What a great weekend!!

This weekend was my niece's wedding. Here's the wedding in a nutshell (if I can): update: I couldn't. *sigh*

Friday arrive at hotel, check in, leave to pick up tux, return and let B swim while Mike napped, went to 3 ring circus, I mean rehearsal, went to the rehearsal dinner at an Italian place, not sure if Mike could go because of his allergies.. he did fine until the very end.

After dinner, Shari wanted me to come help her with some "last minute" stuff so Mike and Blake went back to the hotel. Her "few" things were to make ALL of the boutinniers (sp??) (9), ALL of the corsages (6) and ALL of the bouquets (6). Dear lord! At 11:30 I told her I was tired... at 1:30 she took me back to my hotel!

Mike and Blake were both asleep when I got back. That was our 10th anniversary.

Saturday we got up and let Blake swim. He was ready at 10:00 AM to put his tux on and get "shnazzed up". We told him he had to wait. He was so excited he didn't know what to do with himself! LOL :)

The wedding was very nice and other than the second before the wedding march starting, Shari's veil falling off and needing fixed... went off without a hitch. Well, I guess technically there WAS a hitch at the end :)

After the ceremony they did 3 hours of pictures. I was ready to DIE! LOL.... I was one of 2 "mistresses of ceremonies"... so I did a lot of running at the church making sure Shari had what she needed and that the bout's were on, the guys were in place, etc. My niece, Robin, was the other runner. She did a lot of "get your dress on!" and "hurry up.. .come on..." LOL :) So the ceremony started a few minutes later than planned. But that was OK. Then I stayed at the church to help with pics and Robin went to the hall to finish up things that hadn't been done the night before (oh dear). I did some bossing around (I'm good at that) so the the photographer could get the shots she wanted. (The photographer is my great nephew's wife =) ). I also told members of the bridal party who kept wanting pictures, "Hey, this is time that Jackie is getting PAID for, y'all can take pictures for free later." Yeah... so who cares that Jackie was doing it as a wedding gift?? She still deserved the respect that would be given to a paid photographer, right??

We walked down to a park for more pics and then, because I hadn't had lunch and it was nearly 4:00, I started to have issues with my sugar. Got that taken care of and helped finish up some stuff at the reception hall. (The reception was a pig roast and the hall was a farm museum so the table decorations were mason jars with bandanas tied around them and daisies in them. Very cute! I should have taken a picture of one!! Darn it!)

Blake did an excellent job all day... not one meltdown and anything anyone asked him to do, he did with no complaints. So he and Mike left the reception early to go back to the hotel and swim :) I stayed so that I could help with clean up after.

They had a jar to put tips for a happy marriage in. They are going to read them on their 1st anniversary. Blake's tip was, "Keep each other safe." I love it.

We had decided that today we would celebrate our anniversary since we couldn't really do that on Fri or Sat. We planned a day at the beach. We got up and my feet and knees were KILLING me. Besides the fact that I ran all day yesterday in barefeet because my flip flops wouldn't stay on my feet, the floor of the museum is concrete... so UGH! Anyhooo.... we packed up and took B's tux back. Then we set off for the beach at Grand Haven on the shore of beautiful Lake Michigan. We got to the beach at about noon and Blake was in the water by 12:01. LOL :) We snorkeled (all of us.. Blake loved it, although we didn't see much), we swam, we jumped waves, we built sand castles, we ate lunch, we chased seagulls away from our food, Blake rode his inner tube in the waves, and some guys who were boogie boarding let him try their boogie boards. He had a blast.

Then we headed into town and took a trolley ride that gave us a little tour of the town and some history. The driver had a lot of cheesey jokes such as, "A lot of us make our HOMES in Grand Haven, not ONTARIO. Some say that Lake MICHIGAN is the most beautiful, but you don't want to go there at night because it gets a little EERIE, however I feel it is SUPERIOR to any other. Just so you know there will be no more great lake jokes from HURON out." But it was great fun :) When we got off the trolley, we walked the boardwalk a little bit... Mike wanted to go to a place we had seen on the trolley ride but my feet couldn't handle it so we didn't walk down there. We shared a DELICIOUS cinnamon roll and Blake had a caramel apple. Then we had ice cream and then headed home.

It was 8:00 when we left Grand Haven. We got home at 10:00.

It was a great day! We relaxed and had no time lines to follow :) I loved it...so did my boys :)