Don't ya think?
Showing posts with label Wedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wedding. Show all posts
Monday, June 27, 2011
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Of weddings and vacations!
It's been a busy couple of weeks for the family. Here's the story of our lives.
CHAPTER 1: THE WEDDING
Emily was the flower girl for my cousin Matt's wedding. She was pumped. She made several new friends over the course of a couple of days and still talks about the wedding. Here is a video of the beginning and the end of the evening.
CHAPTER 2: VACATION
We took some time off the week after Mother's Day. With the store closing and lots of other changes going on in our lives right now, it was a good time to get away. We went down to Tennessee and took some time refocusing and hanging out as a family and with some friends that live down there.
We spent a little extra time in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg this trip. One of our first days there, we stopped at the Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant... or as Tom calls it, The Apple Barn. :-) Tom and I are both on Twitter (@tsfGodGuy and @jennihypes) and we tweeted a lot during our trip. Tom sent out a few posts while we were waiting on our yummy food!
We also killed a little bit of time while waiting for our food by playing with my camera. Check out the close-up of Snickerdoodle's beautiful eyeball!
At some point during the week (I can't remember if it was after lunch or an entirely different day -- but does it really matter in the whole scheme of things?) we went to Ripley's Aquarium. It's become another one of our standard stops when we're in the area. Here's a picture of Em looking into an aquarium tube from underneath it... or if you don't believe that, she might also be listening to angels announcing the virgin birth, or trapped in a Steven Spielberg movie.
The Ripley's Aqaurium has quite a few exhibits to be proud of.
There's the giant, Emily-sized catfish that apparently likes to have it's belly tickled.
There's a ginormous tank that you can see from above....
...that has sharks....
... and old people swimming and scootering about in it!
Then, there are the giant tubes with moving sidewalks that take you underneath the ginormous tanks so you can get an up-close-and-personal view of the sharks, turtles, stingray and other creatures lurking about in the deep water.
There are also creatures that make us want to go, "Oooooooo!"
At the end of the moving sidewalk are several other exhibits and rooms to explore. Here's another giant tank that would make a fabulous addition to our living room. Any volunteers to buy it, set it up, clean it and maintain it for us?
One of my favorite exhibits at ANY aquarium are the jellyfish. We saw these first when we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I made these guys sit still for this picture and it took about 6 takes before the smaller of the two stopped grumping it up... it was WAAAAY past nap time at this point.
Once we made it out of the darker, more peaceful part of the aquarium, someone caught their second wind and was ready to start checking out the domes that were built into the smaller aquariums.
On our way back past the giant aquarium (remember the one we wanted for our living room?), we were lucky enough to find a diver that was just finishing up feeding the fish some lettuce. That's Em's silhouette on the bottom-right working her charm to get the diver to wave at her.
There's a new penguin exhibit in the aquarium this year. It opened just a little over a month before we got there. It was pretty sweet. Here's a picture of Emily laying on the glass floor watching penguins swim back and forth between the indoor and outdoor parts of the exhibit. They also had tubes to crawl into so you could reach a dome that popped up in the middle of the penguin exhibit. Up close and personal folks. Up close and personal.
It was a good day. A long day. But a good day to snuggle up to a penguin.
CHAPTER 1: THE WEDDING
Emily was the flower girl for my cousin Matt's wedding. She was pumped. She made several new friends over the course of a couple of days and still talks about the wedding. Here is a video of the beginning and the end of the evening.
We took some time off the week after Mother's Day. With the store closing and lots of other changes going on in our lives right now, it was a good time to get away. We went down to Tennessee and took some time refocusing and hanging out as a family and with some friends that live down there.
We spent a little extra time in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg this trip. One of our first days there, we stopped at the Applewood Farmhouse Restaurant... or as Tom calls it, The Apple Barn. :-) Tom and I are both on Twitter (@tsfGodGuy and @jennihypes) and we tweeted a lot during our trip. Tom sent out a few posts while we were waiting on our yummy food!
We also killed a little bit of time while waiting for our food by playing with my camera. Check out the close-up of Snickerdoodle's beautiful eyeball!
At some point during the week (I can't remember if it was after lunch or an entirely different day -- but does it really matter in the whole scheme of things?) we went to Ripley's Aquarium. It's become another one of our standard stops when we're in the area. Here's a picture of Em looking into an aquarium tube from underneath it... or if you don't believe that, she might also be listening to angels announcing the virgin birth, or trapped in a Steven Spielberg movie.
The Ripley's Aqaurium has quite a few exhibits to be proud of.
There's the giant, Emily-sized catfish that apparently likes to have it's belly tickled.
