Wedding Week

Tomorrow is it! People have been arriving from out of town this week. It's crazy, but a good crazy.

Jasmine, the puppies and I watched My Boyfriends' Dogs on Hallmark.

Jessica packed up her room. It used to be hers and Jasmines and then Kayla joined them in it. Then when Adam left, we put Kaleb in with Tyler and moved Jasmine and Kayla to Adam's room. Now Jasmine will have this room, and Kayla will have the other room. Confusing?

My mom and sister picked Ty David up on their way down. They got in Wednesday evening. His hair has grown out, so he had two colored hair. I think it actually looks cool. But we decided not to leave it that way because soon all the blond would be gone, and he doesn't really have a good way to dye it at Job Corps.

Kayla and my mom

Ty David

Ty and my sister.

We made homemade shakes.

Adam stopped by.

The twins with my mom.

The twins with my sister.

Jasmine

Jasmine

We decided to play rummikub. This was Jessica's request.

Cheat much??

Rick looks like he'd had a long day.

This morning. He just rolled out of bed and left his hair as it was!

Getting it bleached.

And cut

My mom isn't able to walk more than a few feet so we found a place for her to sit while we walked at the park.

Brother and sister

A minute before she was trying to knock him over I think.

We didn't have a good week at school! I asked for family leave for the kids' for all day tomorrow and Monday. Kaleb's was denied due to grades. Of course he has to go to the wedding, but we've decided he needs to live with his choices so Rick will pick him up at noon. Planners had way too many notes this week. Neither twin was granted Monday off. 

I wasn't able to go to rehearsal, but we all went to Hunter's dad's house afterward.

Rick took pictures at the rehearsal. He's walking her down "the aisle" so needed to make sure he could walk on sand in his dress shoes. Ty will be escorting me down "the aisle." I'll post the rehearsal pictures at another time.

Moving into Wedding Week

This was a busy week around the house. Rick has been out of work since October 1, so I decided it was a good time to do everything around the house we'd been putting off. We used to move every 3-4 years with the military, so things would get cleaned out and we'd move into a sparkling clean house. But we've had this house eleven years this coming week, and with the possibility of having to move to get a job, it was just time to clean. 

With people coming for the wedding next week, we have to get it all put back together. We've taken everything out of the utility closet and reorganized, taken everything out of the kitchen cupboards, got rid of a load of water bottles and dead storage containers and sprayed and wiped all the shelves. (This is FL so we have tons of roaches!) We've attempted to clean out the extra clutter in bathrooms but that seems to be a lost cause!

Jessica repainted the kids' bathroom. I don't have pictures of the other cleaning. I guess it wasn't that exciting. I should have taken one of all the utility room stuff filling up the whole kitchen.

Jessica took a day away for a dead body seminar. I'd gone with her, but it turned out that it was going to be all day in the woods, and I'm allergic to pretty much everything in the woods! So she stayed, and I went to the mall and started some Christmas shopping. She has one college class plus cave diving and she's working at Applebees still.

Jasmine and Rick finished up the experimental portion of Jasmine's science project. She did the rough draft of the paper and the bibliography, but forgot to turn the bibliography in for two days so will have a very low score on it. She needs to do the charts and the board.

We went to Maze Runner last week and Planes 2: Fire and Rescue this week. Maze Runner had a lot of swearing in it, which was totally unnecessary and distracted me from the plot. Not sure yet what I think of it. Planes 2 just didn't have much to it. But if you are 8 or under, you'd probably think it was a great movie.

Last might a few of us got together for an impromptu shower, or girl's night out, for Jessica. Jasmine got to go along. She's really well behaved and handles herself very well in social situations, so she got to be one of the adults last night.

We started at Chill.

We got her a table cloth, candle holder and candles plus the blue strainer. We bought the strainer at a kitchen store on the TN trip. The rest was a surprise.

Only my Jessi....

Lisa, her future mother in law, bought her several pairs of Victoria's Secret undies. I think this is when they saw that a guy had been very carefully watching from across the room as  Jessica held each pair up.

Then someone decided we should drive another half hour to Wild Wings where we waited an hour for a table. The FSU/Notre Dame and FL/MS games were on and there were about 300+ people shouting the whole time, so talking was not an option.

I know not everyone is shown on the blog. I just didn't take that many pictures except for the girl's night out. So you'll see them all in the next few posts as we are now in the wedding week!!

My mom is going to try and make the trip down. Lots of prayers please. She's really not in good shape to travel but gets so bored and wants to get out. It's about a 16 hour drive for them. They are stopping to get Tyler on the way. They come down I 65 and he's off of I 65 near Mammoth Cave. A friend and her family who live in the same town as my mom and sister are flying down, and her mother is coming along also.

