Kasey's Wedding

On May 21st, my dear friend Kasey got married to Bradley and became Mrs. Havens. It was an absolutely beautiful wedding, both in external appearance and in spirit. We are so thrilled for you guys!

Kasey and her bridesmaids at the Rehearsal:


We held the lingerie shower at Homewood Suites in Allen on the night before her wedding, and several of us spent the night together there that evening:

I have been so impressed with Annie's Bakery in Murphy, who I used to make the "It's a Boy" cookies and these adorable corset and bra/panty cookies for the lingerie shower. She made the corset and bra/panty cookies look almost exactly like the image that was used on the lingerie shower invitation!



WEDDING DAY!!!!
Julia had insisted on wearing her boots that day, so here are a couple of adorable pics of her in just a diaper and boots. I especially love the one where she's so proudly dragging her Dora backpack behind her.



Hanging out with my dad before the wedding:


Hanging out with daddy before the wedding:


Kasey and all of her flower girls:


As you can see in several of these photos, we were pretty generous giving suckers to Julia that night to bribe her into cooperating calmly despite all the wedding chaos surrounding her. Worked like a champ, and we also got some of her best smiles on camera because of her happy mood!...



The wedding was held at The Cotton Mill in McKinney, which was a working cotton mill warehouse until 1969. It had so many cool architectural aspects for photo taking. Here, Julia is looking out the huge glass doors which led to the outdoor ceremony area:



Quite possibly my favorite picture of Julia ever:


Giving kisses and hugs. Especially since it's only been in the past couple of months that Julia has learned to give "real" hugs with squeezes and love pats, I adore the picture of her giving me a genuine hug with a genuine smile on her face.



Julia FREAKED out during the rehearsal when we practiced her walking in with the other flower girls, so we decided that she'd walk in with me. I was super anxious that my almost 2-year-old would ruin the wedding with a crying fit, but she did *great* during the actual wedding.



Here I'm telling her where daddy is sitting and that he has a sucker waiting for her. Upon hearing the word "sucker", she sprinted off immediately:


Sitting with daddy during the wedding. She was so quiet and calm. We were super proud of her:


Sweet picture of Kasey's kiddos, Katie and Jacob, standing beside her and her parents. All four of them (Katie, Jacob, Kasey's dad, and Kasey's mom) gave her away. It was very touching:


Bradley praying for he and Kasey after lighting the unity candle:


Sheer excitement upon being announced Mr. and Mrs. for the first time!...



The kiddos playing in the ceremony candle decorations...post-ceremony of course! The ones on the left are Kasey's two kiddos, Jacob and Katie.



My high school girlfriends, all of whom I've known since elementary school! During our high school years, we affectionately referred to ourselves as PYT. We used Michael Jackson's "PYT" as our theme song, complete with a dance we choreographed to it. Now we refer to ourselves simply as (from left to right)Hillary, Julie, Kasey, Mylinda, me, and Shannon:


My cutie pie parents at the reception:

Slippy

"Slippy" is Julia's word for "slippery". We find it so endearing every time she gets out of the bath and walks overly slow on the tile because it's "slippy". Anyway, that brings us to her new toy: a Slip n Slide! Jarret wanted to buy one for her upcoming family birthday party, but we did a trial run last night to get her used to it.






And here's a video of all the fun!

- - - Click to play Slip N Slide Video - - -

Some of our favorite things about this video:
- For whatever reason, how a little kid answers "Yeah" and "Kay" is very funny to us.
- Her amnesia. How does a child go from giggling and having fun, but then 10 seconds later acts scared and passionately shakes her head "no" when it's suggested that she do it again? Luckily, as is her normal process, the initial hesitancy eventually wore off and by the end was saying, "I do gin!" = "I want to do it again!"
- How she does a little hop when she wants to emphasize something she says. We see her do this little hop several times a day for us. E.g., the part in the video where she says she wants to see daddy do it again (so that she doesn't have to do it).

School's Out!

It's Julia's last day of Mother's Day Out, and I wanted to document her first day photo and last day photo. We will miss you Mother's Day Out!!!

First Day:






Last Day:

It's a...

BOY!!!!

At the sonogram appointment... We ensured the sonogram technician didn't tell us the gender during our appointment:


The three of us went to breakfast at OHOP, where we opened up the envelope of sonogram pictures that revealed it was a boy! The photos had "BOY" written on them, but it was very obvious from the photos that it was a boy. I cried from overwhelming excitement, which surprised me. I really thought I'd be excited either way, but my reaction was so strong and I realized how thrilled I was that we were having a boy. I knew J was leaning towards wanting a boy, so I'm so happy for him that he got his desire.

Oh, and the other great news is that the baby is (currently) not breech! Not during any of Julia's 5 sonograms did we hear that she was head down, so this was a first. At least we know now that my uterus isn't abnormally shaped in a way that would force the baby to be breech.

We told our family over dinner by having them open gender-neutral gift bags that contained "It's a Boy" cookies inside. Some were in the shape of baby carriages and others in the shape of onesies.









The cousins had blast together running up and down the sidewalk, playing in the car, and dancing like maniacs when we got back to our house. I have a 5 minute video of them all dancing and acting like fools, but it's too big to post. We're so thankful Julia has her cousins in town to play with. She (and we) absolutely adores them!!