Jonathan and Danielle marry -July 12, 2009

Okay Folks, you are opening the longest blog post I have ever done, but I plan to tell the story mostly in pictures, so this should be fun.

Jonathan and Danielle Wyatt, Zachary and my nephews were ushers. Wyatt took this job very seriously after much whining about all the pictures and being outside in the heat. He would take the man's hand and lead him and the family to their seats -very cute.

Wyatt was beaming when we had him fitted for his tux. When he went to pick it up, he tried it on and was disappointed that he didn't get to try on the cuff links too. Andy said he wanted to wear it home.

Julia said she would be embarrassed to be a flower girl. I couldn't see her coming down the aisle because she was so short, but she hopped into her place at the alter. I have heard that the musician behind kept poking her with his bow and appeared to get a kick out of her.

These two say they want to get married which tickles me because I know this will change over the years.

Danielle's brother was her man of honor, and the rest of her attendants were these five beautiful and sweet girls. Three of them are sisters (her cousins), and well, you know the other two.

My beautiful girls. I was worried a little about Savannah because everything has to go as she is told it will go, and we did not account for the musicians when we placed the girls for the wedding. However, Savannah did just fine.

my handsome boys

they clean up all right, don't you think?

wow, what girl wouldn't want a date with this funny and handsome young man?

The Todd grandchildren

Page- party of six

my parents

Logan and Austin

My sister Tiffany with her husband Tony and the boys

my sister Tara

The reception was held in a gorgeous old theater

We were greeted with several posters like this one with pictures of Jonathan and Danielle. The kids really got a kick out of the favors - a box of M&Ms with pictures of Jonathan and Danielle on the candies.

I just missed the kiss, but I like this picture -sorry I am on vacation, so I haven't cropped or fixed any of these pictures yet. I also felt like my pictures that showed off Danielle's dress were too dark, so I don't have any on this post. Trust me, it was beautiful.

My brother Joshua gives the toast. He is a very quiet guy who doesn't like attention. Yet, he did a great job!

This is my Uncle Jack (Mom's brother) and my Aunt Janie

This is my cousin BJ with his wife Angela, and their son Jack. Jack is the sweetest baby. This was the first time I have seen him, and he kissed me goodbye. Can we say future heart-breaker? BJ and I were born just a couple of months apart.

Zach and Logan think they have the edge on the garter toss.

Zach put his cotillion experience to good use, and he pulled away from Savannah when I got my camera. I convinced him to let me get the picture --so glad he cooperated.

This boy loves to dance! Here he is busting a move!

This is my cousin Susie (Dad's side of the family) with her husband Eric, and their daughter Lesley. She lives a couple of hours away, so we rarely ever see her. Susie and her family came to an open house at our house a couple of years ago, and a friend of mine asked his wife who the other woman was who looked like one of my family members but wasn't my sister.

watching the kids dance is one of the best parts of attending a wedding

Andy took a break from dancing with Julia, and she was practically in tears. He danced (appropriately) to "Brown-Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison with Julia. She was upset when the Cha Cha Slide was being played (one of her favorites), and he wasn't out there. Wyatt kept Savannah busy on the dance floor. I think she got a little tired of it, but that is her payback for wearing me out at a wedding four years ago because she wouldn't leave the dance floor.

my sister Tessa with her friend Chris - Tessa is on crutches because she needs a hip replacement, so she told him he would be her gopher at the wedding.

This is supposed to be the serious picture of my brothers and sisters and me. From left to right we have- me, Tara, Tessa, Jonathan, Tiffany, and Joshua. (Birth order would be me, Tiffany, Tara, Jonathan, Tessa, and Joshua.

This is Jonathan and his groomsmen. Jonathan, Patrick (my friend Stacey's younger brother -she and Patrick grew up across the street from us), Damon, Jimmy, and Joshua

It was a beautiful wedding and a fun and beautiful reception. Danielle was the most relaxed bride I have ever seen. She was ready to have fun and was not bothered by those little things that always go wrong at weddings. Fortunately, if I missed any pictures I wanted (and I did), I can get them from the website Jonathan and Danielle have for guests to post pictures.

