Sunday, August 27, 2006

Run for your life; it's the Chocolate Vampire!

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He vants to suck your BLOOOOOD (if you are a cookie)! Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

... and another scrapbook page.

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More reception pictures.

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I ordered prints all collaged-together like this so that I could get a lot of tiny pictures onto my scrapbook pages. (It's another trick for saving money and time while scrapping, because less money spent on photos = more money for Chatterbox.) I Know Kevin was wanting to see some reception pics, so here ya go, and sorry you missed out on all the fun.

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Sunday, August 20, 2006

I've been a busy girl

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Rather than try & upload all the pictures from the wedding, which is proving to be a tedious task, I'll put up some of the scrapbook pages I've done. I have actually been on a scrapping binge lately: I did 6 other pages in the last few days, plus these 3, and I have another one almost completed but I had to move my stuff off the kitchen island so I could make biscuits. I've been using a lot of Chatterbox paper for the wedding pages; I think it's so classy and pretty, and the Scrapbook Corner has all the new CHA stuff in. (I restriced myself to 4 new pages - one of each from Garden, Courtyard, and Villa, plus the redesigned Sun Room - and paid for them with a giftcard I've been saving for emergencies. I think that Chatterbox's new CHA releases definitely constitutes an emergency.)

I've been printing up a lot of the wedding pictures small, so I can cram a bunch of them onto the page. (The pictures fo my dad will see the light of day at some point.) Thanks to my cousin Becca for taking the one of Matt and me smooching - it almost makes up for the exploding-eye-feta incident. (Love ya, cuz!)
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Friday, August 18, 2006

Wedding pictures

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So sorry, this is kind of a cumbersome way to show my photos. Blogger still hates me, but not as much. I found out I can only upload the pictures from Picasa, and I haven't figured out how to insert them into the existing posts. *rolls eyes* So, now you can finally see how much fun we all had and how Dad was, truly, the life of the party. Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Wedding Weekend, part three: Saturday, Sunday, Monday

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It turns out that I'm not the only one Blogger hates, since they have a Known Issue with their photo posting. I guess all of the tech support people are at BiMonSciFiCon.

Needless to say, we all slept in pretty late on Saturday morning.

Once Matt and I finally dragged ourselves out of bed, we abandoned our kids with my mom and went to the Palmyra Temple. (I thought of you black llama!) It's usually pretty hard to get to the temple, because of time constratints and little kids, so we usually take any chance we can get. And I must have been tired-er than I realized, because I wanted to fall asleep real bad! I managed to stay awake, though, and I'm really glad that we went. On the way home we stopped in Palmyra for some ice cream.

That night, we all went out to see Catherine's play. Despite the fact that she's leaving for school in just a few weeks, Cath somehow found time to appear in a community theater production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was outdoors in a park in Webster - they even used the trees as part of the set - which was very classy and the weather was nice. To our surprise, the SSGT. and Mrs. Brown actually came out of hiding to see the play. In the announcements before the start of the play, Cath and one of her friends got the director to announce and congratulate the newlyweds. Emily's reaction: "I'll kill both of them." It was pretty dang funny.

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Thanks to my husband, I actually got to see the play, since he took the kids home when they were misbehaved/poopy. It was a really awesome play and Cath did a great job. I especially liked when Hermia jumped on Demetrius' back and started beating him up (although by then it was too dark for my camera to get it).

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We went home after the play and I promptly abandoned my husband again to go out with Rob, Kevin, and the cousins. The funny thing was we went to East Ridge Family Restaurant, where I vividly remember going after Crazy for You my senior year. (I gathered that high schoolers and drunks constitute the bulk of their clientele after 10 p.m.) I had a Greek omelet with feta cheese, which I may never be able to eat again, thank you Becca. We sure had a good time - it was really nice not to act like a responsible adult for a little while. Actually, I did a lot of that over the weekend.

