Wedding: Pregame ... Fun!

Despite the flower fiasco, (which, as I said, ended up totally okay and absolutely beautiful), Laura did have some fun in the final days before her wedding. She and I both got a pedicure and a manicure.
The morning of the wedding, my dad made breakfast to lure lots of people over. (Doesn't that look so good?!! We also had pancakes! YUM!!!!)

Addie and Gabe, (and many other family members), met Claire. Gabe helped Claire begin to learn to walk; he moved her feet in a step-like manner while I held her up. - It was Gabe's idea!

Taylor and Marcus had fun playing with Bec.

Marshall hanging out with some of the kiddos

Aunt Sylvia and my dad spent some time catching up.

Uncle Jack, Mom, Grandmom, and Andrew

Uncle Glenn, Aunt Debbie, and Angie with Claire

Aunt Janie, Paige, and Donny

Grandmom showing Andrew her new phone!

It was lots of fun seeing so many family members in the morning. It was the beginning of a fun, exciting, wonderful day!

Wedding: Pregame ... YIKES!!!!

Here are some things you DON'T want to have happen leading up to your wedding:

• A freezer going out. - This is not a huge deal, but my parents were counting on the freezer space for some food for the weekend. This happened a few weeks before the wedding, so my mom "got" to spend time cleaning out the freezer instead of working on wedding stuff.
  
• The power going out. Twice. The Wednesday before the wedding. Needing a new transformer. Getting pretty hot while waiting for the new transformer and deciding to go to a hotel for the night. Laura not being able to work on the slideshow for the reception because the power is out. (And by Wednesday night, Laura's time-line for her to do list was pretty tight already!)
  
• Background: A family friend offered to do the flowers for Laura's wedding. That is wonderful. So Laura had to decide on the flowers she wanted, and my mom had to order them online. That seems simple enough. The FIRST YIKES part: The flower company calling Wednesday, (when the flowers were to be delivered Thursday), and informing my mom that 2 of the kinds of roses she ordered were unavailable. So my mom "got" to pick substitution roses.The SECOND YIKES part: The flower company saying, oh sorry, we can't send you rose petals. But we can send you roses. It will just take you 30 minutes to tear the petals off all the roses. (That was not true! It took 3 people working together for 45 minutes to accomplish that task!!!) The THIRD YIKES part: The flower company calling after the flowers had arrived Thursday morning to inform my mom that one type of flower had not been picked up. The flower company blamed it on FedEx. FedEx said there's no way to know who was at fault because they can't track anything they don't have in their possession yet. So maybe the flowers weren't where they were supposed to be in order to be picked up. The flower company saying "We'll offer you to have these flowers delivered on Friday instead." What? Offer? These flowers were paid for!!!
  

The flowers were obviously the most stressful part of the YIKES wedding pregame, but they turned out absolutely beautiful!!! And once the flower issue was resolved, I kept thinking, "Maybe that's it for bad things happening before the wedding." But I didn't want to say it out loud and jinx anything!

Laura's Married!!! - MARRIED!!!!

My little sister got married! I'm so happy for her and Matt!


Throughout the wedding weekend I took some pictures with Laura's camera, but I didn't take very many with mine. So this is one of the only pictures I have of her and Matt on their wedding day. Matt's little sister is here, too. She is so excited that she has a sister now!

I'll post more later, but I felt like I need to document this!

Claire Says...

Happy National Watermelon Day!!!


I thoroughly enjoyed my watermelon this evening! I hope that someone else out there was able to enjoy watermelon today, too! The coolest thing to me today was that my dad called on his way home from work to inform us that today was National Watermelon Day. - He heard it on the radio! How exciting!

Mom's Birthday

Claire and I came to Dallas on Saturday to help with the preparations for Laura's wedding and to celebrate my mom's birthday. My parents got all dressed up and went out Saturday night. Don't they look good?!!


On Sunday we had a very good lunch with lots and lots of food!



Marcus LOVES his corn!

She got some nice presents.
Grandmom and her grandsons

Marcus and Taylor helped blow out the candles.

I'm glad Claire and I were able to celebrate with my mom! (But Claire was asleep during this time, so that's why she's not pictured here!)