Rehearsal Dinner

Well this weekend was the BIG wedding weekend!
After a year of planning, Faith and Evan finally tied the knot :)  The weekend started with the big rehearsal dinner.  Since Noah was going to be a ring bearer for the wedding and receive lots of attention for wearing his tux, we decided to feature Mr. Sam at the rehearsal in his own special suit.  You may remember this suit from a cruise with Noah a few years ago.  Sam was a hit!  We all gathered together for a few appetizers before getting down to business.

 

Then it was all hands on deck as we follow Evan's direction for processional, etc.

As is tradition at Jewish weddings, Evan walks in with his parents.

As Dan shakes Evan's hand, he gives him some friendly ribbing about his decision to marry into this crazy posse.

Faith's mantra for the weekend, "I'm getting married bitches!"

Faith and Evan handed out gifts to their wedding party.  The gals got bags (that were our favorite colors) with initial on them and jewelry for the wedding day and wine.  The guys got these awesome coolers that also service as small chairs with 6 packs in them.  

It was a wonderful night!  While we missed Sara, her presence was clearly felt all weekend and Dan was not lacking in beautiful table partners :)

May 2012 = crazy time

How's your May going?  Ours is, in a word, INSANE!  Lots of fun things going on, but I can barely keep up with everything.  Noah started soccer with the park district on Friday afternoons.  He loves it and actually seems to do pretty well following directions, dribbling the ball, and running up and down the field.  They don't actually "play" so-to-speak, it's mostly just kicking a ball and running, but it wears them out, so I call that a success!

Cal and I are "birthday buddies" since he celebrates on May 4th and I'm May 7th.  We had a little party at our house with the boys and Evie.  It was the usual chaotic fun!

Then, we had Evan and Faith's bachelor and bachelorette parties last weekend.  For obvious reasons I won't post a majority of the pictures, but you can get a pretty good idea of how the night when (at least for the girls).  We had spa time in the morning, then headed out for dinner in style!

We crowned the guest of honor at Cafe Iberico downtown...

And then we were off to LaSalle Power Company where the dueling pianists played George Michael's "Gotta have Faith" and had her dance on top of the piano!

 The night ended with a ride back to Kim's house.  My parents had the boys for the weekend, so they had a blast as well.  We took a couple days to recover from that.

The highlight of my birthday was getting $$$ to buy the SLR camera I've been hoping for.  I ended up getting a Nikon d3100 and I am super happy about it.  I still need to take some time getting to know it, but you can't deny the results are impressive as evidenced by the following...

Noah is wrapping up his year in preschool school this coming week.  Last week he had a mother's day presentation where the kids sang and Ms. Diane read a list of cute quotes from the kids.

Then the boys were great troopers as I dragged them around town trying to get together some things for upcoming events.  We discovered that Meijer offers free pony rides, score!

 Then last night was my mom's big night.  After over 30 years of teaching, she is retiring this spring.  Mary Tavegia, principal and dear family friend, is also retiring.  They were honored by the Cossitt staff last night at the LaGrange Country Club.  It was an amazing night filled with wonderful memories and heartfelt words of thanks.  And she deserved every last bit of it!

 Both my uncles came as well, wouldn't Ione be proud!

We clean up purdy good, eh?

 The honorees, in their tiaras.  They are two very wonderful, important, compassionate teachers and women.  I am so proud to know both of them!

So that wraps up the last few weeks, what's up next?  Well, Faith and Evan's wedding, of course!  That's next weekend and I'm excited about seing Noah in a tux and Sam in a suit.  It's going to be a wonderful weekend, so you know there will be pics to follow!

Fish Release

So a couple weeks back was our local park district fish release.  It's where they have a bunch of buckets, you take your bucket and get some fish out of a larger bucket, and go dump them in the local pond.  The Worsts joined us for this outing.  The pictures are in reverse order, sorry, again learning the new layout features and it's too hard to move them all around.  Calvin promptly dumped a rather large catfish on the cement brick before it made it's way into the water.  Classic!

 Fred was the pro of the group.  He touched the fish and dumped his right in!

Calvin and Philie with their rather sizable catch!

Look at those things!  They are at least 3 feet long (well perhaps I'm exaggerating a tad!)

The Rodriguez boys had much smaller fish, which was just FINE by us!

Sam was a bit more adventurous and did reach into the bucket to touch the fish.  Noah preferred just to look and say hi to the fish.

He was pretty excited about wearing his cow rainboots and getting a bucket, the fish were "meh" in his book, but still a fun day!

And what do we have here?  Well this is what a FUN THURSDAY can look like.  When school is not in session due to Parent Conferences, we take a busload over to Meijer to go shopping.  Yes, yes, we know we are insane!  Philie called it the Crazy Train, and crazy it was!

HAMBURGER!!!

Wow, ok, so blogger has changed stuff and the editing page is completely different.  So, bear with me as I  learn how this looks and how it translates to posts.  Anywhooooo, here is what Sammy's favorite food is.  Hamburgers!  We went to Red Robin (one of our faves) for Mike's birthday a couple weeks back.  And Sammy started excitedly yelling, HAMBURGER while eating.  It was pretty amusing for us and everyone in the restaurant.  Cuteness :)

Easter-rrific

Well we have been busy the past 2 weeks! There was a quick zoo trip, which was fun...
Then the Worst crew came over for an Easter bird nest project. Every cooking project requires safety goggles, right Calvin?
And chef's aprons too...
Devilish looks also welcomed....
And voila, edible birds' nests, thanks to Aunt Philie's creative prowess!
Then pre-Easter weekend was spent at Bamma and Bampa's doing some egg decorations.
We were able to limit most of the messiness!
Then there was an Easter party at school, complete with Bunny hop performance...
And a quick impromptu egg hunt with Evie on the Thursday before Easter...


On Good Friday, Spiderman made an appearance...
Along with Nick and Francesca and Auntie Kim...
Finally Easter was here, we woke up at Bamma and Bampa's house to 4 easter baskets filled to the gills with fun stuff for the boys.
More toys? Yes, more toys, Noah!
For Josh's birthday, Mike made this masterpiece. We were too nervous to complete construction at our house, hence we spent the night before Easter at my parents house. Mike did a great job (I mixed the batter!).
The boys in their Easter fineries. Polo shirts are our formalwear!
Ah yes, they can be cute at some points...
It was a beautiful Easter Sunday!
And the Birthday man enjoyed his cake. So, Happy Happy to my husband, my father, and my brother. Yep, all together in one week. Someone turned 60 (eeeek!), someone turned 34, and someone turned 30, but I ain't naming names. You do the math.