Cousin Carolyn's gift was sentimental (and No. 1's a sentimental person).
Jake was the Best Man and he and Barbara (his wife) are wonderful people.
Happy (who hosted No. 1's wedding shower) and her husband, Jeremy, shown along the lake. If you look hard, you can see the reception in the background.
Chris, Jo Ann, and Nanette were also out by the lake chillin'. I called Chris "My Porter" because anytime I wanted something hauled he hauled it. I dropped off several coolers of food at this place, but I never touched any of it after that except to finish some last-minute baking. These kids laid out the entire buffet including crockpots (with minimal instruction).
Crap; I have borrowed coolers and probably can't remember who I borrowed them from.
There's Jessica fishing.
Chris and Jeremy:
Mel and Brian (both wonderful people). Thank you SO MUCH for all you did to help.
Here's Brian again with Evelyn. Evelyn is the one who said, "I'm here for you; ANYTHING you want me to do I will do." The others just DID anything I wanted them to do, but Evelyn made it clear that she was my slave for the day.
Interesting to see photos from others showing things I totally missed. Looks Like No. 1 had a similar opinion on the pain involved with hair doodles.
Also, I knew Dave was going to sing a song or two to my daughter on their wedding day, but I missed it.
There are several fairly accomplished musicians in this crowd, so there's never a shortage of entertainment when they're around. I was disappointed that we didn't get dance music for that patio area by the lake, yet I can't imagine when we could have squeezed in the time for it. Maybe (like so much other stuff) I just MISSED the dancing part. Heh.
The bachelorette party was, IMO, lots of fun. I'd never been to one before and wasn't even sure I was supposed to be invited to this one. Who invites their mom to watch them act a fool? Kids who know their mom can act a pretty good fool herself. I'm really proud of this next shot. Do you realize how hard it is to capture on film a ring hitting the target with the delays inherent in digital cameras? Five of us spent the night at the hotel. They offered a GREAT free breakfast in the morning. Melinda and Evelyn did a wonderful job hosting this event. I can't say enough good things about No. 1's friends. I love them all. As I said before, GREAT people.
Yes; there was a girl maybe aged 11 who followed No. 1 everywhere while she wore that dress holding it up and off the ground. Fortunately, for the young girl, No. 1 changed into street clothes before things got jumping.
Took a great picture of the first green beans from my garden a while back and need to get out there and pick more, but somehow green beans didn't seem like news with No. 1 getting married and all the pics I had of the Bachelorette Party, and now the wedding. Even with No. 2 and No. 3 in town for the first time in a long time I had to keep saying, "This is NOT about ME."
Oddly enough, Ken called today to see how everything was working out for me. Remember Ken? He's the guy who tilled the mushroom soil into my yard and got the whole thing going this past Spring. My garden is working out beautifully this year (so far), not JUST because of Ken; nature has been wonderful to us, giving rain, more rain, and more rain followed by sun, sun, more rain, sun, more rain, sun (rinse, repeat). These plants (and more than half of them are volunteers from throwing all our food scraps in the garden areas) think they're in heaven, but will soon realize that they're in hell when the rain no longer comes and I forget to use some of the rain water I've collected on them.
I'll get back to thoughts of gardening while No. 1 spends the week in Puerto Rico on her honeymoon this next week, but for now, here are some pics from the Bachelorette Party, Rehearsal Dinner, and Wedding.
For YEARS No. 1 has said, "When I get married, I want it to be outside and I want BOTH my dads to walk me down the aisle." Well, she had pretty much the world's longest aisle down a hill laden with bumpy tree roots, so it probably took two men to hold her up on that walk (in high-heeled shoes so the gifted dress would fit right without alterations). I look at that pic and wonder who was more nervous.
The wedding was held behind the house of the wedding planner (and school chum from UTA) who lives on a lake in Irving, Texas. It made a beautiful backdrop, as you can see here.
