Bryan and Stefanie's Wedding

My brother married his long-time girlfriend Stefanie on Friday, October 1st and I'm very happy for them both!

Dad was Bryan's best man, Jason was a groomsman, Frannie was a flower girl, and Adam was the ring bearer. 

Getting ready

I love this father-son picture. My dad has always been there for Bryan since he was a preemie baby boy and his wedding day was no exception. 

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You'd never know from this picture how much Adam truly hated this suit when I took him to try it on at the store (pouting/crying).  I thought we'd have to have cousin Miles do the job instead. Fortunately Daddy worked his magic (I think he can get Adam to do anything) and not only did Adam do the job of ring bearer perfectly, but he wore that suit all evening long. 

The Adam whisperer- Father and Son

Before the Ceremony

Pretty and sweet. I decided to do five cornrows in her hair the night before and take them out to give her hair some curl. I wasn't brave enough to attempt any complicated braiding or twisting styles since I'm still pretty inexperienced and the finished product often has bumps (which is ok for school, but not a wedding). Curls are a sure thing. Since her hair is stick-straight and won't hold curl well, this is the best way to give her a nice style that would last the evening.

Owning the red carpet

The Girls' Side: From Lewis, to Marr, to Castillo

Flower girl and Ring Bearer

The Ceremony

The night before the wedding I was told I'd be walking down the aisle with the kids. I guess during the rehearsal they were getting distracted with the long walk and right-hand turn. I'm very glad I chose a dress that matched their outfits!

I got teared up at this part. Weddings really are so beautiful. 

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Marr!

Aftermath

Awww...ain't we cute

This'll probably be our Christmas card

It was impossible to get a good picture of all three. Natalie is a real busy bee. 

Better than bunny ears

Stefanie and her family wore checked Vans in memory of her brother who passed away

I love this glamor girl photo

I love this one too. You can see Doreen there on the right. She was their photographer and she did an amazing job! (I've seen a few of her pics already.) I'm super proud of my sis!

The Reception
Stefanie is in love with the Nightmare Before Christmas Jack and Sally characters so she decided to make this the theme of the wedding. It was a very lovely elegant wedding with lots of little tasteful accents. Here is the piece de la resistance: The Cake!

The colors for the wedding were black, white, and red. Here are her cute "party favors" that were at each place setting.

M &Ms with their names and picture printed on!

Hershey chocolate bar with this wrapper

One of my favorite parts of the reception was watching the both of them do a little choreographed wedding dance. It was very adorable. They did a simple night-club two step and did a great job!

My other favorite part was just seeing so many family members that I haven't seen in a very long time. 

At the top of the list has to be my aunt Carrie and her boys Miles and Parker. At the last minute they decided to fly in from Washington state and they stayed with us! Frannie and Adam have been in kid-heaven for the past three days. I have loved spending time with my aunt and having her at the house. 

Diane, Donna, Viree, Vicki and Uncle Jack

These are my second-cousins (and Uncle Jack). I don't get to see them very often since Diane and Donna live in Georgia and Viree lives in Washington. I love them all though. They are all really good moms and have good kids and families. It's kind of fun for me too when they are around because we look alike (especially me and Diane) and there is something cool about being around the people who share your same features.

Top: David and Michael Byrne (Viree's boys) Jason Eckhart
Bottom: Trevor Eckhart (Vicki's boys)

                                                  

My Aunt Terri and Uncle Jack really know how to cut a rug. They are good little swing dancers.

I am hoping to upload some more family photos once I see what my dad took. I hope to get one of Alan and Ryan and Uncle Jim and Gloria and Sherry. I don't know if anyone got one of Rhiannon :/

So that's it for now. I'm tired. Uploading stuff takes forever!!

Having Fun with Frannie's Hair

Since my brother and Stefanie are getting married in one week and Frannie will be a flower girl, I've been spending time visiting hair blogs to get some ideas for her hair. There are some really talented women out there!

Check out these amazing styles.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=18171&id=132926950063444
These are done by Girly Dos by Jen

And another one I've spent a lot of time on is Adopt a Do. She gives really great tutorial videos.

Each of these ladies has other hair blogs linked on their sidebars so I've visited several of those as well.

Anyways, watching all of these videos has inspired me to have a little more fun with my girl's hair. At first, when I spent a bit more time on Frannie's hair she was really squirrelly and didn't like me to do it. She complained that her legs were tired and moved constantly. I saw on one of the videos that the woman's daughter sits up on the counter while she does her hair and I thought "Brilliant!" That has helped a lot because now Fran doesn't have to stand for so long and she can even eat a bagel or something while I am working on her. Also, as soon as Frannie could really see what the finished product looked like, she honestly stopped complaining about it, because she liked it :) Just looking from a handheld mirror didn't help, so I got the idea on that first day to take a picture of it so she could really see it.

So here is my first weeks worth of hairdos.

Taking advantage of the next-day curl

It's fun! I went out and bought a few supplies. A rat-tail comb for one, and some thin black hairbands. I need a few more thick hairbands too. I'd also like to get a few more embellishments for her hair, but I can't do any clips that will bug the back of her head when she's in the car. So the classic hair bows with metal clippies are out. I'm thinking she might be ok with a simple ribbon.  

Nit Nat News

Here's my little sweetie pie showing her cute new set of chompers! She's actually got two more little ones on top on either side of the fronts. I just love love love this baby girl. I just love having a baby to squish and love on in general, so Nit Nat gets a lot of attention. 

She is 15 months old. She has a love affair with the phone. She takes it, pushes millions of buttons, calls Japan, and says "hiii" in her little sweet voice. 

Just look at that sweet beach belly baby.