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I woke up on Sunday at 8:14, for 9:00 church. Oops! We probably would have been up sooner but Dad wasn't there - he left for the airport in the wee hours of the morning, to catch an 8:00 flight to China. We just barely made it to sacrament meeting on time, so Catherine had someone to sit with for the 11.9 minutes we actually got to sit before the kids got antsy again. Mike and Mandy left for home while we were at church, so we didn't see them, but that's okay because they will be coming to visit and see our new house and pick up our old microwave. (Right, guys?!)

I took an awesome nap that day.

Later in the afternoon, I called up my old friend Mary from high school. The last time I saw Mary was New Year's Day, 2000 (when we were all worried about Y2K. Remember Y2K?) because right after that, I met Matt and haven't spent much time in Rochester since then. Mary came over and it was awesome to see her again and catch up on what everyone's been doing. I was surprised to hear how many of Bishop Kearney High School, Class of 1997, stayed around Rochester. (I couldn't wait to get out of Rochester when I left but maybe it's in my nature to be trunky. Betsy will probably feel the same way about Indiana when she graduates from high school.)Anyway, seeing Mary was a fun blast from the past, I felt like I should be listening to 'Under the Table and Dreaming' and rolling the waistband of my skirt.

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Sunday night, we cleared out the cedar chest in my mom's room. It belonged to my great grandmother, and Mom promised me the chest when I was about 10. And I now finally have a big enough bedroom to put it in, yay. We found some interesting things in there. I now have the dress I wore when I was baptized as a baby - if I have another girl in the future, I can use it for a blessing dress. On Monday we loaded up - the cedar chest did fit in the back of my fan, since Matt took out the back bench - and headed home.

It was so good to get back to our brown house! And thanks to kindly neighbors, we actually still have a lawn.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Wedding Weekend, part two: Friday

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Despite Blogger's consistent refusal to post any of my pictures, I'll continue the narrative of the fun weekend...

My mom, not surprisingly, didn't go to bed on Thursday night, but she did get all of the dresses done. I was able to do some of the hand-sewing while she slept on the couch the morning of the wedding. (I really need to learn how to sew!) The girls went over to the hair salon to get our hair done. Since Emily is a hairdresser, of course we all had to have nice hair for her wedding! We went to a salon where one of Em's friends from hair school worked. While I was waiting for my turn, I drove over to A.C. Moore and Michaels and bought a ring pillow, a couple of garters, and some ribbons to make sashes for the dresses. The cashier at ACM totally didn't believe me when I told her that the wedding was in six hours. After the hair I glue-dotted some woven daisies onto the ribbons for the girls' dresses... in case any scrapbooker is wondering, the glue dots worked great for the sashes, but didn't work as well holding little bows onto Emily's garters, so she dropped little bits of ribbons behind her when she walked...



When hair was done I finished some other last minute things and watched Emily get her makeup done - which took a really long time - and did my makeup - which didn't take very long, so I must be prettier than Em to start with. She got zipped into her dress just in time when the car showed up: instead of a limo, they rented a sweet vintage Rolls Royce, and Em and my mom rode together to the church. (I rode in style in my minivan, in case you were wondering.

Kickoff was at 3:30 so we hung out for a little while in the crying room, touching up lipstick and whatnot. (Betsy had to have concealer since she had a huge bugbite right smack in the middle of her forehead. Yes, I did put makeup on a 3 year old.) I did worry a little when we were queueing up for the aisle march and Betsy started screaming "NO NO I CAN'T" but she got over it, I think because she realized she got to hold hands with her beloved Aunty Molly. After that Betsy was pretty well behaved; she entertained herself during the mass by yanking apart her little basket of flowers. (In case you were wondering... the pink ones don't smell like perries anymore.)