There's a ginormous tank that you can see from above....
...that has sharks....
... and old people swimming and scootering about in it!
Then, there are the giant tubes with moving sidewalks that take you underneath the ginormous tanks so you can get an up-close-and-personal view of the sharks, turtles, stingray and other creatures lurking about in the deep water.
There are also creatures that make us want to go, "Oooooooo!"
At the end of the moving sidewalk are several other exhibits and rooms to explore. Here's another giant tank that would make a fabulous addition to our living room. Any volunteers to buy it, set it up, clean it and maintain it for us?
One of my favorite exhibits at ANY aquarium are the jellyfish. We saw these first when we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I made these guys sit still for this picture and it took about 6 takes before the smaller of the two stopped grumping it up... it was WAAAAY past nap time at this point.
Once we made it out of the darker, more peaceful part of the aquarium, someone caught their second wind and was ready to start checking out the domes that were built into the smaller aquariums.
On our way back past the giant aquarium (remember the one we wanted for our living room?), we were lucky enough to find a diver that was just finishing up feeding the fish some lettuce. That's Em's silhouette on the bottom-right working her charm to get the diver to wave at her.
There's a new penguin exhibit in the aquarium this year. It opened just a little over a month before we got there. It was pretty sweet. Here's a picture of Emily laying on the glass floor watching penguins swim back and forth between the indoor and outdoor parts of the exhibit. They also had tubes to crawl into so you could reach a dome that popped up in the middle of the penguin exhibit. Up close and personal folks. Up close and personal.
It was a good day. A long day. But a good day to snuggle up to a penguin.
Monday, May 10, 2010
I'm Getting Married!
I started to post this entry over a week ago and.... oh, look... shin-ey.....
Yeah, I got distracted. So what hasn't that ever happ... pretty!
Okay, I'm back. Phew.
POSTED ON 5/19/10 just so you know I'm a little behind schedule....
Emily was slated to be the flower girl for my cousin's wedding in early May. The dress I made her for Easter was a practice dress for the flower girl dress I was going to make her. Let me just say this... this girl loves to wear dresses and especially dresses that twirl. The higher the twirl factor, the more requests we have for her to wear that particular dress.
The Easter dress had a VERY high twirl factor and is requested every time we open the closet. With this in mind, Emily knew her "wedding dress" was going to be just like her Easter dress but ALL white. She couldn't wait for me to finish it so she could try out it twirlability. (Like that? I just made that word up.)
I had finished her dress a couple of days before the wedding and somewhere in between the two, Emily had a physical therapy appointment. While we were walking through the hall during therapy, I asked Em to tell her PT what she was going to be doing on Saturday. With an exuberance galore and arms thrust wide open, Emily shouted for all to hear, "I'M GETTING MARRIED!"
Oi vey! Does your Daddy know?
Yeah, I got distracted. So what hasn't that ever happ... pretty!
Okay, I'm back. Phew.
POSTED ON 5/19/10 just so you know I'm a little behind schedule....
Emily was slated to be the flower girl for my cousin's wedding in early May. The dress I made her for Easter was a practice dress for the flower girl dress I was going to make her. Let me just say this... this girl loves to wear dresses and especially dresses that twirl. The higher the twirl factor, the more requests we have for her to wear that particular dress.
The Easter dress had a VERY high twirl factor and is requested every time we open the closet. With this in mind, Emily knew her "wedding dress" was going to be just like her Easter dress but ALL white. She couldn't wait for me to finish it so she could try out it twirlability. (Like that? I just made that word up.)
I had finished her dress a couple of days before the wedding and somewhere in between the two, Emily had a physical therapy appointment. While we were walking through the hall during therapy, I asked Em to tell her PT what she was going to be doing on Saturday. With an exuberance galore and arms thrust wide open, Emily shouted for all to hear, "I'M GETTING MARRIED!"
Oi vey! Does your Daddy know?
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Catch Up (Ketchup?) Time!
As I did last year, I gave up "leisure internet use" again this year for Lent. It may sound odd to give up internet because most people give up certain types of food or drink, but I find it more meaningful. My mistake this year was that I forgot to let people know I was going to "disappear" for a while. Sorry about that!
Here's what you've missed out on!
At the end of January, we attended a Bridal Shower for my cousin, Matt and his fiancé, Stefanie. Emily is going to be the flower girl for this wedding so it was extra fun!
Later that evening, we got to surprise Ryan at his 18th birthday party. Emily was pumped to be able to surprise him and on top of that she got to play with some new friends at the party. Ryan is such a great big brother. He had a lot of family and school buddies at his party and still spent extra time with Emily which made her feel so special. They really do have a special brother-sister bond considering there is 15 years difference between them. It's very heartwarming to watch them together.
