A May Wedding and Bike Pictures

It was a beautiful outside wedding!

They built this bridge the week before the wedding.

Bethany (bride) and Selah (flower girl)

We've known Bethany since she was 3 !

She was a junior bridesmaid in my wedding ... nine years ago (last week was our anniversary!)

The handsome ring-bearer.

I think Bethany picked him because his hair matched her wedding colors ....

Simon did a great job.  We aided his cooperative behavior with plenty of Chuck E. Cheese tokens that we had with us for that purpose ....

When Matt was explaining to Simon his role in the wedding, he told him about how he was carrying the rings down the aisle and how important the rings were.   THIS IS A TRUE STORY ... Simon asked if the ring was the RING OF DOOM ... 

That makes for a funny wedding blurb.

(Simon watched the cartoon version of Return of the King which prompted the 'ring of doom' question)

This was a beautiful cake!

I loved how Bethany used her Willow Tree figuring that she received as an engagement gift as her cake-topper.

Here is Simon waiting and wondering when he should exit the ceremony.  The flower girl skipped out on him about 2 minutes into the ceremony.  Thankfully, Simon didn't follow her which surprised me because he was quite taken with her.

The groom and his bestman (his brother) and Bethany's little brother all wore kilts in honor of the groom, Jonathan Ferguson's, Scottish heritage.  Their family motto is "Sweetness out of Difficulties" which the pastor combined with the scriptures about joy from sorrow and beauty for ashes.  Jonathan included in his hand-written vow the promise to be a strong spiritual leader for their family and to not always be practical.  He included a lot more promises, but those two really stood out to me.

Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Ferguson

The giving of the bride ....

Sorry the pic are out of order 

A sweet flower girl and ring-bearer combo.

Evie-Grace's first ride in our bike-trailer one weekend morning.

Simon took this picture of the flower girl.

This is the last couple to walk back down the aisle in the procession and they were sweet to grab Simon's hand and include him and help him figure out how to exit.

Matt making sure our kids are safe.

I call this the 'arc of love.'

This is a hand-crafted dress mom bought for Evie at a boutique before she was born.  It never fit her very well until now and it works great as a tank-top.

If Matt was demonstrating the 'arc of love' I guess this could be demonstrating the 'crunch of love.'

A Friday Post

One Perfect Rainy Morning

Simon is typically so sweet and loving to Evie!

I can't imagine how he could be a better big brother.

Simon loves "uncle alex" and always wants him to come over.

I think  because they play video games together ... ?

Yup, we'll be friends with anyone.

Don't worry, we wouldn't leave our kids with this guy ... :)

Matt surprised me with matching shirts from WOOT !

This one is called "a cup of freedom"  (I think ?)

Anyway it combines old-school g.i. joe and coffee, so how could you go wrong?

Simon wanted to make oatmeal raisin cookies and we had all the ingredients, so ....

I wrote a sentence in red ink to model for Simon and I let him choose his parallel sentence.  He needed help spelling "daddy's ipod."

Sally snapped this picture of my little girl!  She is really developing a comic personality!

Matt and his friends Alex and JD tackled part I of drywall last Friday night.  They hung all the drywall.  I think they started around 7:30 and ended around 12 or 12:30.  All in a night's work (and I think they had fun, too!)

Matt's been able to do most of the laundry room by himself, or with some guided supervision from my dad, but he has done most of the labor up until this point when we really had to rely on some friends.  It's a great blessing to have friends who are (1)  skilled (2) not dangerous with tools (3)  smart (4) take charge and (5) really enjoy our children (6) are not only willing to help, but seem to be excited to and also enjoy it .... and friends who don't look twice when the living room is covered with laundry.

Now, Matt, on the other hand, might be a little dangerous with a power tool.

Just kidding.

This week Matt and Simon were out there working on filling in the screw-holes, etc, on the drywall.  Simon took care of all of the screw holes under 2-3 feet high.

This was how Simon looked a lot of the time ....

When he was supposed to be doing this 

(sleeping on the porch)

It was such a fun night we let him stay up.  He really wanted to sleep/rest IN the garage, but that wasn't an option.

The guys were already giving us girls a hard time for sitting around while they were working.  It was only fuel for the fire when around midnight we put in an exercise dvd just to watch it.  You can imagine how silly we looked just sitting there.  

Breakfast on Wednesday morning.

Standing in the garage facing our interior door.  This is the back of the laundry room.  There is still room to park a car in there.

More buttermilk pancakes - what else to do with buttermilk?

Stages and Snapshots

Lunch and Playtime One Day at the Nature Preserve

More than Conquerors

GFA Family and Volleyball

These boys dug deep enough to 'hit' water.

The Cutest Spectator, Evie

Evie has started dancing lately which is an instant smile-maker.

I love how Michael is looking at Matt as if he is a complete nut-case.

I think Matt was dancing here ...

Breakfast at the Arboretum with a group from my mother's church.

Simon bonding with Pops.

Evie had her 18 month exam this week.

She finally weighs 20 pounds (20 lbs, 4 ounces)

So we are able to put her in a front-facing carseat ....

She is in the 50th percentile for height, 3rd percentile for weight

The pediatrician seemed relieved that Evie was finally walking.

I can't believe that she is one and a half!

Simon is just the cutest thing as well.

The other day when we were going for a nature walk to collect treasures, he announced in a very loud and clear voice ...

Simon:  Are we looking for trash?

NO!

Are we looking for shiny stuff?

YES!

He makes a great expedition leader.

My friend Bonnie made these sweet matching outfits for Simon and Evie.

Seamstresses AMAZE me.

This is one of the storytime play structures on display at the Arboretum.

There is a place near the entrance of the Arboretum where you can get coffee, etc.  I surprised the ladies with breakfast (a couple of muffins) in a mini-paper bag with a scripture label.  Anyway, on one of the bags I put a scripture on how God is our portion and in that bag there was just a little half of a mini muffin instead of two larger muffins.  I thought it was pretty funny.  And, yes, I had another bag for the lady who happened to get that verse ....

I know it looks like Simon is trying to break Evie's neck, but he really wasn't ...

Simon helping with the demolition in our garage.

We are basically moving our washer and dryer six feet from where they are (laundry room) into the garage that is right next to our current laundry room.

Our current laundry room will be annexed into our kitchen, thus giving me 6 more feet of counter space!!!  I'll actually be gaining 9 feet of counter space because we are mounting the microwave that currently takes up a 24 inch section of counter space and we are extending one middle 'wall' of the kitchen 12 inches ....

It was warm enough at the Arboretum for Simon to get drenched.

Happy Mother's Day!

(Well, it's tomorrow, but I'm thankful for these kiddos right now!)

escape artist si

Fast-forward to the tween or teenage years ...

I can see Evie now ....

We went to a wedding yesterday for Chris and Cathy!

These kids (yes they are still kids to us) were in the youth group and we used to teach them.  Cathy also attended the public school we worked at Matt used to teach her there, too.

I think we ran across a detention slip lately that he had written her once ....

And we've known Chris since he was a little lad ....

And then their worlds collided ....

Small world

May God Bless their Marriage!

The evening was charming and bucolic.

I don't think I've ever been to an wedding that was outside, but now I am a huge fan of them.

Gigi and Evie