Garden babies, wedding nails and the gooseberry deluge

The garden babies are appearing.  

 

My first baby grapes!

At the very most, we will get three apples this year. 

I'm pretty sure these are volunteer jalapeño plants. Look how cool! The seeds sprouted right in the shape of the jalapeño that fell there.

A little less cool is the absolute flood of gooseberry plants that are sprouting up in every single bed. I'm gonna need to wage ruthless war on the gooseberries. 

Luckily I have my wedding nails to ring their little gooseberry necks. 

Also...look at this cute little blue bird:

Hollywood Ending

Once upon a time, we got burned by the mean girls and their mommas. I won't go into detail. 

Fine. 

The details: In Anna's fifth grade year, we found out after the fact that almost the entire grade got together and went to "Day at the K" together, even though the school had stopped organizing it as an official fieldtrip. It was put together by the queen bees and their offspring.  All but a few kids were made aware. So Anna went to school that day only to find out that she not only wasn't invited, she had to sit through a useless day of classes. 

It was a jerk move. 

I may have made my feelings of frustration known on the school facebook page. I was mad and hurt for Anna. 

Fast forward to Everly's fifth grade year! We were tipped off by one of the nice moms that the same thing was taking place. Did we want to get in on it and buy tickets with the group? I had mixed feelings. I suggested that everyone in the grade be invited. A novel idea! I asked Everly if she'd like to go and Mark offered up an alternative plan. 

Would we like company seats in the Diamond Club?

Why yes, that would be PERFECT. And even better? We had four seats. So Anna got a redo and Laney got to take a day off of school. 

Diamond Club seats are FANCY.

They include an all you can eat buffet as well as candy bar, ice cream bar and free ballpark food brought to your seat by a darling waitress that asks you every 10 minutes what else you would like?

It's a kid's dream come true. 

It isn't often that those childhood wrongs are made right. 

And it didn't even require therapy!

Peace out, Day at the K! 

Pee carpet and Picklemans

The wedding is over and we have two weeks to get things under control at the house before the Newlyweds and In-Laws are coming for the open house. 

Am I stressed?

You bet your sweet bickes I am. 

But we still have to get our house to a point where we can move out of the garage. Kinda seems like we're getting comfortable with the premuim potty seating. 

Unfortunately, the refinishing of the hardwood floors did not go as well as we had hoped. They need to come back and fix approximately 63 flaws (if only I was exaggerating). 

The carpet installation was a disaster. Did you know there is worse carpet out there than the stuff our geriatric dogs peed on for 14 years?

There is. 

And it was recently installed in our house. 

I will not cry. 

There is no crying. 

We will figure it all out, but first....it is time to pick up Megan from KU! She is coming home to work for the summer and we will celebrate with sandwiches at Picklemans. They have magic bread. 

That's a wrap

And just like that....

Seventh Grade is done!

Yin and Yang

 Me and my wedding nails missed this garden.

Wedding Weekend

We did it! We got everyone up and out the door at 3 am. Mark didn't even feel tired! The kids were feeling perky enough to take out a couple giant airport cinnamon rolls. The sugar helps ease the shock of mom saying yes to buying....anything. 

These three lucked out and got to sit next to each other. 

One of the best parts of traveling with grown kids is the legitamately cool photos they take. Check out this window-seat shots!

No time for chit chat. We hit the ground running. Shopping for luncheon supplies and getting 6 crock pots churning out the pork barbacoa. Through an unfortunate lapse in judgement combined with my complete and utter inability to think for myself when I'm around my big sisters, I started the meat at approximately 7 pm....dooming me to a sleepless night of waking up every 30-45 minutes to check the tenderness of the meat, moving finished batches to the garage to cool and monitoring the temperature in the garage so as not to cause every single person at the luncheon to get food poisoning because I didn't bring the main course to proper temperatures. Also, worrying that a stray dog would wander in the open garage door and eat all the meat because an open door was the only way to get it cold enough in there. 

I also forgot that Heidi was receiving alerts on her phone from the cameras installed in Mom's garage. So that's a fun all-night show!

In truth, I was kinda glad someone knew in detail how I sacrifice for this family!

 

The day before the wedding was a flurring of last minute preparations. Getting my nails done by the very  talented Kaira. I've never felt more girly!

Repackaging the heavenly cilantro dressing into smaller containers. More fun than as a team!

Megan and Mark made 150 tortillas

Not everyone was feeling the same levels of wedding related stress. 

And finally the day was here! I woke up first thing to check the weather. It looked like we weren't going to be taking photos in the rain after all

When Kaira and Jordan walked in about 30 minutes before go-time, I was in the kitchen making corn salsa in my PJs. Kaira said, "uh-oh" and before I knew it, she was juicing a lime....

And Jordan was ironing my dress

We sent our adult kids off to the reception center to drop off the luncheon food and plug in all the crock pots. I commenced praying for them to make it to the temple in time...

I don't have many photo yet, since I decided to let the photographer do her job and just be in the moment. I soaked it all up. All the love and all the joy and all the family. 

The kids made it. Frantic phone calls were placed. Photos were taken and we were off to the reception center! It was beautiful!

Mathew MC'd the wedding shoe game and it was so adorable! He did a great job.

We took a break after the luncheon, frantically packing away the ridiculous amount of leftovers and running them over to the fridges and freezers in Kaira and Jordan's temporary apartments. In a blink of an eye, we were putting our shoes back on, touching up makeup and back to the reception center. 

Ethan and I danced to the acoustic version of 'Take On Me' by a-ha. That moment will forever live in the happy places of my heart. 

Cutting the cake!

A room full of love and happiness!

Some of my favorite guests of the night. Sam, Kylie and Miranda.  Love these kids like they are my own!

Like I said, these are just the few photos that we snapped throughout the day. I will add the professional ones later! But, oh my heart, what a day. The memory will bring me happy tears forever.