We had more cold weather and snow than normal. So, to help fight the winter blahs, we broke out the play-doh a few times.
Emily spent a little more time working on phone etiquette this winter. This particular night she wanted to talk to Nannie before bedtime. We happened to buy some curlers earlier that same day... who could resist taking a picture of this?
Now that Ryan is still going to high school full-time and working a part-time job on top of that, we haven't been able to spend as much time with him this school year. We spent an evening at Dave & Buster's with Ryan. Emily was intrigued by the air hockey table. She had a blast playing against another girl her age while Ryan and I looked on.
Fast forward to Easter. As I mentioned earlier, Emily is going to be the flower girl in my cousin's wedding. I thought it would be fun to make her dress for the wedding and since it's been a while since I've sewn a formal (my own wedding dress - almost 10 years ago!?!) I thought it might be wise to make a practice dress using the same pattern. Enter: Easter Dress. It's not made of any fancy material, just plain ol' cotton. But I wanted to be familiar with the pattern and instructions before I sewed on white satin. Emily was very patient with me and after about 4 evenings we had a dress.
A few days before Easter, I realized we didn't have shoes or tights to go with the Easter or flower girl dress. We went shoe shopping together and found a pair of strappy sandals that would work but have been a little tight on her toes. Just as we were getting ready to leave, I spotted another pair that would work much better. Em tried them on and said, "LOOK! Mommy, they have hips!" "Sorry, what did you say?" "Hips! Mommy, they have hips!" "Can you say that again? I don't understand."
At this point in her life, she's used to my ignorance. She's gotten very good at finding other ways to describe or even pantomime what she's talking about. Being ever so brilliant, she points directly at the heels. "See Mommy? Hips!" "Oooooh. Baby, those are called heels."
Here's my girl on Easter morning with her new dress and her "hips".
After our Easter service at church, we spent the early part of our afternoon at Uncle Chuck and Aunt Connie's house with our extended family. The food and family were fabulous and the weather was spectacular. When everyone was done eating, we got to take the kids outside for an Easter egg hunt.
I think this was the first year that I could just turn Em loose and let her run on her own. It was great to sit back and watch their excitement.
Well, maybe I should have supervised a little closer. Emily found a stash of golf balls that were filling a hole in the yard. Eggs! Hmmmm, I wonder how those got there? I'm pretty sure she realized they weren't eggs, but she kept reaching into the hole and finding more and more golf balls. There might have been 6 or 8 balls in that hole! Surprise!
This one was set up to be a great picture... but you know... kids and sun in the eyes... doesn't always work like you hope it will! ...well that, and her cousin in the blue dress behind her had previously been pulling the hem of her dress up to her eyebrows and I was laughing too hard to snap the "good" picture.
After the fun at the Easter egg hunt, we ventured to Utica to hang out with the other side of our family. Em loves getting to play with her cousins, Jeffrey and Rachel. (On a side note: The crowns were part of Em's Easter basket and she took them to each party to share with her cousins.) Again, I think this was one of the first family functions that I was able to let Emily play on her own most of the time and just check in on her occasionally. She did great and Tom and I got to enjoy grown-up conversations with our families!
Easter's over now and Emily has initiated a LOT of conversations (almost daily) about Heaven, Jesus and God. She's been asking things like:
"Where's Heaven?"
"Can we go to Heaven now?"
"Can I see God?"
"Is that Heaven?" (while pointing to a field with a pretty sunset)
"Maybe there's popsicles in Heaven! Maybe there's jumping beds in Heaven! Maybe... MAYbe..... MAYBE..... (and then in a whisper) there's CAKE in Heaven!"
"Why did Jesus die?"
"I don't want Jesus to die."
"Can we be with Jesus all day in Heaven?"
We do our best to answer her questions. She gets a lot of it... but it's hard to phrase things for a 3-year old to understand. Well... a 3-year old that still thinks Shrek, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and other stories are found in her Bible.
Here's what you've missed out on!
At the end of January, we attended a Bridal Shower for my cousin, Matt and his fiancé, Stefanie. Emily is going to be the flower girl for this wedding so it was extra fun!
Later that evening, we got to surprise Ryan at his 18th birthday party. Emily was pumped to be able to surprise him and on top of that she got to play with some new friends at the party. Ryan is such a great big brother. He had a lot of family and school buddies at his party and still spent extra time with Emily which made her feel so special. They really do have a special brother-sister bond considering there is 15 years difference between them. It's very heartwarming to watch them together.
We had more cold weather and snow than normal. So, to help fight the winter blahs, we broke out the play-doh a few times.
Emily spent a little more time working on phone etiquette this winter. This particular night she wanted to talk to Nannie before bedtime. We happened to buy some curlers earlier that same day... who could resist taking a picture of this?
Now that Ryan is still going to high school full-time and working a part-time job on top of that, we haven't been able to spend as much time with him this school year. We spent an evening at Dave & Buster's with Ryan. Emily was intrigued by the air hockey table. She had a blast playing against another girl her age while Ryan and I looked on.
Fast forward to Easter. As I mentioned earlier, Emily is going to be the flower girl in my cousin's wedding. I thought it would be fun to make her dress for the wedding and since it's been a while since I've sewn a formal (my own wedding dress - almost 10 years ago!?!) I thought it might be wise to make a practice dress using the same pattern. Enter: Easter Dress. It's not made of any fancy material, just plain ol' cotton. But I wanted to be familiar with the pattern and instructions before I sewed on white satin. Emily was very patient with me and after about 4 evenings we had a dress.
A few days before Easter, I realized we didn't have shoes or tights to go with the Easter or flower girl dress. We went shoe shopping together and found a pair of strappy sandals that would work but have been a little tight on her toes. Just as we were getting ready to leave, I spotted another pair that would work much better. Em tried them on and said, "LOOK! Mommy, they have hips!" "Sorry, what did you say?" "Hips! Mommy, they have hips!" "Can you say that again? I don't understand."
At this point in her life, she's used to my ignorance. She's gotten very good at finding other ways to describe or even pantomime what she's talking about. Being ever so brilliant, she points directly at the heels. "See Mommy? Hips!" "Oooooh. Baby, those are called heels."
Here's my girl on Easter morning with her new dress and her "hips".
After our Easter service at church, we spent the early part of our afternoon at Uncle Chuck and Aunt Connie's house with our extended family. The food and family were fabulous and the weather was spectacular. When everyone was done eating, we got to take the kids outside for an Easter egg hunt.
I think this was the first year that I could just turn Em loose and let her run on her own. It was great to sit back and watch their excitement.
Well, maybe I should have supervised a little closer. Emily found a stash of golf balls that were filling a hole in the yard. Eggs! Hmmmm, I wonder how those got there? I'm pretty sure she realized they weren't eggs, but she kept reaching into the hole and finding more and more golf balls. There might have been 6 or 8 balls in that hole! Surprise!
This one was set up to be a great picture... but you know... kids and sun in the eyes... doesn't always work like you hope it will! ...well that, and her cousin in the blue dress behind her had previously been pulling the hem of her dress up to her eyebrows and I was laughing too hard to snap the "good" picture.
After the fun at the Easter egg hunt, we ventured to Utica to hang out with the other side of our family. Em loves getting to play with her cousins, Jeffrey and Rachel. (On a side note: The crowns were part of Em's Easter basket and she took them to each party to share with her cousins.) Again, I think this was one of the first family functions that I was able to let Emily play on her own most of the time and just check in on her occasionally. She did great and Tom and I got to enjoy grown-up conversations with our families!
Easter's over now and Emily has initiated a LOT of conversations (almost daily) about Heaven, Jesus and God. She's been asking things like:
"Where's Heaven?"
"Can we go to Heaven now?"
"Can I see God?"
"Is that Heaven?" (while pointing to a field with a pretty sunset)
"Maybe there's popsicles in Heaven! Maybe there's jumping beds in Heaven! Maybe... MAYbe..... MAYBE..... (and then in a whisper) there's CAKE in Heaven!"
"Why did Jesus die?"
"I don't want Jesus to die."
"Can we be with Jesus all day in Heaven?"
We do our best to answer her questions. She gets a lot of it... but it's hard to phrase things for a 3-year old to understand. Well... a 3-year old that still thinks Shrek, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and other stories are found in her Bible.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
What?!?! Mommy's Naked?
(Emily's cousin, Brooke, colored this blanket for her for Christmas!)
Tonight, our little cherub and I had a video chat with Aunt Shell and Aunt Laura. Before we signed off, we had a conversation about Emily being a flower girl for a wedding in May. When asked about her dress, she told Aunt Shell that Mommy was makin' it... which somehow came out on the other sounding like Mommy's naked. They laughed. Emily laughed.
Shortly after that, it was time to sign off and get our darling to bed. I asked her if she wanted to read Aunt Shell and Aunt Laura a story before we signed off and she trotted away to her room for her Bible. She came back, flipped through the pages and started with a little prayer of her own, "God help us -- Mommy's naked."
Oi vey.
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