They have dated for years, and we have hoped for this for a long time. I hope they have many years of happiness together. I love my new sister-in-law!

this is goodbye

13 years ago this month, I got Andy a dog for his birthday. He wanted a big dog, and I had my little Yorkie, so I found this dog through a local shelter. She was about a year old with plenty of puppy left in her.

We were amazed at how slowly she aged especially for a big dog, but the last year has brought on a rapid decline in her health. She saw the vet on Friday for routine shots. In preparation for this, we have to give her drugs because the vet makes her nervous and she snaps at him. Andy had to carry her in to the vet and repeat that procedure to get her in the house. For close to 36 hours now, she has been unable to stand on her back legs. We know she is miserable, and we know it is time. She will see the vet either tomorrow morning or Monday morning, and we will say goodbye.
This is one of my favorite things done by Bambi - she crosses her paws.

None of our children can remember life in this family without Bambi, so I took a picture of each of them with her.

Zach is taking it the hardest.

Savannah noted that she is the only person in the family who has had Bambi in her life since she was born.

Bambi has been a good dog with a few bad habits such as:

• tearing up a room if she is confined in it
• she does not like tall men and once ran one out of our house

She is like other dogs in that a good scratch under her collar is like sending her to paradise. She has made me feel safe when Andy has travelled as I am convinced that she would fight to the death for us if she felt we were threatened.

She is not like other dogs in that she has never liked to play tug of war with a sock.

The timing here is difficult as we do have a special wedding tomorrow, but Bambi has had bad days off and on for months now. She has fallen down the stairs several times, and she had one other episode for several hours where she was unable to move. She has slept more than she has been awake for the last few months, so it has been a slow goodbye. It is hard to even imagine what life will be like without this dog, but she has lived a good, long life.


July 12th morning update - she is gone. Andy is gone with her now. I need to calm down and get myself ready for the wedding. It is nice to have something fun to look forward to. I am anxious to see the girls in their princess dresses and the boys in their tuxes. Pictures coming soon....hopefully tonight if I am not too tired.

sneak a peek

We have so much going on here. I will have lots of pictures to blog over the course of the next week, but I will be so busy living that I may not touch the blog again until 10 days or so from now.

The most exciting event on the calendar is my brother's wedding which will take place tomorrow. I love weddings. I think they are worth the expense to have family and friends gather for a happy occasion. The only other time we truly gather like this is for funerals. Weddings are much more fun.


We had the rehearsal last night, and wow, the church is beautiful! So, I am giving you a sneak peek. Shh! Don't tell the happy couple. I felt like I had been transplanted back into England as the church reminded me so much of places we visited there. The gardens were the true reminder that I am still in America.

Okay, I did not do such a great job of loading the pictures so that the text will match. So, I will do my best to explain each picture. I will start with the bridal party. Danielle (in white) is my future sister-in-law, but she is already like a sister, so the "future" part is just linguistics. To her left is her brother who is her man of honor for the ceremony. I think you will recognize my girls, and I believe all of the other girls are Danielle's cousins.

My sister Tiffany loved that the boys were dressed so similarly, so she asked me to get a picture by the pond. Getting them to cooperate is another story. You would think that the oldest would be the best, but he is the worst. Zachary has ruined more pictures than I can count because he does something goofy, and it frustrates me to no end.



Of course I did allow one goofy picture. Logan (in green), well, I just don't know what to say about that pose.

Julia gets a boost from her cousins. For about a year now, she has had two people hold her like this, and we recite a quote from a Hannah Montana episode..."Family, family, so glad to have you here...good times, good times." I don't think she did this with Austin and Logan.

Now for the cute stories of the day. Wyatt loves his tux. He knows that he is quite handsome in it. Andy took him to pick it up, and he tried it on at the store. He was disappointed because he didn't get to try on the cuff links too. :( .....and disappointed again when he did not get to wear it home. We did a little practice with him on seating people (his job), and he did surprisingly well. This is going to be a hoot!

When getting ready to go to the rehearsal, Julia could not understand why she was not wearing the dress for the wedding. :) soon, my girl, soon

In other news Julia saw the eye doctor for a routine exam to get ready for kindergarten, and she needs glasses. I was not prepared for that, and she was not happy about it (something to do with not wanting to be like Junie B. Jones). This will certainly take some getting used to. We won't have them for a week or two, so those pictures will be forthcoming.

