Happy Tuesday!

To my worldwide audience,

Life keeps rolling on....last week was the move, and last weekend the wedding. The wedding was a momentous occasion since it was 1) Gaylia's wedding and 2) the first of a long line of cousins to get married.

Lori's sister (Aunt Jodi) flew over from Iowa. We picked her up at the airport on Friday night (actually, Lori and the big girls made the trek to Portland late Friday night - I was providing moral support by babysitting the sleeping kids :-). Saturday morning we headed up to South Prairie (East of Puyallup, Washington). We arrived at around 2:00 and went to Alice and Dale's house (Alice is Papa Jim's sister) in Enumclaw, had soup for lunch/dinner, changed into wedding-suitable clothes, and then drove over to the church.

The wedding started at 6:00, and ended promptly at 6:05, when the preacher asked if anyone objected. That was a big mistake! Just kidding. It was a very nice wedding, with bride, groom, groomsmen and bridesmaids behaving nicely. Aunt Terri wrote a song for the wedding - it was beautiful. Of course the bride was stunning in her wedding dress. The groom looked okay too, but we all know that the groom is simply a must-have wedding artifact. I think that guys should play weddings and girls should dream about catching a big frog. What would life be like? Faerynn was particularly interested in "the kiss". I glanced down at her during the "you may kiss the bride" part, and Faerynn was riveted to the scene, with a slight grin on her face. On the other hand, Daniel was staring off into space, probably thinking about how he could get to the next level in Runescape - I rest my case.

After the wedding, there was a very nice dessert reception, with delicious cheesecakes and other scrumptious hors d'ouvres. Adrielle, Gaylia's soon-to-be engaged sister caught the bouquet. This was a pre-arranged and orchestrated catch, since all of the older girls knew that Adrielle was next in line.

At the reception we talked about how many wedding we were going to attend in order to see all of the cousins down the aisle. There are 50 between the two families. One alternative is that we could have double, triple or quadruple weddings. Instead of having one ceremony following the other, we could go through the different phases in parallel.....the preacher would say, "you may kiss the bride, and then, you may kiss the bride, and then, you may kiss the bride". I really liked the idea because it would save so much time and money. All of the cousins "of age" really disliked the idea, but I think that they just don't understand :-).

After the wedding we went back to Alice and Dale's to watch Olympics and then spend the night. On Sunday we went down to the Larson's for a nice visit. At about 3:00, uncle Russ, Uncle Dale and I decided that a game of golf was necessary - the guys really needed a break from socializing. The ladies quickly obliged (get the smelly men out of the house, quick!), and so we went back to Enumclaw, grabbed 3 sets of clubs and headed out to the golf course. We have a great time together, but the golf course was frozen tundra, with windravaged tree limbs strewn across the course. Somehow we managed to get through the ordeal without actually making par on any of the holes.

On Sunday night we watched more Olympics and then hit the sack. Monday morning we awoke to a grand breakfast with pancakes, waffles, eggs, ham, bacon, orange and apple juice, coffee and a great conversation at the breakfast table. We fiddled around for a bit, and then headed off into the sunset, after picking up the boys and little girls at the Larsons and the big girls at the Anderson's (Lisa's mom and dad). We stopped briefly at McDonald's on Hwy 7 (off of Hwy 512) to see uncle Shawn. At 2:00 we hit the road, and arrived in Dallas, OR at 6:30.

Anyway, that's about it for now.....

Before I go.......a man and woman were sitting down to breakfast....the man was reading an article to his wife about how women speak on average 30,000 words per day, and men speak 15,000 words. The wife replied "that's because we have to repeat everything we say", to which the man replied "what?".

ttfn,

-Shannon