Photo Overload
Please don't feel bad if you skip over (but please feel free to stay and look!)
The United Methodist Church has missionaries all over the world. Our church (Trinity) usually has one or two trips per year to work with our missionary in Panama and one trip to Costa Rica and sometimes one trip to Africa.
Hannah (second from the left below) led a trip to Costa Rica last year and loved it so much that she led a trip last week. Last year, the team was five young adults from our Tuesday night group. This year, there were three from our group and two people from my age group. They returned on Saturday with smiles on their faces.
We have a man on our church staff who has been working with us for over 25 years BUT he thinks that last week was his 25th anniversary. Hans was a part of a local program - Horizons - which teaches life skills to folks who might not otherwise be able to live alone. He came to work at Trinity after completing that program many years ago. Horizons is affiliated with UAB so when people are talking about where they attended college, he tells them he graduated from UAB. All of that to say, we celebrated like last week was the official 25th anniversary. We gave him a trophy and I picked up GINORMOUS balloons. He was happy!
Mark spent two days at the farm and got even more done on the kitchen. They reused cabinets from two of our houses and it is coming together. This has been a long time coming.
On Friday afternoon, our daughter, son-in-law, and our almost six-year-old granddaughter arrived. Laura, Mark, and I headed out to Oven Bird for the rehearsal dinner for our niece, Grace. It was the start to a busy and fun weekend.
Saturday morning dawned bright and early and Laura and I packed up our stuff and drove to our sister-in-law's house to help host a "morning of the wedding day brunch" for Grace and the women from the two families that were in town.
Grace is very talented. You may remember that she painted the big picture that hangs in my kitchen. She paints and does other artistic things really well. (she is an engineer by education)
She had painted sunflowers years ago and we used that painting on the invitations and as our theme (van Gogh-ish).
I even found wooden skewers with sunflowers for the fruit kebabs. You give our family a theme and we can run with it!
I never could get high enough over this to get both names fully in the photo. We were using fiesta dishes so we went with fun primary colors. Bob made the donut holder and it was so cute. They can mount it on the wall and hang mugs on it or they can put it in one of their offices at their house and use it as fun & quirky art.
I made a lettuce and avocado and green onion salad with a homemade lemon vinaigrette. It was so good.
The party favors were little tiny easels painted in primary colors with a square sugar cookie art piece. The cookie baker was able to take the art that Grace painted and make the cookies look like miniature canvases of her painting.
We used Grandmother's silver goblets - we loved the juxtaposition of fun fiestaware alongside the silver goblets. Mark's momma would have loved the party. We sure do miss her. She's been gone a year this month.
There were six of us at the kitchen table.
Isn't the dining room lovely?
There were 10 ladies in the dining room.
As soon as the party was over, everyone headed to their respective homes or back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding.
At the rehearsal dinner, the groom's mom had cool light sticks on the table for everyone and we brought several home for our granddaughter to have. She loved them!
We had to be at the church at 3:15 for family photos. Traffic was at a standstill and we literally had to go south and then east and all around the world to get there. We were only a few minutes late. I wish my daughter-in-law had told me the trick below (my arm over toward Mark) when we were taking the big family photo. I can tell you right now that I'm not going to be happy with that family photo BUT the day wasn't about me :-). Mark and I married in this same sanctuary 41 years ago.
Grace had painted two little birds that were then reproduced on the wedding invitations. She felted the two birds on top of the wedding cake as the topper. They were lovely.
The reception was held at The Club. I was teaching our granddaughter that it isn't the Club, but The Club. Both words are said equally strong. The (with a long E) - I don't know if that makes sense, but it is the way it has always been pronounced.
The wedding cake layers were not all the same flavor - some were strawberry and some were red velvet.
The groom's cake was 450 baby bites. If you are ever in Birmingham, swing by
Pastry Art to taste a baby bite. You won't be disappointed.
Both the bride and groom are Auburn graduates (in engineering).
The flowers at the reception were gorgeous. My sister-in-law (the mother of the bride) made the bark vases. She loves flowers.
The picture frame below was on a big easel as you entered the room. You can see the birds that Grace painted.
Grace and Paul cut the cake at some point in the evening. Everyone said it was yummy.
Here are our two oldest granddaughters - Our oldest is 9 and our middle granddaughter is just a few weeks shy of 6.
This is our son, daughter-in-law, and oldest granddaughter.
While we were waiting for the service to begin, the girls were playing games. (These photos are totally out of order - these were at the church and I've already shown you the reception. Blogger has not been nice to me lately regarding the loading of photos.)
The oldest has a Louis Vuitton purse that she has had for years. When she was three she called it her woowie.
We headed home after the reception and went to bed not long after we arrived at home. I left for work at 6:45 a.m. Sunday morning while everyone else was still fast asleep (except for Mark). He stayed home and played with our granddaughter when she woke up. They left to drive home while I was still at work. I was the only Elliott "representing" at church on Sunday morning and I told our Sunday School class that I was on the payroll! (not for teaching but for working the welcome desk)
I left the church at 11:15 and drove home and Mark and I dragged a couple of things out of the fridge and ate a quick bite of lunch and I took a 30 minute nap. I was out cold. My alarm went off and we hopped up and got dressed again. A former associate pastor, Suzanne Pruitt, died last week after a long battle with cancer. I was blessed to know her as a pastor and a friend and a co-worker. Her daughters had her funeral in north Alabama on Saturday, but she was inurned in our columbarium at Trinity. The service was at 2:00 p.m. and my car thermometer said it was 95 degrees. They moved the main portion into a glassed in hallway that overlooks the columbarium due to the heat. We only had to stand outside for a final prayer and for them to place her ashes in the niche.
I shared with y'all about glueing on the new crosses. Doesn't it look lovely? Rest in peace, sweet Suzanne.
My car has been having a gas vapor lock issue so we stopped at Mark's twin brother's house to borrow a car so we could put mine in the shop. Now imagine all we've done over this weekend and how tired we were. We took the car. Mark filled out the information on the envelope. I handed him the key fob and he dropped it all into the overnight box at the dealership. We drove to our house (not far) and when we pulled into the driveway I asked Mark, "do you have a house key?" Mine is now in the dropbox. We called around and no one had a key. Why not??? They will all have keys after this week. Our daughter, who lives an hour and a half away had a key. She had just arrived home and we called and said, "can you meet us halfway?" We started driving and I said, "why don't we call a locksmith?" I googled and called the first one (not recommended) and he said he could be there in 25 minutes. Red flag #1 - he wouldn't give me an estimate over the phone. When he got here, it was significantly higher than he indicated, but by that point. . .money was just that - money.
My hair is literally stuck to my head. We had on dress clothes and we were sitting on our front porch sweating!
He arrived and we took him around to the back door. Of course, we have the kind of lock that can't be picked. He had to drill it out. I gave him 5 stars on google simply because he did arrive on time and he did fix it. Last night, I actually put a chair in front of the door . . .just in case. Mark replaced the locks today.
After all of that, we went into the house and changed clothes. I had to change EVERYTHING. TMI? After we changed, he went to the garage and I went upstairs. We knew we were too tired to try to talk about anything.
So . . .how was your weekend? or last week?
I'm coming to the end of this summer mini term. My final is July 2. I have a couple of big (ish) projects due this week - I have to create a 15 minute teaching video with slides for the project that is due Wednesday night.
If you read all of this, you deserve a prize!!
