Mom’s wedding Day part 2

Mom and I pulled up and aside from being greeted by six-shooters, and a general feeling of “she’s here we can start,” I was greeted by, “as soon as the ceremony is over I’m driving over to the ER.”  And looked at Jeff’s thumb to see it completely swathed in gauze and medical tape, and I was starting to see blood through it.  This was not a good sign.

 
The wedding got started and Sean walked down the aisle next to Patrick.  It was an all family wedding.  Sean, my brother, performed the ceremony.  All of the bridesmaids and groomsmen were family members, except for one or two of the groomsmen.
I walked down right before the 4 ring bearers and the flower girl, as maid of honor.  I could barely walk in those boots, okay that may be exaggerating, but still they hurt.
  
The ring bearers all did great walking down the aisle.  Princess, not so much, she did wonderful at rehearsal, gleefully flinging flower petals all about.  When it came to the actual time to do it.  Not so much, she saw all those people and just stood there.  Her brothers more or less gently nudged her down the aisle.  Not a single petal was thrown on the actual trip down, but when we were walking back up for pictures did she throw them.

Everyone had a really good time.  We decided that regardless of what Mom said they needed to have a first dance, so Sean announced it, and they got one.
My brother Chad walked Mom down the aisle, we joked that’s his official role at weddings because he walked me down the aisle at mine.  Dawn, his wife was one of the bridesmaids, and obviously their boys were some of the ring bearers.


I’d show you pictures of the garter toss and the bouquet toss, but really I’ve never seen a more reluctant group of people to try and catch them.  The bouquet was caught by a girl  who was almost forced up there by her friends.  The garter was picked up grudgingly by a teenager after it’d fallen on the floor.  I think Princess was the most eager girl there, and she really had no idea what was happening.

And luckily for us, and for the wedding in general there was a playscape there, and all the cousins had a blast.  And Aunt Tara was nice enough to entertain kids while I had to be in a lot of pictures.  So, I’ll take a break from narrating for a bit, and instead just give you a bunch of fun pictures of kids playing.  My kids are such hams.
    
The boy in all these solo shots is Superman, who insisted “take my picture Mommy,” and so I had about 10 pictures of him, these are the cutest 3 and probably most like his personality.  I felt kind of sorry for the photographer trying to get 5 preschoolers to all look at him, when all they want to do is play with their guns.  I kid you not, that’s all they were going to do.




I almost missed the running out, I did miss getting to blow bubbles on them, but I at least got a shot of them walking out.
Poor Jeff missed the whole reception, he grinned and bore it through the whole ceremony, and then stuck around for about 10 minutes worth of pictuers.  By the end he had bled through the entire roll of gauze and was standing there with his hand cupped as the blood dripped in his hand.    As Mom drove up Jeff got back from the ER, and told us all about what happened.



So, end result for Jeff.  And, as a random side note, let me just say he looked so handsome, and don’t you think there’s something great about a guy in a white undershirt?
Jeff had partially severed the tendon on his left thumb, and got five stitches.  The ER nurse and doctor said it was one of the worst of that type of injury they’d ever seen.  So, that was exciting in a bad way.  But, plus side the Urgent Car place he went to was very helpful gave him the stuff to change his bandage, and were very nice, from the reports I got.
And that concludes our crazy crazy wedding day.

Totally should have said how he hurt himself.  He was opening one of the toy guns for the kids, and his brand new knife he got for being a groomsman slipped right through the plastic and into his hand.  OUCH!

Mom’s wedding Day part one

 

To find out about the Rehearsal and the craziness there, go to this post.

 

Saturday started off like most important days do, with too much left to do, and not enough memory to remember what you need to do.  I set off to reach Mom’s house to have my hair and make-up done a little late, but thinking I’d be okay.  Then I stopped for donuts, forgetting the usual Saturday morning rush, add 30 minutes, and I was an hour late getting over to Mom’s.

 

But, that’s okay because Haley did a WONDERFUL job, can you believe that’s me?  Apparently I shine up real good when you spend almost an hour putting make-up and curling my hair.  Oh, and when I actually wear jewelry.  Princess didn’t do so well at the hair styling…….  And that’s an understatement.