Summer was both the sitar player AND officiant. Everything about her performance in both roles was flawless. In fact, outside of burning to a crisp an entire pound of bacon (MY doing) and failure to get delivered the wooden plates I'd wanted (warehouse oversite somewhere), and running out of time before two planned side dishes were made (I made enough food to feed 12 armies and almost missed the wedding because I wasn't done making food), the entire thing went off without a hitch.
No. 2 (shown on the right above) did my hair and makeup as well as No. 1's hair and makeup. It is SO MUCH FUN to have someone else do your makeup ... with brushes of all kinds that tickle you all over your face. The hair thing ... not so much. She put it up and that required tons of pins and clips, some necessary and some as adornments, but they all pretty much hurt and it felt WONDERFUL to take it all out at end of day.
Everything I cooked turned out wonderful (so they told me) and looked great on the buffet table. No. 1's friends, Em, No. 2 and No. 3 slaved themselves to my every need. How often do you hear "I'm here for you. WHATEVER you want done, I'll do."? GREAT bunch of people. I don't want to hear any more of that bullshit about how the youth of today is this or that. They're the youth of today and they're GREAT people.
The grounds along the lake where the wedding was held was so expansive (for our purposes) that a quick look at some of the pics might lead one to think few people came. It was HOT (Duh ... this IS Texas, afterall) and people found shade both during the wedding AND the reception. One resourceful family even brought their fishing poles. Don't know if they caught anything, but there were fish in that lake. This is one of my favorite pics because I totally missed this. In fact, I don't know if she even threw her bouquet.
One bad(although not really bad) thing about shade along a lake kicks in when trying to take photos. The after-ceremony photos were taken on the way other side of the property with the lake (again) used as backdrop. Lots of trees and nice shade there, which meant that people stayed cooler but the pics came out so dark that they had to be lightened to see who we were and then the whole lake thing got washed away. /just sayin'.
Will be posting more pics all week long, maybe going back and forth from wedding pics to bachelorette party. I think you'll be able to discern the difference in events.
Here are just a few of those who came to see her walk across that stage.
Don't know who bought all the flowers or what happened to them while we went out to eat afterwards. We didn't buy any because we didn't know what to do with them while we went out to eat.
She wants to get a job after taking the summer off, waiting a year or so before grad school. We'll see how that goes. Very, very proud of her.
62 years old today, and starting to get little notices from my knees: "What did you DO to me?" "Nothing! Sit Down and Shut UP!"
Garden's doing great, IMO, considering all that's going on this time of year around here. No. 1 will be graduating next Friday and getting married 2 weeks after that. Little by little, our house is being filled with borrowed serving items and alcohol/other stuff purchased for this event.
Peaches are ripening on the trees.
Have 4 sweet potato "rounds" in the backyard:
Will be planting cantalope and cucumber in the 1 round reserved for the sweet potato that died and the 1 round reserved for the horseradish that died. [R.I.P.], as I'm running out of space to separate squashes from cucumbers from watermelon from cantalope.
Thought I ought to get these pics up of the rhubarb because I'm gonna be pickin' it to make strawberry rhubarb dessert soon.
We've been eating salads for several weeks now consisting of turnip greens mixed with lettuce, mixed with strawberries, smashed almonds, quinoa, orzo, etc.
Last year's compost turned out to have so many volunteers that they've overrun the Home Depot tomato and pepper plants I planted this year. For a long time, I thought the volunteers were cucumber or cantalope (because we eat a lot of that), but it looks now like maybe zucchini, so I've been pulling up the zucchini planted elsewhere and looking for places to plant cantalope and cucumber = reason for using the unused mounds.
Incorporating the heirloom tomatoes and peppers that I'd started in those Burpee things this Spring. Here are a few of them already planted outside with the beans and strawberries, which will be going through slow "mounding" processes with mushroom soil in an attempt to simulate the replanting they might have gone through with someone with a greenhouse.
I'd thought to plant something with the asparagus, but ended up giving them a newspaper mulch because their octopus-like roots seem to get disturbed during weeding. Waste of space, IMO, but weeding that asparagus patch was hard.
There MIGHT be some cantalope & cucumber volunteering in the NEW compost/garden area:
