July in Review

I'm gonna try to stay rolling with these monthly recaps so I can get current again,so here's July!

July 4th Week:

We visited Brandon's folks for 4th of July.  I attended my very first C-ville 4th of July Parade, which is a big deal there.  It was everything I thought it would be and more.

The downtown area is set up with vendors along the streets and the parade goes right down the middle of them.

Brandon's mom, Bev, Brandon and I walked from his parents place to downtown to watch.

Even Senator Mitch McConnell was part of the parade!

There were lots of tractors....

4-wheelers.....

A Dump Truck.....

And even a Tow-Truck (and we actually knew the guy driving it - Brandon's cousin)....

Even random SUV's that didn't seem to be sponsoring anything, with tiny dog-passengers....

And of course, those crazy Kosair Shriner Guys....what KY parade is complete without them?

However, my favorite part of the parade was the lone cow (who we named "Meatball") poking his head out of the semi-pulled cattle trailer!  You just don't see stuff like that in your average parade.

Finally, the horses marked the end of the parade.

Like I said, this parade was everything I thought it would be and more!

On July 5th, we traveled to O-boro to visit my college roomie, Alisha, her hubby, Scott, and their little man, L.  It's been a tradition that each year, we get together around 4th of July.  We've done so for at least 6 or 7 years (none of us can remember exactly when we started it). 

I don't have a ton of pictures from visiting them....mainly because we just spend some good quality time together playing games, talking and laughing and rarely get out of our pajamas!  (Oh, and I eat my weight in icing there).

Here's a few pics of everybody playing Mario Cart.

And Little Man watching...

Week of  July 15-21

Wednesday, July 18:  Jenn's Shower

It was back to the Ville for me for my good friend Jenn's Bridal Shower (she's in the middle in pink)

Shannon and the other bridesmaids had creatively decorated everything with hearts!

After eating, and Jenn opening her gifts, we had some Photo Booth fun!!!

Saturday, July 21:  Bennifer's Wedding

A few days after Jenn's Bridal Shower, Brandon and I both headed to the Ville for her wedding.  She was to marry a sweet guy named Ben , o we lovingly refer to them as a unit called "Bennifer."  You may remember them from the blog - we had a fun weekend with them here.

Here's the lovely Bride....

All the girls

Shannon was giving Jenn her "Something Borrowed."  It was Shannon's "Something Old" that I gave to her for her wedding and my "Something Borrowed" from Shannon at my wedding.

Gina Bug rarely gets quite this gussied up - doesn't she looked bee-utiful?

Myself and the Bride

Time for the ceremony 

(I may or may not have "borrowed" these pics from facebook)

Mr. & Mrs. Bennifer!! 

Entering the Reception

The Happy Couple

The Wedding Cake

And the Groom's Cake

Isn't she gorgeous?

The Fab Four - LOVE these gals!!

Weekend of July 27-29:

Brandon and I and my parents spent the weekend with my brother's family.

My Dad's birthday was the next weekend, so we celebrated this particular weekend since we were together.

Pawpaw opening presents - the kids had made homemade cards - so cute!

Dads a huge Red Sox fan and Mom found him a Red Sox steering wheel cover.

Then it was time for baseball-decorated cupcakes!

And what birthday celebration is complete without a dance party???

Not only did we celebrate my Dad's birthday that weekend, but my brother's kiddos had several events going on that we got to see as well.

The Tank was involved in a little league tournament - my brother is the coach.

In the dugot

Batting!

Catching!

My sis-in-law put down a blanket for the kids at the game, which was like a magnet for all the other kids at the park to come and play on - it was great.

The Chief was the only one who wouldn't sit still (but, he is a toddler, so I expect nothing less).

My mom says I used to to this same thing - take off running while I was looking behind cause I knew I wasn't supposed to be running off.

I could eat him with a spoon he's so sweet!

Little Miss Boo

Amid all the baseball games, we attended a play that Goose was in.  They did a reproduction of Cinderella and Goose was one of the mice.

She's been in a few other plays, but this was the first time I had gotten to come to one - she did great!

In the "Receving Line" after the play - The Chief was all hugs for his big sis.

