Wedding Week - Family Arrivals!

Our wedding week was quite a jam-packed event!  On Wednesday (4th of July) Keith and I headed home to my parents house in Louisville with our cars loaded up with all of our wedding clothes and necessities, along with our honeymoon luggage.  I gave the pups a few extra treats and some wuv time (love time) before sadly heading out and promising to be back in 12 days.

While I normally quite enjoy the 4th of July, I actually despised it this year because it stupidly prevented me from getting a ton of my wedding errands taken care of (like printing the guest list at Kinkos and picking up gifts for my bridal luncheon hostesses).  All was not lost though, because my sister and brother in law and my sweet little Mason arrived around 8pm and we poured some wine and relaxed with my Aunt Sherri, Uncle Ara, and cousin Summer who had flown in the day before from Cali.  We had a big time hanging out in my parents backyard while the boys smoked cigars and the gals chatted it up and watched the neighborhood fireworks. 

If you can't tell, this is my favorite way to sit...legs draped over the boy.  I do it at home, at the movies, and pretty much everywhere, including the gate at the airport while waiting for our flight to leave on Sunday, and on the plane.  Can't help myself!

On Thursday, the real festivities began!  I woke up early and went on a run with my sister before the boy and I headed down to the County Clerk to get our marriage license.  We thought it might be a time-consuming errand, but once we got there, it actually only took about 15 minutes, and I might add that despite some long-standing stereo-types about people from Kentucky....you cannot marry your cousin there (they verify if you are related when you apply). 

By Thursday evening, pretty much all of our out of town family had arrived in Kentucky, including a plane with 14 family members on it, flying in from various parts of California, and my aunt Patty & Uncle David from Georgia, Aunt Karen from Texas, and the boy's family from Georgia as well.  As has become the tradition, we welcomed everyone to my parents house for a cook-out, some adult beverages, and a little corn-hole.  We probably had about 40 people at the house, and with it hovering somewhere around 100 degrees, it was HOT, HOT, HOT inside and outside of the house.  Even though we were pretty much melting, spirits were high and we had a great time.  I will admit though, that seeing how miserably hot is was had me freaking out all week because our wedding and reception was outside.  It was hard to put that aside and try not to obsess about it (which I did anyways) but I tried to just enjoy the evening for what it was.

Cousins Jayme and Summer, and myself

A mix of my cousins, the boy's family, and members of the wedding party

mom and brother

Me and future husband

A little cornhole action

Aunt Kathy and Uncle Mike

Cousin Kevin and Uncle Mike

We found some hilarious pics of my aunts in the 80's while looking through my baby pics...we blew them up and made them into fans to use at the cook-out...it was really quite amusing, though somewhat less amusing to Aunt Patty and Karen

Me chatting it up with the boy's mom and looking like I have a baby bump (a just to be clear, I do not have one and won't for a long while!)

The point in the evening where Brynn started just holding her wine in everyone's face while she was talking to them...just for funzies

brothers, cousins, and mom being ridiculous

I will say that of all the great conversations and catching up I got to to with mine and the boy's family, the real highlight of my night was coming out to say goodnight to everyone after I had washed my face and put my glasses on, only to find my mom, dad, sister, brothers, fiance, and several members of the wedding party shotgunning beers in the backyard.  Apparently I just don't know how to party. 

It was a fun evening had by all, most especially my dad, who the next morning said, "The last time I felt like this after drinking was in college..."  And let's just make a round-about guess about how many years back that was, shall we?  Unfortunately for my Dad, he had been working on a golf scramble for the last month with about 25 of our friends/family members for Friday morning, and they had 9:30am tee time.  Did I mention that it was about 104 degrees on Friday?  I'll let you imagine how that went...

Next up will be a recap of Fridays events, starting with my bridesmaid luncheon!  Can't wait to share more!

sparkler "pose-offs" & acoustic trauma

Happy 4th of July to all my sassy readers out there!  I have to say that the 4th of July is slowly becomming one of my favorite holidays, if for nothing else but the fact that it allows me an extra paid day off work.  This year it has been especially helpful in that it delays the inevitable email jail I will be in upon my return from vacation at least on more day.  Hallelujah!

I also love Independence day because it affords me the freedom to drink copious amounts of acohol with my girlfriends and try not to pee myself from laughing so hard at our sparkler pose off we had this weekend.  The boy loves 4th of July too because this year he had a little mishap with a sumo-sparkler that will allow him to play deaf for the next week everytime I ask him to put the toilet seat down in the bathroom (though I suspect he does this anyways)....but more on that later...

So our celebration started out with a little cookout and adult beverages at Miranda's house and ended with  me coaxing my Sawyer boy out from under the grill cover because he's not much of a fan of fireworks.  Poor boy.  Here he is when he was still speaking to me:

Anyways, no 4th of July would be complete without fireworks, so being patriotic like we are, we brought about $20 worth of sparklers, fireworks, and rocket sparklers to the party.  The fact that he got to light things on fire made the boy pretty happy....

As I said, the night started out innocently enough with some sparklers....

And then the boy got the party started with some things that pop and make pretty colors....

Look at how proud he is of his work!  At this point, one of Miranda's neighbors had come out to her driveway to express her displeasure at our firework show, by watching silently from her front porch.  I'm not all that sure what was so offensive about our show other than my constant reminders to the boy that I was not stuck with him and if he bent over the fireworks one more time while they were going off, I would come visit him and his mangled face in the hospital with my new boyfriend.  Besides, if she didn't like the show to this point, I doubt she cared much for our next display of drunkenness: The Rocket Sparkler Pose-Off.

I went first.

Then went Whitney....

Ahh....fire can be so much fun.  The boy tried to get festive and take a turn at the pose off with our last Rocket Sparkler, but as I we were readying ourselves for pictures and watching the fuse burn down to light the sparkler, something strange happened.  Instead of lighting off the sparkler, it caught and blew up....no really...it was a boom so loud, I got in bomb shelter position like it was the '40s or something. 

Once we all got up and stopped our stunned laughter, I thought it was appropriate to check on the boy and make sure he still had a face.  Turns out he does.  He also had some ringing in his ears that wouldn't go away either.  No worries though....he consulted his friend who has a doctorate in audiology and he said that he will probably have some ringing and hearing loss for a few days, but it would go away.  Besides, a little acoustic trauma never hurt anyone.

In closing, I leave you with these....happy 4th friends, strangers, and stalkers!  Hope you all have a safe, acoutic-trauma-free holiday!