She's a messy one all right. I call her my dirty stinky smelly stinky ol baby. I say that in the sweetest way possible of course. She loves to go into the backyard and squish the box elder bugs. She'll sometimes bring half-dead ones into the house to show me. Cool. 

Here she is happy as a clam in the backyard hunting for bugs. 

We visited Granny and Nan this weekend. Here she's getting a kiss from her Great-great grandma Nan. Nan is a sweetie who loves the babies too. 

I know that some of the things Jason really loves is how she runs right up to him with her arms outstretched saying Da da! as soon as he comes home from work. She'll drop whatever she's doing to welcome him home.  Then she follows him into the garage and does her "uhn uhn" sound while pulling up on the bicycle. She wants a ride! 

One of the things I love the best is her face when I come into her bedroom in the morning or after a nap. It is just so full of light and joy. One of these days I need to remember to take the camera in with me when I first get her. I love that face. 

I also love how she runs with her hands fully open with all fingers flexed. She kind of throws her chest forward and arms back with hands open wide and RUNS! It's so cute to me!

Ok, ok, my gush fest is over. :)

Our Anniversary Ride

On Aug 24th Jason and I celebrated 8 years of marriage and 15 years of togetherness. That's a pretty long time I'd say!

In honor of our special day, he decided to take me out for a tandem bike ride (22 miles one way!!) to the beach. It was really fun! My butt hurt sooooo bad, but it was really cool to be able to talk to each other the whole way without having to crane our necks or shout like you normally do when trying to talk while riding. Also, he took me on a paved trail so there were no signals and no traffic so you could really just relax in the pace of the bike and enjoy the ride.

Starting out in Yorba Linda

Ain't that a cool trail?

Once we got to Newport, we stopped for lunch at the Crab Shack

On the way home my poor booty was soooo sore. I have no idea why. I've ridden a bike before of course, and I've gotten some soreness but nothing even close to this. I almost had to tell Jason that we needed to have my dad pick us up I just couldn't pedal anymore. So Jason told me to lift my feet and he started pedaling us both on the trail. He did that the WHOLE WAY HOME! He pedaled his wife's 140lb butt back home 22 miles. Can you believe that? Pretty amazing. Many people chided me along the way by saying "Hey! That's not fair!" or "You owe him dinner!" and we just laughed. I did appreciate him though for being so fit that he could do it!

Marrying him was the best decision I've ever made. 

Francesca's First Day of School

The alternate title for this blog is Mom Sends her First Born to School. It was just as much my first day (and Jason's and my parents') as it was hers.

I must start off by commending Frannie's bravery today. Do you what was on her mind as we were about to leave? Here it is:

Can you believe that? Now how, you may ask, did my little girl get in her mind that people would hit her or be mean to her?! I mean, this is crazy that this is what is going through her head and yet she is bravely going to school with no complaint or fuss! I am sad to say that I think the fault is a combination effort of both Reem and I. I have many teacher friends and many of the pregnant moms in my class have been teachers and I have been known to pass along a "can you believe what happened at school?" type of incident to Jason. The problem is that I've probably spoken in front of Frannie and I have a tendency to use the universal term 'kids' whether I'm referring to children her age, middle schoolers, or high schoolers. :/  I also think some of this is unintentionally Reem's doing because she comes over and tells animated stories of the kids she helps at the ICC school and will mostly talk about the ones who are really bad (don't we all do this type of thing?). And she'll often tell similar stories of crazy events that happen at her middle school. All in all I think that's what has affected Frannie's view.

So despite her cloudy outlook on what she would face, Frannie went to school and had herself a fine day.

a packed lunch

a gravity-defying walk to school

a few pics with her sibs

and her worry-wart mother and non worrier father

Here she leads the class in her part of the welcome song.

In spite of all my fears and worries, she never caves into them. She is a strong little girl who can hold her own in many situations. I think of her words "Making sure nobody hits me or bes mean to me." She isn't about to let anybody get away with anything. When I watch the video and see the little resolve in her spirit it makes me both laugh (because her answer was so unexpected!) and feel sad (that that is what she's anticipating) but in a way proud of her for being such a tough cookie!

Ok, so here's my pledge to her. To quit talking about school so d@mn much. I'm sure she's sick of it. I'm sure she's sick of hearing me talk about it, and every single other friend or relative we have who begins a series of 20 questions with her all about kindergarten, and what she'll face, and how it will be, and etc..etc..etc..etc..etc.. I'm just going to stop it. She's there already. It's out of my hands now. I need to just let her have her day and let her experience this year without trying to forecast every hill and valley.

Frannie, my dear, I love you so much. I'm glad you are who you are. 

Adam is Blossoming

Over the summer I've watched as Adam has really begun to come into his own. It has been so nice to see!

In my last post I showed some pictures of how he's swimming in the pool now. And just yesterday Jason taught him how to ride his bike without training wheels! It's totally amazing!

I've seen how being able to do these skills gives him so much confidence. He is always saying now that he's a Big Boy and that he's "willy stwong". Just yesterday he was screaming at the top of his lungs in the backyard and punching air. I went out there and asked what he was doing and he turned around and smiled and told me this whole story about how he was getting the dragon. So I guess he's becoming a little super hero now :)

On another note, his crying and tantrums have really changed as well. [Enter big sigh of relief.] I don't have near the problems with him that I used to. He understands "wait" and he'll say "ok, Mommy I'll wait". He always says please (sometimes even a "pwetty pwease") and thank you. He's a polite little guy! He says thank you so often that Natalie says thank you too.

He's still got that sense of humor of his and he often tells me "Ok, poo poo" and I'll answer back "Ok, poo poo". Or he says to me "Thank you sir." He tells my dad "Ok, Gwama" He's just silly.

I love my little son (ok, big boy) so very much!