Marriage and Honeymoon

On Friday, July 24th, at approximately 1:00 I tied the knot. I married Nicki Murphy. Along with her I get two wonderful sons, Michael and Matthew, a daughter, Ashley, and grandson, Cameron (already the light of my life). Yes at the age of 31 I married into a family and I have no regrets at. I love the family I am and nothing is going to change that.

We married at a small Baptist church. The minister, who was performing his first marriage, was almost as nervous as we were, but the wedding went off without a hitch. It was a beautiful service with a very beautiful bride. We had traditional vows, not so traditional rings (both are black with a ring on gold leaf in the middle and they are both personalized, mine saying Nicki and Michael 7-24-09, hers saying Michael and Nicki 7-24-09), and instead of a unity candle we poured unity sand.

My mom looked absolutely beautiful, my dad and brother and sons were pipping out the tuxes. My dad was my best man, there was a space between he and my brother Will to signify my older brother, Brandon who passed away almost 8 years ago. The bride and myself both had special white flowers with a black flower in the middle to represent Brandon. Of all the people, apologies to them, Brandon was the only one that I truly wanted to be there, in person. I know he was with me but it just wasn't the same.

After the wedding, we headed to Hot Springs for our Honeymoon. I absolutely love that town, there is so much history there, that even in the three days we spent there wasn't enough time to even discover half of it. One of it's biggest features (outside of Oaklawn Park) is Bathhouse Row. The first time I visited Hot Springs with my family in 1989 or 1990 the row had closed down and was in dis use, but the city or government (whoever has taken the charge) has almost completely restored the row and there are now two bath houses re-opened for special hot springs baths.

Not all of the history is being as carefully restored, but I will save that for another blog.

The three days were spectacular as we stayed in a hotel that was in walking distance of everything and we practically walked everywhere from there. Just getting into the hotel, though, was an adventure in itself. We had reserved a room three months earlier (one thing I have never understood is when you make a reservation for something you aren't actually reserving that thing just keeping it open for you. With the case of the hotel room, we weren't reserving a specific room, we were JUST reserving a room) but when we got there, they were in the middle of huge turn around, essentially all rooms were going empty and getting filled at the same time. We got our rooms on the 8th floor and headed to our room only to discover that two elderly ladies were already in that room. We headed back downstairs and discovered that two other families had the same ordeal, but we eventually got a room on the 5th floor.

The next day was just as bad for the hotel staff and to add to it, the general manager's dog had jumped off the top floor balcony and landed on the concrete below right next to the pool where several kids were swimming, I couldn't make this up.

However,

The wedding and honeymoon were absolutely great and look forward to spending the rest of my life with the love of my life Nicki.