Emily looked so beautiful walking down the aisle! Russell's smile was really sweet as he was watching her come towards him. Russell and Robert both wore their dress blues - I know this because guess who hemmed Rob's pants the night before the wedding? - and they both looked really sharp. There was a funny bit at the end when thepriest was announcing them to walk bak up the aisle. All during the rehearsal the priest kept forgetting Russell's rank - I think at one point he was General Brown or something - so in the wedding, he said "STAFF SERGEANT and Mrs. Brown" and we all had a pretty good chuckle.

Yes, it was all lovely. But the really important part was... the PARTY.

We arrived at the reception hall and right away there were guys circulating with mini quiches and stuffed mushrooms... very classy... and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was STARVING. Holy cow, they were good. Plus, there were sliced vegetables with, like, a ranch dressing fountain or something but I didn't waste any calories on vegetables. Once all the bridal party had arrived we got to do the whole 'go into the banquet hall arm in arm but nobody cares about you unless you are the bride and groom' thing. Catherine and I shared a groomsman since there were way more chicks than dudes in the wedding party and we ended up just going arm in arm with each other, which was fun since we were the only ones that had identical dresses. (Everyone else's dresses were at least a little different.) The food was pretty tasty, and I actually got to enjoy it because I was at the head table and my kids weren't. Rob gave a brief yet classy toast about how when he was in Basic, he never dreamed that he was sleeping next to his sister's future husband (they alphabetize the bunks... both last names start with B... and the rest is history!)

Anywayyyy... (are you beginning to see why I've broken up this blog post by days? Perhaps I should have done hours) once we had all stuffed out face with free steak and yummy wedding cake (Steak'n'Cake! haaa)... then it ws time to hit the dance floor. Emily danced with Russell, 'acause she got married to Uncle Russy, and then she danced with her daddy because that's what princesses do, and the Russell danced with his mom which was pretty funny because she dipped him (he's not a small guy, either) although my reflexes weren't fast enough to capture it on film. Then the bridal party danced, which because of the aforementioned gender imbalance, I got to dance with my man. We invited Betsy to dance with us, but she ran off screaming "I CAN'T I CAN'T," because if you dance with someone it means you are getting married to them, and everyone knows Betsy is getting married to James.

After that we all pretty much danced the rest of the night. Matt completely busted a groove, Betsy ran in circles for three straight hours, and Emily was shaking her bouffant heinie, but the real shockeroonie of the night was my dad. He's an engineer, if that tells you anything. I'd think that the fact that he paid for the whole thing, plus the knowledge that he was leaving for China (You know, China? In Asia?) in thirty-six hours, would have put a damper on Dad's enthusiasm. The fact that he and my mom danced pretty much non stop that night is a testament to what a fun wedding it was.

Emily tossed her boquet to a respectably large group of available women and my fabulous cousin Becca caught it cleanly (this is one of the few times I've seen her when she didn't have an injury of some sort, she's lucky she wasn't on the DL) which meant that I'd better start shopping for a dress for her wedding.

My favorite part of the whole night was "White Wedding." See, the whole time Em's been planning her wedding, Dad kept teasing her that they should play Billy Idol's "White Wedding" for the daddy-daughter dance. And they didn't; they went with the infinitely classier "Butterfly Kisses," but towards the end of the party, Em made a request to the DJ. (I should mention that the DJ was the former bishop of Dad's ward, and Dad served on the bishopric with him for years, so if anyone has Dad's number, it's Jeff Sykes.) And yes, he did play "White Wedding," and Emily and Dad totally danced together, and it was full on priceless.

Like all great parties, this one did eventually have to come to an end. Em and Russ drove off to their quasi-honeymoon in the Rolls (with Russell going back to Iraq soon, they didn't leave town or anything, but they got a few days at the Coutyard Marriott) and I went home and regretfully had to take my awesome dress off. On the plus side, when I went through my camera, I found out I took 152 pictures, which should provide weeks of scrapping fun.

