Tara's Summer Wedding

The other exciting thing that Jacqui and I were involved in during August was our good friend Tara's wedding. She had it planned and personalized down to the flip flops for the reception! She hand made nearly everything, including toothpicks with flowers on top for the dessert table. In her fashion, and with her vision, Tara created an amazing and beautiful wedding. She was married in her parent's back yard, and they really presented their house and yard in an amazing fashion. The yard was perfectly manicured. Once we (I) got all the chairs (165) set up and all the 100 something yards of fabric draped around... it was time for the ceremony. It was lovely and went off without a hitch. I don't have all the pics from the wedding, just a few that I took with my own camera and they happen to be all of the girls... Jacqui was the flower girl and Alex's (the groom) step-brother was the ring bearer. I was one of the 4 bridesmaids. Tara had a gorgeous gown with a removable insert to enhance the bling! The colors were black, white, and fuchsia. It was beautiful and turned out to be a perfect day, even though we were pretty worried that morning because of the 30% chance of rain. What an event and what a gorgeous setting!

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First Day of School...

Well, since we are a family of teachers... I know this is super busy time of the year for everyone, getting the classrooms ready, meeting the kids, and assembling some kind of order in a chaotic classroom :) I am not a teacher (thank goodness!) but now have my baby in 1st grade! I can't believe she is already in 1st grade and all day school... She is SO excited to start; and this year will hold many firsts for both of us... She is going to a new school from last year, has a new teacher (of course) and will have all new kids in her class since she changed schools. She is also changing programs, which I am super excited about and will be in the Spokane Montessori program. We were able to meet her teacher early this week and check out the classroom. They have a turtle and some other little creatures that the kids take care of. Jacqui is stoked to be in all day school and is so far LOVING it! She did mention on Friday that the 2nd day of school was "way more complicated that the first day, I actually had to work on stuff today mom!" It was great!
Since I'm working day shift now, Hank and I are juggling schedules to try to get her to and from school... Jacqui opted to be in the before school program at the school. It is a great program, and I can drop her off before I go to work, since we don't start school here until 9am. They will feed her, help her with her homework if needed, and generally just hang out with other kids in the mornings before school for working parents. It is a neat program that Spokane offers, and Jacqui wanted to be AT school, not at day care, so it worked out well :)
These are her pics of her posing for her first day of school:) She is excited as you can see... Love the colors this year, the 80's are coming back! She has her 'Twinkle Toe' shoes on, apparently a hot commodity for her age group (gotta love TV marketing!). She loves her teacher, loves her class and is already making friends. She said she is the tallest person in her class. I'm not sure if this is accurate as she is in a 1-3 grade classroom, but I do know she had a few inches on many of the kids we saw at orientation... she's growing and will pass me up quite soon I'm sure!
Miss you all and hope the beginning of your school year is going well and settling down!

Grandkids Weekend 2010

Well August has flown by and I haven't had the chance to catch up the blog with pics... So I'm going to try to get some posts in, in the next few weeks of what has been happening!
Earlier in August was our annual 'Cousins Only' weekend with Grandad and Grandma and it was a perfect weekend in Walla Walla for us to all spend time together. The weather was beautiful, and we made the decision to take our pics earlier in the day, instead of in the scorching sun and dusk of the evening -- which has been a challenge in past years :) We all shared stories, laughed, and cried, and generally just had a good time being TOGETHER. We also had a great surprise with Levi showing up from Arizona... Grandma cried :) It was a great weekend! A small slide show of some of our great pics... We are an entertaining, performing family!

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Some of our favorite Priest Lake Pics

The explorers discover Upper Priest Lake!

Christa & Kayla enjoying the boat ride to Upper Priest Lake.

The future Olympic gold medal swimmer.

Jacqui on Uncle Jim's boat!

Kayla, Katie, Jim, Diana, Christa & Jacqui at Elkins with Chimney Rock in the background.

Thanks for having all of us over for a great time Dad and Diana! Great memories!

Priest Lake

AAAHHHHHH! The serenity of the lake and a hot summer day... Jacqui and I were thrilled to be invited back to spend a week with the Fied's and stay at Uncle Jim's new AWESOME cabin! This year we had a special treat and we had our own Huckleberry Loft that we got to 'camp out' in. It was a perfect size for Jacqui and we loved our little area:)We spent at least an hour, sometimes over 4 hours every day swimming in the lake. Jacqui is a little fish and Lucy even got in on the swimming this year. We all dipped in the lake and enjoyed the refreshing cool water. I loved getting up and going directly to the lake for a few hours just to relax and swim (I don't know where Jacqui gets her love of the water!). We also took some great boat rides with Uncle Jim. Mike, Sean, Uncle Jim, and Kayla attempted to wakeboard... they were all pretty successful, except Kayla who flew right out of the bindings for the board. I will totally be ready for an encore next year though! I will be working on it! Jacqui and Kayla sang karaoke at Elkins, Jacqui picked "Beautiful Girls" to sing, which is a hip hop song about a girl leaving a boy and he is suicidal -- not probably the most appropriate song, but she loved it and has been waiting ALL year to sing that song and there was NO talking her out of it! She was tickled and is working on figuring out what song she will sing next year... I loved having 5 days completely away from work. My cell phone barely worked up there (which was actually great!) and we had absolutely no schedule except to play hard and enjoy the scenery and the lake attitude and atmosphere. We both got some new sweatshirts for school this year. It was a much needed vacation, and a perfect break for our busy summer.

One other thing, Jacqui LOVED spending so much time with the cousins and Uncle Jim. All that attention had her performing her heart out. With the encouragement from Katie and Christa she has become quite the drama queen and quite the story teller... So if we see you, ask her about her trip, or about s'mores, or swimming with Lucy, or learning to play 'Oh Heck!' and she ought to have a great story for you :) We really loved seeing everyone and can't wait to see everyone for our cousin's weekend coming up. Love you guys and thanks for the great and memorable week for the summer of 2010~!

Priest Lake July 2010

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Happy Birthday Katie 7/21!!

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