Sunday, August 31, 2014

a day of vacation

August is usually when we visit our Wisconsin family, which means just about everyone, Dan's relatives and mine.  This year we saw some of my family at the wedding in Oregon, and we took advantage of the day after the ceremony to have a day together before we all headed home.

my beautiful sister and mama
My mom's idea of peaceful and rejuvinating is the ocean, so Seal Rock beach is where we went (twist my arm)...

















...and then to Newport to check out the huge sea lion population.








Thursday, August 21, 2014

three days of love

The end point of our journey west was the beautiful wedding of my dear cousin, Jessica to her honey, Ben. Weddings do such a nice job of bringing people you love to one spot, and we spent every minute of this one enjoying the community they've made for themselves in the world.  

My uncle and my grandfather - can you see the resemblance?

Great Grampa, Grampa, and new grandson
(those are lovely pictures, but where's the bride?)
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Preparations
(really, where is the bride?)








(there she is!!)













(I feel that these last two photos might require some explanation...The groom's brother flew in early Friday morning from the UK and his gift was the installation of two gigantic beeswax candles which he spent all day Friday and part of Saturday constructing, much to our amusement.  It smelled so good...)

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my cousin C with beauiful Ani
Eliza and Cousin Lucy









The groom's family, trading songs around the salmon
the beautiful couple enduring a hilarious brotherly toast



Sigh.  It was everything a wedding should be.  Joyful, sincere, silly, radiant, hopeful.  My 96-year-old grampa made the trip out with his 94-year-old sister, and they both danced to my uncle's swing band and the looks on their faces will thrill me for a long long time...