Back at my bro's house, Boo showed us her "Balance Beam" routine (she was big into watching the Olympic Gymnasts. and my bro and sis-in-law put tape on the floor for her as a beam - so cool!).

This post is kinda random, but so was the weekend - heading from one thing to the next.

One thing that I always have to do when we visit there is eat at my all-time favorite Mexican restaurant, that we refer to as "Los".

YUM

That pretty much wrapped up July for us - after a jam-packed weekend with family, we headed back home and got ready for August!

June in Review

So June started with us coming back from our fun San Fran One Year Anniversary Trip on Friday June 1st.  We spent that evening with my parents and then returned home for the rest of the weekend to do laundry and get ready for a new work week.

Here's some more of June....

Weekend of June 8-10, 2012:

We had a wedding to attend in the Ville, so we decided to spend the entire weekend at my parents house for a work / wedding weekend.

My parents were in the process of giving their play room a make-over.  The room had already been painted blue.  I had found and/or photo-shopped some Peanuts characters / scenes that we projected onto the walls (hooked a projector up to the computer).

We traced the character or scene onto the walls with a pencil.

Then we started painting in each character and would later outline them with a thick black marker.

We didn't finish all of if this particular weekend, we came back here and there and my mom also had many other friends and family members pitch in and help accomplish everything.

Here's before and after shots from each of the four corners of the room after everything was finished though:

Before - Corner One:

After - Corner One:

Before - Corner Two:

After - Corner Two (the area below the "stage" is a chalkboard):

Before - Corner Three:

After - Corner Three:

Before - Corner Four:

After - Corner Four:

Saturday June 9 - The Wedding:

Amidst all the tracing and painting for the play room, we still had that wedding to attend, so we cleaned up on Saturday afternoon and headed to the wedding site.

The Bride and Groom - Mr & Mrs. C!

I got to see one of my good friends, Jamie, and her boyfriend, Al at the wedding too (you may remember Jamie from some of my wedding blogposts - here and here).  She could now call Al her fiance since they had gotten ENGAGED that morning!!!  Soooooo happy for them!!!  And it was so fun to get to congratulate her in person.

I love this shot of the Bride and I - this is *so* her and such a fun pic.  :)

The month of June actually offered us a few weekends at home (which is pretty rare for us not to travel on a weekend), so we snatched those up pretty quick...so the middle of June was pretty quiet and uneventful, therefore there's not much to blog about (not that I'm complaining about down time!)

At the end of June, we headed back to the Ville.....

Weekend of June 29-30, 2012

Friday, June 29:

We arrived in the Ville for a visit with my parents and my brothers family.  It had been about 4 months since we had seen them and I was about to die from withdrawals.  :)

The months of May and June in our family are packed with birthdays and anniversaries.  Instead of mailing out packages to folks, we had saved up all the presents and gave them out that night. 

We had gifts for 4 family members birthdays, Fathers Day for my Dad and an anniversary gift for my brother and sister-in-law.  It was like Christmas!   My parents anniversary is in May too, but we had already celebrated with them for that. 

This was what I gave my Dad for Father's Day.  The picture on the left is him holding me at the hospital when I was born and the one on the right is my wedding day.

 

We gave Goose a Colorguard flag and she picked it up and spun it like she'd been doing it all her life!

We had fun hanging out that night and playing with the kiddos.

Saturday, June 30:  The Annual Family Cookout

My dad's middle brother and his wife host a family cookout each year.  We play lots of games, eat lots of food and just have fun together.

In the last couple years, they have also added a water slide to the mix, since we've had some hot summers.

Even the Big Kids (aka my Dad) go down the slide.

Uncle J somehow always takes charge of the water hose and loves to spray everyone with it.

After cooling off with the water slide, the lawn games began.

We play a variety of games including marshmallow shooting, bean toss, darts and water balloon toss (which turns into a water balloon fight almost every year).

We cut out of the picnic a tad early to head to C-ville so we could attend Brandon's cousin's wedding.  It was a small back-yard wedding.

The Bride and Groom with Brandon's immediate family

Congrats!