Happy Birthday Ben!

Last week Ben celebrated his, um, 39th birthday! Yeah, that's it.... 39! ;-) We were blessed to have his family join us to help celebrate. Of course the kids couldn't be happier than to have a house full of ready arms and laps to hold and play with them!

Maggie has gotten to the age where she has definite ideas about what she wants to get people for birthdays and other gift giving occasions... she picked this out especially for Daddy:

Yes, she knows her daddy well. (It was the SEC championship game on DVD by the way).

We also had the privilege of dog sitting for a friend again . . . here's Sidney "helping" Ben with his gifts:
I think perhaps she was hoping there was some milk bones in there or something we could play fetch with... sorry, Sid.

One of the highlights of the weekend was taking Ben to the Naval Air Museum at Pensacola. Ben LOVES this museum. Back in our early married days we used to go to the beach for each anniversary and no trip was complete without a trip to see this museum. We hadn't visited in several years and they had recently completed an update and opened 55,000 sq. ft of displays so of course we had to check it out!

Here's Maggie and Daddy by one of the flying tigers:

We weren't sure how Maggie would like the museum - it's definitely a "guy" kinda place and Maggie is ALL girl. But she had a GREAT time - her favorite thing was getting into the trainers to "fly":
She had to try every one! And she was especially proud when she could climb into and out of them herself:
The new building houses post WW II planes and helicopters. It's got a "Top Gun" F-14 (gee I hope I got that right), a harrier jet, some coast guard 'copters, and this particular plane of interest. Look under the window (that's probably not the right word for it) and see if you can make out the pilot and rank of this jet: (you can click on the photo to enlarge it)
The new hangar had lots of room for crawling, which was good because by that point Abby was getting more than restless. So at the end she decided she wanted to get into the action:
Maggie politely informed her she wasn't big enough to fly the helicopter yet.

"NO, AB-BAY!"

Whenever Maggie is scolding her, Abby's name turns into "AB-BAY". I digress.

I think one of the highlights on this trip for Ben was getting to try out the new 360 degree simulators! They strap you into a box, shut the lid and you are completely enclosed. For 5 minutes you have control of the stick and the box will spin, flip, do anything you tell it to do! The instructors tell those riding they can either try to win the game by shooting down the enemy plane on their virtual screens, or they can just get in there and start doing barrel rolls and what not. From what we observed, the younger "pilots" got in there and just immediately cranked the stick over from takeoff. The more, um, mature "pilots" tried to win.

Ben said it was a great ride, complete with realistic vibrations which increased as your increased the throttle (it was suppose to be a WWII prop plane I think). Anyways, I think he enjoyed it, you be the judge:
That was Ben exiting the ride... you'll notice all the stuff in his hands - you have to empty out your pockets before getting in the simulator.. hehe.

So Happy Birthday to my Ace Pilot! Baby, I'll fly with you anywhere!

Big Hair!

Recently Maggie got to visit a kid's salon called Smiles N Styles to help a friend celebrate her birthday. They had mini-makeovers and the kids had SUCH a blast. Hair, makeup, mani- and pedicures, not to mention the GLITTER! There was glitter in her hair and on her nails... then eventually glitter on my face, on the bed, in the living room.....

When she got home of course Mommy had to have a little photo shoot.

And Abby had to get in the action.....

Maggie liked her fancy hair so much she wanted to keep it in for 2 days until Sunday so her teacher could see it. So I agreed. Sunday evening we finally took the braid out:


Can you imagine if ALL of her hair had been braided like that? I felt like putting on a musical or something.... Anyways, we all had a good laugh.

5 Weddings

Several months ago I was sort of commenting to God about how I had only one wedding last year and I wouldn't mind if I could get a few more than that this year... Well, God heard and answered. So far, I've had a total of 8 weddings scheduled for this calendar year, including 1 that was not from the church but just a friend who hired me to direct the wedding of her sister at her father's house. Five of those weddings were all in a row. I've never had two in the same month I don't think, much less 5 in a row! I thought it would be fun to document those.....

Wedding #1: May 21

This wedding was a first for me in many ways - my first job not related to the church. My first outdoor wedding. The location was just beautiful:

This is the backyard of the father of the bride. There were several meaningful things. The couple got married under the arch that the bride's parents were married under. On the left in the picture below is a candle that was lit in memory of the mother of the bride, lit by the the father and sister before the ceremony started. On the right, a sand ceremony that the bride, groom and the bride's children participated in.

The Groom then presented the bride's two girls with rings as he joined their family. It was very sweet and the girls were very surprised.

Wedding #2: May 28 (Photos for this wedding provided by Jeff Tesney Photography)

This wedding was unique in that the couple told me from the beginning that they wanted to involve the wedding guests through corporate worship. As they lit the unity candle, our Worship Pastor led us in the song "Take My Life and Let It Be". It was truly a worshipful moment and I could sense the Holy Spirit's presence - so much so that I forgot to text the caterer when the wedding was over!


Other Unique Elements: The unity candle was a floating candle, which I had never seen before. It's was beautiful! Unfortunately it only came with 6" tapers and by the time we got to that part of the ceremony, the candles had burned down so far that they only had little nubs left to light the unity candle with. But they handled it well. Live and learn.

During the reception, one of the bridesmaids performed an interpretive dance.

Wedding #3: June 4

This bride is a member of our church's orchestra so she had asked a trio of trumpet players to perform at the wedding for the processional and recessional. That was really fabulous! Plus it was fun because I knew one of the bridesmaids and all the trumpet players. :-)

This wedding, like the previous, had their reception at the church. That's a little unusual these days. Our church has an in-house caterer that does all the weddings and events and it's been good working with Chef Jim. At this wedding we FINALLY figured out the best way to set up the fellowship hall for receptions. Yea!

