Parties & A Wedding

Whew!  Things have been pretty busy around here over the last four or five days and I've barely had a moment to just sit.  In fact, there are several other things I can think of that I should be doing right now but I really wanted to post this so here I am.

The parties/festivities started on Thursday.  First, on Thursday morning Calleigh had a swimming lesson and then we went to Yolanda and Emma's for play time and lunch.  In the evening, Duncan got home a little early from work so I could scoot down to the California Pizza Kitchen at the Mall at Millenia for Tiffany's bachelerotte party.  Duncan, meanwhile, took the girls over to his parents to eat, as I suspected he would despite my leaving out pizza supplies.  As he said, and I quote, "I did what any dude would do.  I went to my mother's so she could feed us."

Friday morning we were back out on the yard sale circuit and had a very successful time of it.  I got 64 things for $0.25/piece and needless to say, Brady is now definitely set on size newborn clothes.  I also got a lot of 0-3 months so I was pretty psyched.  There was a seven year old girl there and Calleigh and Aubree played hide and seek with her in the back yard as I went through all the clothes so that was a very nice break.

Following nap time for Aubree, we were off to the wedding rehearsal at Cypress Grove Park in Orlando.  I had never been there before but it was truly beautiful despite being near a section of the city I wouldn't necessarily want to hang around in.  It was an outdoor wedding overlooking a lake.  Anyway, the rehearsal went fine although there really wasn't too much for the girls to rehearse.  Note to future brides...it would be a good idea to bring the actual baskets and some sort of flower or whatever for them to practice with.  In this case, I think it would have really helped because they were to hand out daisies to guests as they walked down the aisle rather than just tossing out petals.  A bit more complicated and they could definitely have used the practice as it turned out.  Right as the rehearsal was finishing up, we could hear the thunder starting to rumble and sure enough, the rain came shortly thereafter.  Fingers crossed that it wouldn't happen that way during the actual wedding.  Shannon came to our house afterwards for supper and then she had to go to the airport to pick up Sean.

Waiting for their turn to practice.

Talking to Tiffany's mother about what else?  Shoes!

After church on Sabbath, we went to Lake Lotus Park where Tiffany and Anthony were putting on a potluck picnic for all the wedding guests.  This was in lieu of a rehearsal dinner the night before.  We had haystacks which were delicious but the highlight was definitely a peach pie that someone had homemade.  Ahhh, it's so nice to be pregnant and stuff your face without feeling all that guilty.  Only a few more weeks of that though and then I'll have to do without it all and get back on my treadmill.  But enough of those depressing thoughts.  We left as soon as we were finished eating so we could get the girls (including me!) back for a nap.  You have to ride a little tram to get from the parking lot to the park and as we rode back to our car, the heavens opened up and it started pouring like you wouldn't believe.  We were partially covered but it was so windy that the rain blew all over us anyway.  The girls thought it was the greatest thing and I wish I could have gotten a picture or a video of their excitement.

I missed the girls' birthday in their Sabbath School since I was teaching in mine.  Here Calleigh plays shy while they were singing to her.  

Aubree did great.  She even blew out her two candles by herself.  

  

Picture time at the park .

Definitely not a little belly any more.

Aubree loves to take her babies with her everywhere.  

  Toni, Terry, Sean, and Shannon (who eventually departed to go to bridesmaid stuff) came over in the early evening to have supper with us and then to watch the Bruins game.  Of course, the Bruins game did not go as we had hoped so that was a bit of downer but we always have a good time with those guys so it was fun nonetheless.