We have so much to do today. We have to sign Zach up for football and Savannah up for field hockey. The rehearsal luncheon is taking place today (we did not have a dinner last night because the rehearsal was too late). Then, we want to go and minister at the funeral home to friends who lost their son this week. Hopefully, we will fit in some worship time since we will miss church tomorrow....other stuff is going on too, but we will share that later.

40 Years!

This is my mom and dad. They are celebrating their 40th anniversary today. The older of these two pictures was taken about 28 years ago, and the newer picture was taken on a trip to Mexico (I believe) in 2007.

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

We love you.

Be still and know...

I do not typically buy pictures from camp, but when I saw this I had to make an exception. In fact, I bought a 5X7 with the intention to frame it and hang it somewhere in the house.

This is Zach at camp spending time with God surrounded by God's amazing creation.

quite an adventure

Did we ever have an adventure yesterday!!! Andy is out of town, and we were due to meet with our social worker for Wyatt's final post placement report. In addition, Kim's baby arrived two weeks ago, and we were anxious to meet him. Because Kim and our social worker are about an hour apart in driving distance and both are a few hours from here, we decided to make a day of it and see them both.

We started with the three and a half hour drive to see Lisa. We got a late start and did not leave until 7:00 a.m. By that time I had been up for two hours. Our trip was uneventful, and we had a nice visit which officially finishes all paperwork regarding Wyatt's adoption.

We then journeyed to the zoo, and this was a really fun zoo to visit. It had the best playground I have ever seen, and I have seen several. When Julia ventured off shortly after our arrival at the playground, I knew to look for something involving climbing, and sure enough, that is where I found her.



Having a big brother is quite helpful when Mom is holding water bottles, map, and cameras.

Wow! Wyatt's upper body strength is improving, and Julia does one of her favorite things -crossing the monkey bars.

I think I may have gotten a good shot of all the kids together. I think there were only about 30 takes to get one.

My reptile lover.

couldn't resist this picture of the brothers

We did see some animals too.

a rare picture of Savannah and me

I really loved this zoo and would like to return, but as you will see at the end of this post, I am not so anxious to do that. Wyatt and Julia definitely need lots of etiquette training. They were constantly stepping in the path of strollers and motorized wheelchairs. Wyatt is bad about running up in front of people at the exhibits, and the boy desperately needs a volume button. We will never lose him in a store because we will always hear him.
After the zoo, we ventured on to Kim's house to meet little Benton. Sorry Kim, but he is now the star :) He is one sweet baby!

Savannah had never held such a young baby and when asked what her favorite part of the day was, this was it.

Kim looks great!

I do hope Wyatt and Julia did not drive Kim crazy during our visit. They are so curious and want to explore the house and climb everything. I think they did drive me crazy. Wyatt didn't pay much attention to Benton until shortly before we left and then he just loved on him. He talked to Andy on the phone while we were driving home and told him "the baby was CUTE!" and that it was a boy. Jim came home from work shortly before we left, and Wyatt was really a hoot then. Jim was in uniform, so Wyatt wanted to know if he was a soldier and if he was a soldier, where was his gun? Wyatt talked and talked about soldiers needing guns to kill the bad guys and how he wants a gun that shoots fire, but kids can't touch guns because that is dangerous and he doesn't want to be shot. He went on and on about guns and Bakugan, and Jim looked amused. Wyatt is not one bit shy!

Soon we hit the road and stopped at about 8:00 p.m. for the fast food meal that I promised the kids (a very rare treat for them). At about 9:40 we hit stopped traffic. Little did we know then that it would take about 4 hours to go 16 miles, and ultimately we would get home at 2:40 a.m. instead of 11:00p.m. When we got home, I had been awake for 22 hours straight. It is totally to the glory of God that we arrived safely. I am stingy with my sleep and struggle to stay awake on any drive longer than 2 hours (okay Andy would argue that it is any drive longer than 20 minutes, but that is when he is driving). I felt alert until the last couple of hours, and I had some interesting conversations with Zach and Savannah during which I learned that Zach needs to take an anatomy class. That's all I have to say on that subject (lol).

Great day overall, possibly even worth the unexpected 7.5 hour drive home.