Busy week ahead as we get Jessica moved out, the final stuff done for the wedding and then there's the actual wedding itself next Friday on the  beach. Right now the forecast is for 73F and sunny.

A Slow Week

This has been a pretty slow week as we are still settling into the school routine. Bus schedules keep changing as the school district tries to get things running more smoothly and not have children picked up at 5:45!

Right now the only after school activities are tumbling and gymnastics for Kaleb and gymnastics for Kayla, but after Labor Day Jasmine will start County Christian Youth Choir on Mondays. She isn't sure if she'll like it or not, so we're just going to give it a try. She'll also have church choir Sunday afternoons, hip hop class on Wednesday afternoons (followed by youth group if she isn't loaded down with homework) and marching band Thursday after school. We need to get drum lessons scheduled back in, but I want to see how she does with these other activities first. She was going to take jazz to because it was back to back with hip hop, but they changed days and it no longer works out.

Sasha went to our vet for the first time. She needed her last baby shot. She is 6.6 pounds. We were told she was a dachshund mix, but the vets say he doesn't see that in her. He said a chihuahua or rat terrier mix.

Travis rode along to keep her company. He's an old pro at the vet. He weighs 12.9 pounds. He used to seem really small to me, but now compared to Sasha, he seems big!

I was hoping Sasha would get bigger, and if she was part Dachshund, she probably would. But being a chihuahua mix, she probably won't get much bigger. It makes me nervous having a dog that small. I'm afraid she's going to get squashed.

First taco day for Sasha.

We started addressing wedding invitations this week. 

I addressed, and Jessica put the invitations and response cards in the envelopes.

My new book came. If your girls are reading through Just for Me: My Family with us, I will send them a copy. Be sure to send me a photo of your daughter with her copy of My Family and a mailing address. I'm getting the bag ready to go out also.

I am putting together a list of the best Christian books for preteen girls-devotion books, non fiction and fiction. If there are some books you've found helpful or fun, leave me a message on this post.

We want to take the jet ski and kayaks out on Labor Day, but we are forecast for rain. How about you?

Who has the most teacher calls or notes home so far? :) Thankfully, we have a much better start this year than in some previous years.

Planning

End of Course civics exam is out of the way. I have no idea whether Jasmine passed or not, and we won't know until summer. So she could be retaking civics next year. I hope not. If she failed either that exam or the reading FCAT she'll lose band to make up the classes. That would be heartbreaking. Won't find out if the twins promote to 4th grade until into summer too. Sigh.

Kaleb is on a field trip to Wonder Works today. I hope he does well for the teacher. He's been doing pretty well at school lately but he was really screwy here last night and got sent to bed even though we had people here.

The grocery store got dog ice cream in.

Surprisingly, they didn't eat it that well. They all ate a little bit and then left it. That's unusual for these three.

Travis is just over a year old.

Scrappy is almost 15!

Caspian is 3.

Jessica and her future mother-in-law (pink shirt) and her maid of honor went to pick up her wedding dress yesterday. It's 3 1/2 hours to the bridal shop, so I opted out of the trip to take care of school pick ups. I was with Jessica when she chose it, so I'd already seen it. I asked them to come back to the house for pulled pork and chicken. These three joined us plus Hunter's dad but Hunter wouldn't come.

Two months ago Jessica left her iPad out, and it kept beeping messages. She was gone so I glanced over at it to see if it was something urgent so I could call her cell if it was a message she needed. The message was wayyyyyy TMI for me.

She told him I read it, so he hasn't talked to me or come in the house for two months. Funny thing is, I didn't really notice until just recently. It's not like he comes in and socializes anyway. Hope he never gets angry at Jessica for anything or she's going to have a tough time. He's not one to just let things go. Especially if he feels he's been wronged. He does this to his mom too. I told her she's off the hook for now because he's focused on me. : )

Adam came over and brought a friend.

There was a lot of wedding planning going on.

I am fortunate to have a guy who is easy to get along with. He doesn't play games, and he doesn't hold grudges. We do get a little crazy at times though. : ) We will have been married 26 years in July, and I hope we have another 26 years together.

Jessica and I are off to New York Sunday. We will be celebrating the twins' birthday tomorrow due to being gone over their birthday. Next week was the best week for us to make the trip, but we will be gone on their birthday which is also Jasmine's band concert (the date was changed on that though, it wasn't originally scheduled that week). But the following week is dance recital and two long rehearsals, so that week was out. And then we get into the crazy end of the year stuff.