The Jaguar Game

Joel & Sherry (my brother and his wife) took us with them to a Jacksonville Jaguar game.
Before the game began, three military flew over. Later the pilots were on the field for us to meet.


When Grandma lived with them she went to the games all the time. In fact, she was at the very first Jaguar game. She was really excited to be going to another game. This game was against the Minnesota Vikings. We all had a great time even though the Jaguars didn't win. We enjoyed the pizza, nachos, pretzels, peanuts, and soda. Jackson de Ville made us laugh. Being there... it's like a big party with lots of fun things going on that you don't see on T.V.

THANK - YOU Joel & Sherry!!!

The Wedding

The groom, Shawn, and the guys, ready for the procession to start, while the drummers play very unusual and lovely sounding music.


The judge. This is his property. Most of the people Bambi and Shawn know hung out on the judges property since they were young. The judges kids grew up with them. He's a great guy.
He performed the ceremony. Here he is ready for the procession to start with the father of the groom ready to take pictures.

The bridesmaids.. On the left, Autumn, the brides cousin and my niece. The next bridesmaid is a friend of the bride. Then the 3rd from the left if Patty Ann, the brides cousin, and my niece.

The maid of honor with the ring bearer, Sasha. Sasha is Bambi's dog. Bambi is the bride.
The flower girl. She is Shawn's niece. When they asked her to be the flower girl it was around Halloween and she said, "I want to be a fairy". Bambi was fine with that and found these wings for her to wear, and some for Sasha too. :)
The bride has her parents walk her down the aisle together...

...and gives them both a hug.


The ceremony...

Our son Will reading a prayer poem.

The scripture reading by the grooms brother.

A poem by the brides cousin, my niece, Dawn.

The wedding cake... depicting a big bonfire.
..and the top. The tombstone says, Love Never Dies.

The drummer
The stage for the band. The band is Bambi's favorite band. They are all personal friends of both the bride and the groom.

The wedding party.

The other end of the wedding party. Somehow, I managed to cut one person off of the end in all my pictures. ::eyeroll::

Sweet little Sasha sitting under mommy's skirt...


...and standing up with her fairy wings.


The groom reveals the t-shirt under his wedding attire. I think you can read it.. but just in case, it says "GAME OVER".


Sasha in her mommy's arms.

Bambi's grandparents, Barbara and Eddie Johnson, and great uncle Herb & his wife.

Grandma Ferree sitting at a table waiting for a bowl of hot vegetarian chili with saltines and tortilla chips after the ceremony. The chili was so good and perfect for the weather. It warmed us up and we had hot chocolate to drink.

Getting the bonfire started. We found out later that they really wanted the fire burning during the ceremony but it wasn't. It was cold there. Thankfully it was sunny and clear, which kept things nice for the ceremony but shortly afterwards as the sun went down it got really cold. It was supposed to get down to 23 degrees that night and I never heard what it actually got down to but it was cold. The bride & groom, and lots of the younger set, including our boys camped out all night in tents that night.

Cutting the cake.. ready to machete the thing.. or so it looked like.

But then they decided to cut it into a nice slice.

Sitting around the campfire after eating dinner... roasting marshmallows and listening to the band.


Staring into the fire...

Grandma sitting by the fire nice and cozy warm. They had hand warmers for everyone that wanted them. They felt really good in our hands.

The bride's brother, Sammy and his girlfriend, Kristen.

Bambi and her mom, Judi...
...and her dad, Sam.

The band... "Fractal"

You can play this video to hear them play.

It was a really fun wedding in a beautiful place and we all had a great time!

Congratulations Bambi & Shawn!

Micah's 20th Birthday

On Friday, Oct 10, Micah turned 20. Where have the years gone? This is Micah doing what he does most and loves most.. playing guitar. Here he is practicing his classical music for school.
He is a music major and seems to love it. He also works at Baskin Robbins to earn a little money. He is thankful for the job and likes getting paid but doesn't really like scooping ice cream all night. He almost always works till 10 p.m. and then has to clean up for about an hour so he gets home pretty late but he's a night owl and does fine with that.

On Friday a.m. Micah wanted me to make him some scrambled fried eggs with cheese, toast and o.j. for breakfast. So I got up and made it for him. He had that around 6:30 a.m. He has to leave for school at 7 a.m.

