Jessica's Wedding

What a wonderful day! Jessica and Chris got married on October 8, 2011.  So happy that we could be a part of this.

Jessica's mother-in-law found these wonderful flower girl dresses online for $20!

Here comes the happy couple!

Attacked, I mean surrounded, by the nieces.

Too much fun in two days.  Fell asleep on the way to the the chapel.

At the reception...

oh dear

Rough housing with the Joneses!

After a long day of driving and decorating, it was time to have fun!

Decorating for Jessica's Wedding

The weekend Jessica got married was a very popular weekend for church activities.  None of the nearby chapels were available for use!  We ended up having to go to a building in Bulverde which is about 45 minutes away from my house and about 15 minutes away from the temple.  But everything turned out well and since that church was so new, it had everything we needed (or forgot)! Plus the furniture was upholstered in the same colors as Jessica's wedding.  How perfect is that?

Jessica's beautiful design for the tables. (She found every decoration online and on sale, the tablecloths even came from Craig's List!)

Adam, Kendra, Keeley and his family all drove together from Utah to come to the wedding. 

They drove straight through and then came and helped us set up!  What troopers!

The lovebirds

Everyone had a job.... 

Setting up the lights

Preparing the food

Making the bouquets

Beautiful!

Decorating the cake

 My secret for getting buttercream to look smooth (shhh!)

Snowball fight!

Driving to Adam and Kendra's wedding

For Christmas break, we drove to Arizona for Adam and Kendra's wedding.  We drove for 2 days, were there for a day and a half, and drove back for two days.  I'm so glad everyone was able to be there for the wedding.  It was kinda hard for me because I was so sick with my pregnancy.  But thank goodness my sisters, Rachel and Sara, were there to help me with Norah.  They were wonderful!

We stopped in Carlsbad one night and since we got there pretty early in the day, we decided to go to Carlsbad Caverns.

Norah was scared at first.  She thought there would be a bear in the cave.

 We got separated as we walked though the cave.  It's enormous! But at one point, we could've sworn that we heard our dad's sneeze.  It's pretty unique.  So Nicholas yelled, across the darkness of the cave, "Bless you, Dad!" Turns out it was him, and he was embarrassed because apparently you're supposed to be quiet in the cave.  Oops! 

We drove though the Guadalupe Mountains

Norah got to throw snowballs in the mountains.

We had an all-out "snowball" fight. It was hilarious!

Halloween

Ever since Norah and I discovered Rainbow Brite on Netflix, she has loved it!  I still have some of my toys that my mom saved since I was little.  She loves to play with them.  I happened to be talking about it to a friend from church and she mentioned that she had a Rainbow Brite costume from when she was little!  She let Norah borrow it for Halloween and it was perfect!

The ward Trunk or Treat was fun.

 

Norah and her friend Mia eating cupcakes they won in the cake walk. (I think it was rigged for little kids to win)

She was tired by the end of the night.

Jessica's Wedding Shower

My sister got married in October.  Her maid/matron? of honor gave her a wonderful shower.  It was so much fun!  Aruna was our next door neighbor growing up and she and Jessica were BEST friends.  They even roomed together in college! It was fun catching up with her.

 The two matchmaker sisters: 

Angela and I go to the same ward and we were talking one day at Book Club about our two siblings, realized they were the same age and both single!  We had to get them together.  And what do you know?  It worked!!!!  We're so happy for them.

Sea World Fireworks with the Thompsons

We got to watch the Sea World Labor Day (I think, it was a while ago) fireworks with the Thompsons.  It was so fun!.

 We ate root beer float cupcakes with milk.  Yum!

We had really great seats by the water but boy was it hot!

Norah's 3rd birthday

So I'm finally feeling better!! Hooray!  And now I can get back to blogging.  I have lots of pictures to share but just haven't been feeling well enough to do much of anything.  Let's start with Norah's 3rd birthday.

 It was a rainbow themed birthday.  I made rainbow colored ice cubes with kool-aid. They were a little sour but the kids loved them like that and I saw them sucking on them mostly instead of just drinking with them!

Norah got lots of fun presents and she loved them all!

Her rainbow cake was so fun to make.

We had lots of friends and family come.  Thank you!