Celebrate!

We had a wonderful weekend celebrating my brother Jordan and his bride Leah! They were married in the Washington D.C. Temple on Saturday. It was a sweet and spiritual sealing and then a fun reception afterward. And with all that excitement, I took almost no pictures. I pulled my camera out while Bryan danced with the girls at the reception...and that's it. So, until I can borrow some photos from other people, enjoy these few. Bonus, you can see my sister-in-law Falisha dancing with Cooper and Sophie as well as my brother-in-law Eugene dancing with his baby girl Emma. Oh! And I just noticed that the bride and groom are visible in the back left corner of the pictures. Well, I guess these pictures captured more than I thought they would.

Congratulations Jordan and Leah! We're so happy that you're married and that we could be there with you on Saturday!

Family Pictures 2015

On Thanksgiving Day we delayed dinner, donned our fancy clothes, and gathered in our living room for pictures.

My favorite might be this one where no one is looking at the camera.

We also have several where almost everyone is looking at the camera and almost everyone is smiling. These are the best two from that batch.

The last time all of my siblings were together was almost four years ago at Paige's wedding. That is simply too long. We need to figure out how to see each other on a more regular basis.

The best picture of the session was made possible by the promise of fruit snacks if everyone smiled and looked at the camera. It totally worked.

Letting My Inner Wedding Planner Out

My sister Paige and my newest brother-in-law Eugene held their wedding reception at my parents' church building. We, as the work crew, were scheduled to decorate the day before the wedding. The night before we were to decorate I asked Paige what decorative elements we were using.

It wasn't much.

One woman in the ward was lending them hurricane jars and tall battery-powered candles, but only enough for half the tables. Another woman was lending small mirrors and small round jars, again only enough for half the tables. Paige had little candles for the second set of jars.

And that was all. No runners. No ribbons. No flowers. No color.

I asked if she wanted anything else. She said yes and I asked if she cared what we got or if she just wanted us to make the decisions. Spoken like a girl that is tired of wedding-planning and just wants to get married, she said "Sure." And that's how I became the puppet-master of the reception.

The morning that we went to decorate, my newest sister-in-law and I stopped by Michael's on our way to the church. We wandered the aisles for a few minutes looking for inspiration. After settling on small glass stones to put in the jars, we paid and left. As we exited the store Falisha veered sharply to the right and went to investigate the Christmas clearance that we had passed when we first went in.

She reached into one of the bins and extracted her prize: a small sparkly blue tree branch. We went to work, digging through the boxes, searching for blue and green. Our mission resulted in about twenty blue branches and twenty-five green branches, some with leaves, some with needles, one feather. We found blue and green ribbon that matched beautifully and said prayers of thanks that Paige's tables wouldn't be barren.

Once we had our supplies in hand, it took some time to figure out how to make all the pieces come together in an aesthetically pleasing way. Neither of the pictures that I have show the complete centerpiece. The hurricane jar had a sage green square of material under it and the mirrors had some blue ribbon that came out from the edges, but this gives you a good idea.

Considering we had no idea what we were going to decorate with, I think the whole thing turned out beautifully.

We also spent time rehearsing. My mom had asked me put together a handful of musical numbers for the reception. Eugene's sweet younger sisters were excited to sing. Here I am giving my unsolicited feedback on their duet of Love Changes Everything (this is a mildly bizarre group performing the song, but it was the best I found in my thirty-second YouTube search) from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love. They were nice and didn't tell me to leave them alone and let them sing. And remember, I was the puppet-master, so at this point in the day I had been telling everyone what to do anyway, so I think they were used to me by then.

Grandma Bonnie, Bryan, and a revolving door of familial helpers took care of the kids in the nursery. It was a great chance for the cousins to play together. As far as I know they were happy for the most part, I don't remember any reports to the contrary.