More Hairstyles

I'm still having fun with Frannie's hair in the morning. Here are some pics!

It's fun having a girl :)

Miles and Parker come for a visit

About a week before Bryan and Stefanie's wedding I got a call that my Aunt Carrie, who lives in Washington state, would be coming down for the ceremony. I quickly offered her a place to stay and within a few days we grew from a family of five to a family of eight! (Plus occasionally a family of ten when my mom and dad were over.) It was so fun for me to have my aunt here and to see her little boys Miles and Parker again. The kids all love playing together so the house was a bit of a madhouse at times. Call me crazy but stuff like that just makes me happy. Maybe it is because I didn't grow up seeing my extended family very often, so when I watch Frannie, Adam and Natalie playing and having so much fun with their cousins I feel so glad that they will have some really awesome childhood memories and relationships.

Frannie (5), Miles (4), Adam (3), Parker (3), Natalie (1)

The other thing that made me glad?
Well, I am SUPER glad for the July Home Makeover Extravaganza. It felt so good to be able to instantly offer up my house as a place to stay when she called. Even though the one month of inconvenience was a pain in the butt at the time, it was worth having it all done and now we can just enjoy the house. Also, because we had to move all of the furniture out of the bedrooms when the upstairs got carpeted, we used that opportunity to turn the 3rd bedroom into a real bedroom instead of a mish-mash office/bedroom/playroom space. Having already moved all of that office furniture out of there and Adam's twin bed in, made Carrie's visit super-easy to prepare for. Whew!

My Aunt Carrie is super great and I love having her around. She is very down-to-earth and funny. She's a no-nonsense kind of a mom who is quick to keep the boys in check and also offers tons of love and snuggles too. The boys are really really sweet kids and if there is one thing that lifts my spirits it is knowing that, at least in my family, everyone is doing such a good job raising their kids! (They're all older than I am so I have a lot of good examples to strive for.) I may not see everyone very often, but when I do see them it's nice to know that the Marr ladies are doing it right. (Well, last names never stay the same with women so it's Campbell-King, Marr-Eckhart, Marr-Byrne, Borkman-Flad, and Borkman-Reed.)

Can't wait to see her again! Next time it will probably be us flying to Seattle. 

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.