 

 

 

They probably tried for almost ten minutes to get her to sit still long enough to get some curls in her hair.  They got some, but not as many as they wanted.  Haley and Sandy were amazed when they asked her if she wanted to look like a princess, and her answer was “No, I want to look like Batman.”  They didn’t quite know what to do with that.  I just tried not to laugh because I think Haley had a hot curling iron on my head, and I didn’t want burns.

 

 

Meanwhile Mom is getting ready and my brother Sean is calling to find out if the piano is still at the house.  It is, so he sends Jeff over to get it while he finishes setting up the sound system.  Jeff runs in gets the piano a power cord, and a couple of other things.  He then calls back about 5 minutes later and wants to know if I see the cord anywhere.  I don’t, but I search around Mom’s garage (in my wedding clothes at this point) and finally find one, and take a picture and email it to him to verify if it’s the right one.

 

Meanwhile, my brother is calling to see if I found one, and Jeff is telling me he can’t see the picture, just bring whatever cords I can find.  While all this is going on my aunt and the various other ladies there head off, and it’s just me and Mom.  I hadn’t realized Mom was riding over with us.    Finally Sean says he’s going over to the church to grab some cords, and don’t look any more, just get over to the barn.  So, finally I have Princess loaded, we’ve got all the relevant stuff we need, and Mom is opening the door to my car, when she freaks out.  I mean totally freaks out.

 

Random side not, isn’t that the most incredibly adorable picture of Princess, and the photographer got better ones I’m betting.  I can’t wait to see the pictures, she’s holding a Cabbage Patch Kid’s horse that used to be mine as a kid, see the yarn bridle?  I made that.

And she had good reason, it seems that as she opened the car door, the rings fell off her finger and she heard a jingling sound as they fell.  I searched under the car, and there’s no sign of it.  So we look over next to us at the storm drain and think bad thoughts.  She sends me over to her neighbor’s house to see if he’s home and can help us get the rings out of the drain.   Luckily they were home and he had the materials to get the drain cover off, and he valiantly climbed in there.

 

As he’s climbing around in there, his wife is shouting advice to him, and their friend who I’m guessing is an amateur photographer is shooting pictures with her camera.

 

 

 

Finally the ring is located and he climbs out.  Then there’s a brief moment of more panic as Mom thinks the rubies have fallen out of the setting, but everyone assures her they’re there.  She just can’t see them without her glasses.

And, I’d like to emphasize, it was not me who almost lost the rings.  Just to make that clear, before my brother tries to spread any more rumors.

 

Quick shot of all the bridesmaids, and then I’m going to leave you hanging on who went to the ER until tonight, when I post part 2……….

In the pictures: Dawn (sister in law), me, Mom, Donna (aunt), Jenn  (sister in law)

Superman you can see his face with the boys, and Batman is hiding, bottom picture Batman is the one looking sad.

Part 2 to come tonight.  You finally find out who went to the ER, you get to see that we didn’t walk Patrick down the aisle with a shot gun like we joked. 

Science Sunday: How is tea made?

 

As you may recall Batman asked a few weeks ago how tea is made, but at the time I wanted to blow something up.  That and I wanted to look it up to make sure I would be able to explain it well.  I was thinking it was something to do with diffusion.

I found this site, it’s a PDF with an experiment, that does a good job explaining it all, but it wasn’t really making tea, but it gave me a general concept to work around.

And by the way, when I googled tea diffusion I came up with all sorts of things that weren’t even remotely close to what I wanted, but were a bunch of high school chemistry stuff.  We’re so not there.

Supplies needed: water (boiling hot, room temperature, and ice water), tea bags, clear cups to be able to see the change or measuring cups.  And excuse the messy counter.

First we all predicted which would make tea fastest, general co census (didn’t know that was two words) is the cold water according to their predictions.  I think Princess might have said hot.  I was doing this super quick before leaving to get last minute things for the wedding yesterday, so I didn’t really follow “scientific procedure,” more of we had fun and got it done, and then they drank very sweet tea.