And Porter? He slept through pretty much the whole thing.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Wedding Weekend, part one: Wednesday/Thursday

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Wedding Weekend - part 1 (Wednesday/Thursday)

We drove out to Rochester on Wednesday - thank goodness for the car DVD player and They Might Be Giants - and arrived around dinner time. This was our first time meeting Emily’s soon to be husband, Russell. They are so cute together! Russell is very nice and has a cute Southern accent which I’m sure Emily will pick up after a few months.

Thursday morning, we awoke to find that someone had festooned the vans in the driveway with CAUTION tape, and that said person or persons had drawn dead body chalk outlines in the driveway...

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On Thursday I drove out to Eastview Mall with my mom’s dress - they forgot to remove the ink tag when she bought it (D’oh!) and Mom was super busy having a pedicure that morning. When I got home, Mike and Mandy were on their way to have sushi with Kevin, Catherine, and two of Mandy’s cousins. (Did I mention that Mandy’s family was also having a family reunion that weekend? Talk about good timing.) I’ve been meaning to try sushi for quite some time, and I knew that Mandy would be a good culinary tour guide since she has spent a lot of time in Japan. So, I abandoned my kids (Thank you, Matt!) and headed to Calfornia Rollin’…

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…where I participated in a feast of raw fish and yummy goodness. I’ve never even used chopsticks before (at least, not successfully), let alone used them to eat sushi. And I have to say… I LOVED it. I loved the miso soup (a.k.a. liquid happiness), I loved the pickled ginger, I loved the salmon the best, and I even liked the wasabi which I thought I would hate since I don’t really like hot stuff. It doesn’t taste hot, necessarily, just really, really mustardy.

After sushi, some of us headed over to Holy Cross for the wedding rehearsal. This is when Betsy finally realized she was actually going to be in the wedding, though we’ve been telling her for weeks that Aunty Emmy is getting married to Uncle Russy. (Betsy is currently obsessed with weddings. She thinks she’s getting married to James, a boy from church.) There was one teeny, tiny glitch when Emily couldn’t find the marriage license. My dad made a detailed phone call to the records office and came up with a plan B involving picking up a spare first thing in the morning - because I’m sure they aren’t the first couple in the world that has misplaced a marriage license…

The most important part of the rehearsal was of course the rehearsal dinner. It was held at the house and catered by the Dinosaur; I’ve never eaten there but it’s basically Dick’s Bodacious of Rochester. Oh, so yummy. Emily had ordered a groom’s cake shaped like a guitar, and my mom’s friend Heidi made a massive pile of cookies.

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That’s Russell stabbing the cake.

They also gave gifts to the members of the wedding party. Emily did a great job of selecting gifts that were really thoughtful and useful. (Ask Russell’s stepdad what time it is…) She gave Betsy a silver jewelry box with a butterfly pin inside, and she gave me a sweet tote bag with my name engraved on a charm. Emily intended for it to be for carrying scrapbooking supplies but that weekend it morphed into the Magic Bag (my mom calls it Incredibag) because we kept putting everything that was really important in the bag to take to the church. I think at one point I had glue dots, baby wipes, everyone’s keys and cell phone, concealer, lipstick, Emily’s purse and Betsy’s coloring book in there.

If the marriage license had been in the Magic Bag, it never would have gotten lost. Luckily, Emily found it that night.

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After the rehearsal dinner was finally over and all the leftovers were put away… then it was time for my mom to work on the dresses.

Monday, August 7, 2006

wedding sneak peek

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Obviously I haven't had time to blog about the whole wedding yet, since we got back less than an hour ago. And I have infinity of laundry to do now (isn't that the worst part of returning from vacation?!) It was awesome to come home to our Brown House, as Betsy has officialli named it. I have downloaded all 190 pictures I took over the weekend to my computer but haven't even begun cropping and editing yet.

This is my all time favorite picture from the wedding. (I was standing on a chair in the 'crying room' of the church, about 10 minutes before we went down the aisle.) It's uncanny how much Emily looks like my mom! She was so beautiful and so happy... we all had an awesome time... my dad totally busted a groove and I have the photos to prove it. Posted by Picasa
 

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