to get a table. All through dinner we complain about our food that is going to go bad and wonder whether we'll have class on Monday. One of the girls even calls the head of our department to find out if classes are cancelled. We also overhear that because of the strength of the winds and the fact that there was rain, Ohio experienced it's first ever level 1 hurricane. (I'm still not quite sure how)

Aaron soon finds out that his parents never lost power, so we devise a plan to take all of our food to Huber and offer to take some of the other girls' food too. On the way home from Hamilton we have to stop at Walmart for candles. Well of course all of the cheap ones are gone, so my friend ends up spending $30 on candles. Walmart is also wiped clean of batteries, coolers, ice and anything else you might need to survive without electricity. After leaving Walmart we get a call from the head of the department saying classes were cancelled Monday (yaay!)

After we finish dinner, a few of the girls pack up some of their freezer food and Aaron and I take that along with EVERYTHING from our fridge and head off for Huber Heights. By now it's about 11:30pm. As we start driving through campus, we notice that all of the buildings have power. Very excited at the idea that we may not have to drive 2 unnessecary hours we turn around and go back to the apartment to discover we still do not have power. We start (for the second time) going the normal way home, but have to turn around and go a different way because the road is closed due to an electrical wire in the middle of the road. And of course, I drank way to much pop at Golden Corral and now that the trip is taking even longer than expected I have to go to the bathroom. Since no one is open we have to pull over on the side of the road so I can squat in the middle of a bean field. When we finally get to Huber, we put all the food in the freezer and visit for a few minutes then head to my parents house to sleep. (Brandee and the baby were at the Sebourn's so it was already a full house).

We get to my parent's house at 1:15am to find the screen door locked. No one in my family has a key for this, so it's beyond me why they ever lock this door. But not wanting to wake up my parents I crawl in through one of the front windows and open the front door for Aaron. Apparently I'm not very quiet when breaking in, and my dad comes down the hall (in his underwear) to find out what's going on. Luckily he doesn't attack us, and Aaron and I finally get to bed.

The next morning I was having everyone over to study at 10, so we had to wake up at 8 to head back to Oxford. Before we left, we discovered that a huge oak tree in my parent's backyard had been uprooted.

We head back to Oxford and quickly take showers with the last of our hot water. We spend the day studying neuroanatomy and playing "Loaded Questions." For lunch we (along with 8 of my classmates) went to a dinning hall. To get ourselves through the week we resorted to stealing bananas and cookies off the salad bar and hiding them in our pockets (Aaron) and purses (everyone else) in order to sneak them out the door. We call Duke a few more times and find out that 800,000 people lost power and they're expecting it to take up to a week for everyone's to be restored, but we should have it back by Tuesday morning at 9am.

We wake up Tuesday morning and guess what, no electric. We call Duke again and find out we aren't supposed to get it back until 9am on SATURDAY!! My friends are one-by-one getting their electric back so we just keep hoping that we're next. Supposedly, of all the people that still don't have electric, 85% of them should have it today. With our luck we'll be the very last apartment complex to get it.

Needless to say, it's been a rough week. I have a huge neuro exam Friday that I've been trying to study for by candle light and Aaron had a math test this morning. Luckily we are able to see the humor in this, but we're ready for the power to come back. Like now. We're surviving on eating out one meal a day and for the rest of the meals, we eat whatever else we can find to that doesn't need to be cooked. I think it's pretty safe to say that after this week I won't be eating peanut butter sandwiches much. Keep your finger's crossed for us that we get power back soon!! (Aaron hasn't showered since Monday and is getting a little stinky....)

No Electricity

Sooo we are without electricity and have been since Sunday afternoon. At first Duke Engery (our electric company) was saying it would be turned on by this morning at 9:00am, but now they have changed it to 9:00am on SATURDAY. I am actually writting this from my office at school because we don't have internet, hot water, or food (except granola bars, chips, dry cereal, warm water, bananas and peanut butter sandwiches) at the apartment.
Luckily classes were cancelled yesterday, but we had to go to class today. We're hoping electricity comes back on soon or else we'll have to start communting from Tipp City or check into a hotel.
We took pictures and stuff, but will have to wait until I can upload them to my laptop (which is dead) and I'll post more about our adventures in the aftermath of Ike.

The first one!

I've seen a few of Aaron's sister-in-laws blogs and thought it would be fun to start one of our own! I was going to wait until after we were married to start, but then thought it'd be nice to be able to blog about the wedding planning so we can look back and remember it all. And also to help keep people updated on our planning!

So... here it goes!

It's hard to believe the wedding is in a little under 8 months. It seems like we still have sooo much to do, but here are the details we have so far:
So far we've booked the church, St. Rita, which is the church my parents grew up in (they even went to grade school there) and they were also married here and I was baptized here.
We're having the reception at the Meadowbrook Country Club. The room looks out over the golf course and has an amazing view! Plus, the food is delicious! We decided to have prime rib and chicken marsala for the dinner.
We've also book a photographer. Her website is http://www.donahophotography.com/ and she's amazing. I'm so excited to see the pictures she's going to take! And Mel's already put in a request to have the WHOLE Sebourn clan in a picture together, so if you have any other requests, let us know!:)
We booked the HONEYMOON! We're going to an all-inclusive resort in Riviera Maya (near Cancun).
We have booked a DJ, and gotten invitations. I also have my dress and so do the bridesmaids and we have the ties for the groomsmen.
Oh, and we have a wedding website. Check it out at: http://www.mywedding.com/carolynandaaron

Now that we're both in school we haven't had much time to do any planning, but I'm going home next weekend and hope to go shopping for a veil and meet with a florist! Then the only major thing we'll have left is a baker, and we have a few options for that.