Nate decided not to work on Friday so he could come and celebrate with us and spend the day with Micah. Micah got home around noon and Nate got here about an hour later. Micah never works on Friday so that worked out well.

For their birthdays I let them choose their meal ahead of time and Micah chose turkey pot-pie. (vegetarian of course) He wanted to choose his dessert but I told him that is always a surprise. He complained that he wanted rhubarb pie. That he always has pie and that he didn't want cake or ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. I told him I wouldn't do that.. I knew that wouldn't be special since he works there and has ice cream from there all the time. Then I told him that Nate was bringing the dessert from Napa. Micah thought, Napa? What is he bringing something from some fancy place up in Napa? He was stumped. Well, I have to drive about a half an hour to get to Marie Calendars. Their pies are the best and they have their pies on sale every October for about $6.00 each no matter what kind of pie you buy. I had already worked it out with Nate to bring the pies since he has a Marie Calendars about 5 minutes from his place. The surprise lasted until Nate got there, which was fine because it was on Micah's birthday. When Nate arrived Micah helped him unload his car and there were the pies in the trunk. Micah was very happy to find that he was going to have his yummy pie and told me as soon as I got home. I had been out shopping. I just smiled and told him, "I know what you like."

Micah was really hungry and had skipped lunch to eat an early birthday dinner. Bob went to work early so he could be home by 5 p.m. for dinner, which is early for us. Anyway, that is why all the pictures have the food half eaten. I just got the pot pie out of the oven and Micah wanted to eat.. but the pot pie needed to set about 20 minutes. So, he decided we would eat our pie and ice cream first, which we did. We put candles on the pie and lit them and sang, "Happy Birthday" first, to Micah's chagrin.


This is the rhubarb pie with the candles already blown out and the pie half eaten. By the time I remembered the pictures we had already done all that.


We also bought a blueberry pie because one pie just didn't seem like enough.

Then we ate the turkey pot pie. Everyone enjoyed it and Mom said, "Micah made a good choice. I enjoyed every bite."

Next Micah opened his presents. He only wanted two things.. both expensive. He wanted a Playstation III game system or a HD TV. We got him the TV since the day before he told me he was so busy with school he really didn't think he'd have that much time to play games and he thought the Playstation III would come down in price if he waited a while. This one was on sale at Best Buy and part of the deal was a $25.00 gift certificate.


Nate told us Micah really wanted this game. He said it was old now and would probably be about $20.00. So we checked it out and sure enough the game was $20 so we bought that with the gift certificate. Micah was really happy with his gifts.



Will sent Micah a new game for his birthday present. It is Agricola.

It is really complicated and no one's game is the same. You are farmers and you are trying to breed animals, grow crops and increase your family and end up with the most points. There are lots of cards that change the rules for each individual and that is what makes it so complicated. But it was fun to play even if it was really challenging. I find that these games are so different every time you play them that it's never boring.. but always challenging and hard to remember everything. We played the game four times over the weekend and Micah won the first game, Bob won the second game, Nate won the third game, and Nate won the fourth game. Notice who didn't win. I haven't figured out the secret yet.. obviously. Here we are playing the game.





We really miss Will but he is way to far away to come home much. He was in our thoughts a lot and we talked to him on the phone while we were playing the game. It is always nice to have all the family together.

Micah had his friends Zach and Michael over and Nate joined them playing Rock Band.

All in all it was a fun weekend for everyone. We even watched some football. :)

Tea for Two

Today Cathy and I went to lunch. She wanted to try a new place in town called Tea-Licious. Here is what it looks like on the outside:

The picture window:

Just inside the door: In front of the picture window

The scone table:
A close-up of the scones.. mmm.. they looked yummy!
The whole place was decorated so cute and each seating area was done differently. We just thought the whole place was adorable and the owner, who I should have photographed but didn't, was happy to know we were going to put our pictures on our blogs.
The table in the background has it's own little gazebo. The place looks barren but there were quite a few people there. I specifically tried not to take photographs of the people. I thought that would be rude. I was surprised how many men were there.



I had a cucumber, cream cheese, tomato, greens and red onion sandwich on multi-grain bread and a fresh fruit cup of apple, pear, and strawberries. We had peach herbal iced tea. It was all very good. We didn't have a scone but we just might have to go back sometime for one of those.


This is the party room. Cathy is thinking of having her birthday party here with her nearest and dearest. It sure was a cute room. They do children's parties too.




I got a picture of Cathy taking pictures.