Marrying Private Ryan

Okay, so the title is just a tad bit on the hokey side, but I couldn't resist! :)

My younger sister, Emily, is a married woman now! She and Michael got married a couple of weeks ago in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Michael called my dad to ask for his blessing to marry Emily and a couple of weeks later, they were saying their "I Do's".
Most people have slightly longer engagements, but that's mainly due to the fact that they need that time to plan their weddings. Michael is in the Army so, as you can imagine, planning a wedding can be pretty tough when trying to work around the schedule of a soldier. Emily and Michael know that a marriage is more important than a wedding, so they decided that Emily would fly to North Carolina and they'd get married at the courthouse there.

Emily had taken a day off from work because we were all supposed to be heading to Galveston for a family reunion. Instead, my mom and dad flew to North Carolina on Thursday morning and Emily flew out that night. The rest of us were there in spirit. :)

On Friday morning, my mom, dad, Emily & Michael headed to the courthouse.


The Happy Couple

The Bride

The Groom

The Mother of the Bride

The Father of the Bride

The flowers

The shoes!

They walked in and filled out all the necessary paperwork and then headed down the hall to wait.

Mom & Emily waiting patiently while court was 'in session'.


After waiting a while outside of the courtroom, Michael walked in and asked the judge if he was performing weddings to which the judge replied, "If you can find someone to marry you." :)

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Ryan

They all spent the rest of the day together and then went out to dinner before my parents flew out that night.

Mom loving up on her new son-in-law....watch out, Jay! :)

Congratulations, Michael and Emily! Michael - Welcome to the family! You obviously deserve the best in life because you're married to her now. We are so proud to have you as a part of our family. Emily - We are so happy for you. There is definitely no denying that faith, hope and love have brought the two of you together. We love you!!!

Here Comes the LEE LA'!

So, my sister is getting married in North Carolina this weekend and is borrowing one of my suitcases. Truett was playing around with the suitcase and put some of his toys in it. I told him he needed to take the toys out because Aunt Emily was taking the bag. Of course, he then asked me why she was taking it and I told him. The following is the conversation that took place afterwards, between Truett and me:

Truett: What's a wedding???

Me: It's when a man and a lady who love each other very much go and get married and kiss and live together and they become a family.

Truett: Maybe when I get big I can get married!

Me: SURE! When you find a lady that you love a lot and you think she is so pretty and nice, then you can get married.

Truett: Maybe LEE LA! She's pretty and nice. I could marry her!

AWWWWWWWEEEE! I love you, Mom!!!!

They Call Him the Fireman....That's His Name!

We celebrated Truett's 3rd birthday yesterday and he really had such a great time. For the past 2 years, I always had a theme for his parties (gators the 1st year, dogs last year) and everything from the cake to the party favors to the games, the invitations to Truett's outfits always went along with the theme. Of course, Jay always made fun of me because he just couldn't understand how stressing myself out over finding the perfect 'theme-related' items could be fun to me! :)

Truett's Gator cake from his 1st birthday

Truett's Pup-Cakes from his 2nd birthday (and YES...I made these and NO....I will never make them again!)

Well, this year, I now have a baby at home and a little less time to spend and a little less sanity to spare for birthday party planning. As I said in my previous post, Truett is in to so many things right now, nothing really stood out, so I thought I'd make it easy on myself and decided to ask him what kind of birthday cake he wanted. I had visions (or rather, nightmares) of Thomas the Train, Handy Manny or Lightening McQueen plastered all over my house, but to my surprise he said, "I want a FIRETRUCK CAKE!" I LOVED it...simple, boyish, fun!

I usually order his birthday cakes from Candy Haven in Denton (SO YUMMY!) but I thought that a firetruck cake would be simple enough, so I decided to make the cake myself. I went to Party City and bought all the decorations, plates and napkins (one stop shopping) and we decided to have Chick-fil-A Nuggets, or as Truett calls them, "real chicken" for lunch.

*SIDE NOTE: As I would assume most kids do, Truett went through this chicken nugget phase where that's all he wanted to eat. So, I started buying the frozen chicken nuggets at the grocery store. Well, I should have stuck with the frozen nuggets because once he had Chick-fil-A nuggets, he realized quickly that whatever it was I was trying to pass off to him as nuggets, probably wasn't chicken at all! So, now whenever I ask him if he wants nuggets, he says, "No, I don't want nuggets. I want REAL chicken!" We now return to our regularly scheduled blog already in progress. :)

Couldn't find a way to tie the nuggets into the 'firetruck' theme, but they're Truett's favorite and less work for me, so we went with it.

We always keep the invite list pretty short, especially since with my parents, brother and sister, and Jay's parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephew, there are 14 of us already. Plus, we figure Truett will have many more birthdays to celebrate with friends.

Aunt Emily

PaPaw

Gramma

LeeLa', Uncle John and Nannie Sarah were there, too. Don't know why I didn't get pictures of them....SORRY, GUYS!

We do invite our good friends, Charlie and Michelle and their daughter, Olivia, who is 10 weeks younger than Truett.

Olivia and Truett swimming in the Gator pool at Truett's 1st birthday party. They were such little chunks! :)

Truett and Olivia this year....chowing down on cake and ice cream!

The party was from 11:00 - 1:00 and everything went smoothly. We all ate lunch and the kids played outside in the blow up waterslide and pool, the bounce house and the play set. Once we were done with lunch, we sang "Happy Birthday" and had cake and ice cream.

Truett was so excited about singing and blowing out candles

When it came time to open presents, Truett was a mad man! Tissue paper was flying everywhere and he'd barely be finished opening one gift before he was moving on to the next. We had to stop him and tell him to slow down many times, but he was just so caught up in the moment.

He really got some great gifts: a new swing for the swingset at my parents' house and a new Mickey Mouse movie. Aunt Emily gave him every beach bucket, shovel, toy, etc....that Target had (which we will be using on our trip to Galveston next weekend!). He even got his own MP3 player that holds about 20 or so songs....it's so funny to watch him when he listens to it because his faces lights up and he starts dancing to the music.

Truett opening his gifts -

Handy Manny Outfit, complete with tool belt, visor, work gloves and tools

Lightening McQueen laptop computer

Spider Web game

Firetruck

Fireman Outfit, complete with hatchet, waterhose and fire extinguisher!

Emma was soaking it all in and had fun just playing with all the tissue paper!

After gifts, we went outside and swung at the firetruck pinata. I've come to the conclusion that pinatas aren't necessarily all they're cracked up to be especially since Truett would have been perfectly happy if I had just given him the bag of candy I used to stuff the pinata!

Truett giving it good WHACK!

The passing of the torch to Olivia

Finally, Uncle John stepped in and got the job done!

The expression on Truett's face says it all, "All of that hitting and that's all that happens?"

Truett was definitely worn out after all the festivities of the day. That evening, Truett received birthday cards in the mail from MawMaw and Gooey (my 2 grandmothers). He was soooo fired up about getting mail! He ripped the cards open and 'read' them both to me. "You are a special boy on your birthday!" hahahah! I guess he thought the cards were pretty special, too, because when I went to tuck him in that night, this is what I found....

He was sound asleep with both cards next to him on his pillow!

So, it was another year, another party, another success. Now, time to start planning Emma's....I only have 4 months to plan! :)