Wedding

A bride and groom on their wedding day.

There's not much that gets more beautiful than that :)

 

We just LOVED celebrating our friend's wedding this past weekend. Aaron had the honor of standing up as a groomsmen for his friend, Tyler, and everything about the wedding was absolutely beautiful! There was love and there was beauty.

 

A few candid shots from the day:

The beautiful bride and groom :)

So fun to see old friends!

Grandma W. liked seeing her grandkids :)

Another valiant attempt at a family picture :) Haha....we're going to have lots of hilarious, not-looking-at-camera family pictures I think :)

Beauty #1

"What IS that!?!?" is a typical question every time someone new meets Aubrey. Confused, I wonder what they're talking about until I look at her forehead and remember.

"Oh! It's a strawberry hemangioma. Slightly common in babies and will go away in time."

A few weeks after Aubrey was born, a raised red spot formed on her forehead. I was curious about it but not worried and found out what exactly it was at her 2 month appointment. The doctor informed me it will be with her for a while....and my response was "So I should probably stop photoshopping it out?" :)

It's part of who she is. It's part of her infancy.

Lately I haven't been able to see much beauty around the world. It sometimes feels like everywhere I turn, another discouraging thing is happening. Last week I had a few revelations and one of them was to start FINDING beauty in the world again. Finding beauty in the places that most people deem unbeautiful.

I also wanted an excuse to get out my camera more. I figured that if I started looking for things to photograph, I would start seeing beauty around me. Beauty, Love, Hope, Miracles....these are the things I want to look for.

As I started thinking of the first beautiful thing that I wanted to capture, I instantly thought of Aubrey's hemangioma. I truly see it as her beauty mark. A unique thing that is beautiful to me. It may not be what the world would deem beautiful, but to me.......

It's Beauty

Reusable Materials #1

I felt the need to write something happy about our life lately too :) So, politics aside, I've been trying to find creative ways to occupy Tristen using materials around the house. Examples? Egg cartons and baby jars for sorting objects in as well as old cookie sheets for magnet fun. You get the idea :)

We are headed to a rehearsal and wedding tomorrow and Friday and I needed to replenish my bag of tricks to keep Tristen occupied during each. Today we finally finished off a container of Parmesan so I quickly washed it out and found another material I could reuse as a toy. (I've been eyeing our Parmesan container for weeks so I could make this activity!)

In case you can't tell, it's just pipe cleaners cut in half and a Parmesan container. (Make sure to fold over the ends of the pipe cleaners so they aren't sharp!) It has already provided entertainment so I'm sure it will keep Tristen occupied for part of the wedding at least!! Great fine motor skills being developed as well as he pushes the pipe cleaners through the holes :) I like the challenge of trying to keep Tristen quiet during church and special events like weddings. I'll let you know how it goes :)

Have a HAPPY Wednesday all....I'm trying :) At least I know the next few days will be fun even though this week has been a downer so far.

P.S. Pinterest inspired idea :)

Their Future

I'm hoppin' mad. Since I temporarily deleted my facebook account due to the Social Media Civil War happening between Democrats and Republicans, I can't vent my frustration there. I probably wouldn't want to either since I would be contributing to the Civil War but even still. (which, is a whole other post.....I literally DESPISE facebook. I just can't go back with the hatred that is on there!)

I've never been this pessimistic in my life. I'm bitter over the results. I'm ANGRY. Sure, I knew in my heart that Obama would probably have another 4 years to completely screw up the country, but I still held out hope.

And now all my hope is gone.

Although I'm a strong Republican, the issues that I am extremely passionate about this year are not even the regular issues that lead me to vote Republican. This year the main issue for me was the economy and the 16 trillion dollar debt that I (actually, no, I don't have any thing to do with 16 trillion dollar debt. I'm actually responsible with my money.) wil be passing to my children.

My children.

 

They are the reason why I've become so engrossed in this election. What kind of world are they going to grow up in?

This election, I'm not sitting around, saying, "Okay, that's just the way it has to be". There has been a righteous fire that has been ignited in our household after last night. I am researching, planning ways to get involved and fight this political war as best I can. We are in a political Civil War and I believe it's only going to get worse.

On a lighter note, I thought of ONE funny thing in the midst of my anger last night.

At least Mitt Romney will have fewer gray hairs than President Obama in 4 years :)

 

If only the President didn't turn gray after 4 years in office, I just might run for President. But, I don't want gray hair :)

Costume Party

Saturday was our annual costume party with friends! It was a blast as usual!! We went as the Publishers Clearing House people.....Aaron was the guy who shows up with the giant check and I was the recipient of the check :) It was too fun :)

The check took a little while to make but it was fun to have a project to do last week :)

 

As always, there were GREAT costumes from everyone!

Minions from "Despicable Me"

Deb and Napoleon Dynamite!!

Bacon and Eggs :)

Mary Poppins and Bert :)

 

Oh what fun!

 

So, it's Election Day. I'm SOOOO happy this day is finally here. My goodness, I can't stand the TV ads, the debates on facebook, the DRAMA involved in this whole 2 year process. Since I don't want to think about it much more, I'll just leave you with a reminder to VOTE. Maybe someday I'll get into politics but not today. :)