Then the kids had lots of fun stirring around the different teas and putting their fingers in.  I did figure out if we do this again to always make sure to use the same teas in every one of them.  The two colder ones were chocolate chai, and it looked darker faster because they were a darker tea than the mint tea I used in the hot water.

The kids also noticed it became tea faster as they moved the tea bags.  They also discovered they didn’t like it when they broke open the tea bags and dropped the tea leaves all over their tea.



Afterwards they had lots of fun drinking their different teas with two lumps of sugar (special treat of extra sugar).

 
Scientific mumbo jumbo: Because the molecules in warm water move faster the tea forms faster in the hot water.  I also learned that tea is not made through diffusion, but through osmosis because the water is moving through the tea bag, not the tea moving out into the water.  Interesting, no?


Now, it’s your turn, what have you done this week?

My Mommy got married and boy what a wild ride that was

The day before started off with a birthday party for the kids.  They had a blast, and I had a blast, and everyone had fun, but it really tired them out, and in retrospect it might not have been the best of decisions, but I probably would have made the same one again, because it was a good friend of both me and the kids.  She’s been to all the kids’ birthday parties for the last year, so I didn’t want to miss hers.

 

 

If you’ve been keeping up with my facebook postings you’ve known I’ve been working like crazy on projects that I HAD to get done for both the wedding and the party.  You can see the final results of one of the projects.  I finished the boys vests, minus snaps right before we headed off for the rehearsal.  By the way, don’t you love Superman on those bottom two pictures?  Isn’t that priceless?  And then on the top one you’ve got Superman busy posing all tough, and Batman pretending to kiss the sign.  I’m not quite sure why.

 

The kids all did WONDERFUL walking down the imaginary aisle.  Princess did a fabulous job of throwing out the flower petals, and when she got to the end she dutifully dumped out whatever petals she had left.  Seriously.  She made sure there were none left in the basket, and she was very happy they were pink petals.  Very happy.

 

The actual rehearsal went well, more or less.  We were mostly serious.  Okay, I was horrible.  I’m not good at being serious.  Not at all.

I did not set a good example on the first time through, but I did get more serious the second time through and did not make any more smart aleck comments.  I just thought them really loudly.

 

Post to continue on Monday, when I’m not trying to write this with all my make-up and hair still somewhat in curls at 11:30 at night, and just sitting here thinking I really want to take a bath, and get not so done up.  To have you wondering what happened on the day itself, I’ll leave you with these teasers:

 

1.  Someone went to the ER.

2.  We had a major hiccup with something very important to the wedding.

3.  I was late to get where I was supposed to be because I misetimated time.

4.  I wore make-up and had my hair done.  Seriously, this is a big deal for me, I never bother with that stuff, who has time for it with three pre-schoolers?  I’m doing good most days if I get a shower or brush my hair.

South American books and animals and such

Honestly, I was kind of bleah on the books we got from the library this time.  Nothing to truly inspire great projects.  So our lapbook for this is rather bland, and forgettable.


So, all I have to share with you are lots and lots of animal printables.  Nothing exciting, but my kids still love to do these.
Tree Frog and Army Ant
Tapir and Macaw
 Sloth and Jaguar
Fruit Bat Boa Constrictor
My kids continue to be fascinated by anything and everything that a jaguar can eat, probably because of their love for GO Diego GO, much to my dismay.  As annoying as I find it sometimes they’ve learned a lot from the show, and they do incorporate it into their play A LOT.

Since I have nothing exciting to say about these, but still wanted to share them, I’ll show you an amusing picture of my kids.

 

So, I’ve taught them a “bad habit,” I firmly believe the best way to eat Wendy’s fries is to dunk them in a frosty, and I’ve taught my kids.  Then they started getting silly, and using them as straws.

I’d show you our other exciting South America forays, but really the closest was the crayon resist, and it didn’t turn out great.  So all in all, I found our trip to South America disappointing, but I console myself with I can do it again and BETTER when we go back to individual countries, and by that time I’ll have had more time to dream of ideas.  Sigh……….