Sunday morning we had a small birthday party at Ron & Elaine's for the girls.  I was planning on doing something a little more elaborate in which we would invite 10 - 12 of Calleigh's friends but between the wedding, the rehearsal (thinking of doing a Friday party), and my general laziness from being pregnant, we settled on something small.  Since a few extra relatives were in town, it all worked out.  In attendance were Ron, Elaine, Toni, Terry, Sean, David, Yully, Aunt Wanda, Aunt Shirley, Tangie, Braelyn, and the twins.  I wanted Calleigh to have at least one little friend there so the obvious person was her best pal, Braelyn.  The girls swam, we opened presents (oh my, you should have seen Aubree's face when she opened her new baby doll.  Her joy was priceless!), had pizza that I had ordered, had cake (a princess cake from Publix) and then we hightailed it out of there for a nap.  I knew it would be crucial for Aubree to get her nap because I was very worried what she would be like come wedding time if she didn't.  As it was, I had to wake her up early to get down there but it ended up being Calleigh who was grumpy for a time because I think I had to wake her up after she had only been asleep for 45 minutes.  I had to bribe her into happiness with the promise of watching a movie on the way there. Thankfully, it worked.  Incidentally, I don't have any pictures of the birthday party because the camera died in our battery.  I need to get them from Ron so I'm sure they'll appear in the next post.

The wedding went beautifully, although as I alluded to, things didn't go exactly as planned with the flower girl responsibilities.  Neither of them handed out flowers to anyone but instead, they made a beeline right to me (I was in the second row from the front).  Oops!  Calleigh wouldn't go any farther anyway because she became intrigued with a firefly or some such insect that was parked right in the middle of the aisle.  Aubree started to cooperate and pass out the flowers to the people in the front row but by then, they started up the music for the bride and that was that.  Hey, at least they walked down and didn't cry so I count that as a success!  They started getting antsy, naturally, about halfway through the ceremony so to give them something to do, I told them they could pluck the petals off all the daisies left in their baskets (which was pretty much all of them).  And that entertained them for the rest of the time.  Whatever works.

I couldn't get any decent pictures of the girls.  This is the best I could get and it's not that great.

Duncan had to keep explaining to Aubree that you should pluck off one petal at a time but she just didn't get it.

We got a chuckle out of who Shannon was teamed up with in the wedding party.  He's like double her size.

The reception was right there so it was very nice not to have to go anywhere.  The girls ran around with a little girl named Abby to pass the time.  At one point, we joined up with Tiffany to take some pictures and Calleigh became very concerned that dirt was collecting on Tiffany's train which was trailing behind her (she forget to bustle it).  Tiffany asked Calleigh to carry the train and Calleigh took that job very seriously and didn't want to relinquish the duty at all when I said we needed to move on.  We sat at a table with Sean, Shannon, David, Yully, and Megan, and the food was very good.  It was cute....because they are both Disney freaks, they handed out these little cards that looked like Fast Passes and it said what time you could go to the buffet to get your food.  Very clever.  Another thing that was kind of ironic was that there were barely any kids there at all but there were two little boys (one was the brother of the girl Abby).  As it turned out, their names were Gavin and Brady which were the very two last names were were down to with naming Brady.  So that was pretty funny.

Aubree enjoyed the meal.

Shannon just couldn't fit in another bite because the dress was too tight.

By the time we finished the meal, it was around 8:15 and we figured that was our cue to depart.  I was tired and I could tell Aubree was beginning to drag.  I felt so out of it that after the girls went to bed, I didn't lift a finger to do anything else except check my email and crawl into bed with a book.  I left a giant mess to clean today.  I couldn't even see the floor in Calleigh's room but I had no energy to do anything about it.

So yes, a good portion of today was spent doing laundry and cleaning.  I felt like we came back from a vacation because nothing had been done around the house in days.  There just hadn't been time.  This morning we did leave long enough to go to Calleigh's swimming lesson which went very well according to Zoe.  Calleigh is getting much better with blowing her bubbles and is going under water all the time.  Zoe said she's floating by herself although she doesn't even realize it.  This was the halfway point of the lessons so I feel very good about it.

The rest of the week is shaping up to be just as busy.  Tomorrow we're going for a picnic lunch with a few people to celebrate Calleigh's real birthday and then on Thursday afternoon, we depart to go down to St. Pete where we have a rental condo for the weekend with Ron and Elaine.  The whole idea to go down there came about because we were going to go to Disney on Ice on Thursday night.  I ended up nixing it when I found it was Toy Story on Ice (no interest in that) and it turns out it was a good thing since the show was rescheduled to Wednesday.  This was due to the Lightning playing the Bruins in the playoffs.  So that worked out well for us in end.

Okay, I need to get my tired bones to bed.  Tomorrow is another day.