Wedding #4: June 11

This was a fun wedding because the groom was the son of our Worship Pastor and while I didn't meet the couple until we started working together, I knew his parents and several members of the wedding party. But what made this wedding truly memorable to me was the bride. She has an amazing bubbly personality and was so emotional on her wedding day. She was in tears as she walked down the aisle. And when the groom began to recite his vows, she was so excited she couldn't contain herself and was bouncing up and down and laughing! Talk about joy!

Unique Elements: The father of the groom performed the ceremony - that was very emotional and touching. The couple performed a foot washing during the wedding. And they used a custom made aisle runner, shown below.


Wedding #5: June 18
I have to admit by the time this wedding rolled around I was getting rather tired and was very thankful that this wedding was NOT having their reception at the church. :-) The families were SO sweet and the bride was just stunning.

Unique elements: The flower girl's dress had a train. The guest book was a book with pictures from the brides photo session:

Movie Time!

Today was a momentous occasion - I day I have anticipated for about 5 years.... we took Maggie to her first movie in a theater! You may know how easily frightened she gets by things in even relatively calm movies (she's yet to make it through any Disney princess film - she did see "Tangled" at her cousin's house but watched about half of it from the kitchen with her hands over her ears). So Ben and I were excited when we saw that Winnie the Pooh was hitting theaters this weekend! We checked the review at PluggedIn.com and was relieved that they gave it a very whole-hearted endorsement.


Maggie had a great time, although she did not like the majority of the previews (too scary!) and we all agreed that there were far too many. But other than that, she enjoyed it. She got scared a couple of times (**spoiler warning** ). We had to tell her that there was, in fact, no monster called "backson" in the movie. She relaxed a bit after that. It's a great family film, runs shorter than your average movie - great for this age! And has many cute, funny scenes! Two thumbs up!

Our Summer Vacation

Last week we had one of our annual Tour D' Parents. We usually go up to my folks place in Western NC sometime around early July (escape the heat!) and hit Opelika coming and going. This time we dropped Maggie off with Ben's folks early for about 5 extra days of spoilage - I mean quality time with Grandmom, Granddad and Aunt Peg. :-) They all had a blast!

Friday, Ben and I drove up with Abby and helped to celebrate Grandmom's birthday. Maggie "decorated the cake all by myself" as she proudly pointed out multiple times. :-)


We ended up heading on up to my parents a day earlier than we had planned to take advantage of an opportunity to cross paths with my sister Jenny and her husband Don at my parents. We were looking forward to this, not only because we hadn't seen them since their wedding last year, but also because they had not met Abby. It was great to see them but unfortunately Abby ended up coming down with a fever Sunday so my time was mostly spent nursing her. Thankfully she perked up quickly and was back to normal the next day.

Here's a shot with my folks:


Ben got a special treat on Sunday - a chance to meet one of his heroes, Oliver North! Turns out he was speaking at a church not too far from where my folks live so he got to enjoy that. Later that day, my dad took Don and Ben on a drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway - always a treat!


One of the highlights for me on this trip was taking Maggie on a canoe trip on Lake Junaluska with my dad.

Back when I was growing up in Wisconsin, this was something our family did frequently so I was excited to introduce her to it. She did GREAT! I gave her a disposable camera and let her be the trip photographer. I'll post those later.

Of course what trip to NC would be complete without a family hiking trip? Maggie insisted on going back to Craggy Gardens.


This makes the third time in a row. We agreed only with the understanding that next time we were going someplace else! But this is a great hike - except for the fact that I forgot the bug spray! Mommy ended up with nine bug bites on the back of one knee. Ouch.

This is one of their favorite spots on the trail:



We got the privilege of watching Fireworks in both locations - in Opelika on the first and in NC on the 4th! Both shows were a big hit! Maggie liked the NC one better though, I think because it was a smaller setting. They do their fireworks over Lake Junaluska and my parents have friends with a house near the lake. So we got to hang out in their front yard, enjoying the lovely sunset -
and catching fireflies before the fireworks started. It was great!

Maggie started a hummingbird tally in Opelika and kept track of each sighting. She got to around 30 or 40 and stopped counting. :-) She loved watching them though and we had several in NC too:
On the way back down to AL, Ben got to meet another hero. Gene Chizik was doing a book signing at the LifeWay in Kennesaw, GA and the manager there is a friend of Ben's and fellow Aburn Alum so he asked Ben to "come help".


I'm not sure how much "help" he really needed - everything went very smoothly - but Ben was excited to get a chance to get a picture with the coach that made his dreams come true! ;-) Not to mention, the autographed book.

Abby was working on her skills this trip. New skills like crawling up stairs, and practicing standing up by letting go after she has pulled up:

She'll be walking before we know it!

We had a LOT of fun with our family on this trip and it was hard to come back to Mobile - it's so HOT! Ben's already counting down the days till the next trip up North!

Happy Independence Day!

Ok, so I'm a few days late. We just got back from our annual Tour D' Parents (more on that to come). I had a lot of fun taking fireworks pics, so here is a sample. A slideshow will be up on the blog (top right corner) soon.

God and Dog

We're dog sitting for a friend this week and subsequently found this video that my sister had forwarded to me years ago. It always makes me smile. Having Sidney at our house reminds me of all the great things about dog ownership... and to be sure to not leave the trash out. :-D