July 2010

July was the month of the big event, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Kyla had been wiggling on her loose tooth for several weeks, and early this month it finally popped out while she was spending the night at Linda's.  The Tooth Fairy exchanged it for $5 the following night and even before she had a chance to spend it we had already spotted the tooth's replacement.

Over the weekend of the Fourth of July we traveled to Chelan to spend time with Jan, Bill, my sisters, and Brian.  The water was too cold to spend much time in, but we toured the lake in Mom's boat and played at the neighborhood pool.  Being two weeks before the wedding we were also occupied with planning and invitation assembly.

Blake's dream of riding on a train powered by Thomas the Tank Engine finally came true when we all attended Day Out With Thomas in Snoqualmie with Marty and Kerry.  Blake enjoyed indulging his train obsession for a couple of hours, though he was a bit overwhelmed by the big crowds.  I'm thinking we need to wait a couple of years before planning that Disneyland vacation.

Then on the Big Weekend we've been waiting for finally arrived.  We spent three days in Ellensburg for Cassie and Brian's wedding.

On Friday we attended the rehearsal.  Blake wasn't willing to cooperate on his first run through as the ring bearer and we just about lost hope that he would participate.  The path the wedding party takes to the alter crosses a bridge over a creek, so I perked his spirits by grabbing some sticks and letting him through them off of that bridge.  On the second try we let him carry sticks with him and this time everything went smoothly (though he paused along the bridge to loose a few pieces of cargo).

That night we went to the Pasta Company for dinner where I screened a movie composed of pictures of Cassie and Brian's childhoods until they met.  The two of them and Becky scanned the pictures from old photo albums and then I edited them together and set the movie to music used in the wedding.  The production was meant as a gift for the parents from the bride and groom.

The big day was busy with preparations of course, but that didn't stop Cassie from taking her bridesmaids (of which Becky was one) on a hike of the Manastash Ridge that morning.  After we showed up to the Party Barn for pictures I realized that I had left my camcorder that was to be used to record the ceremony at our hotel room and I broke a few speed laws on my way back to retrieve it.  After the ceremony, toasts, cake cutting, bouquet and garter tossing, etc, the dancing started, and Kyla was a dancing machine.  She spent most of the songs dancing with me, and by the end of the night both of us had very sore feet.  She did kick me to the curb for one song when she pried some poor young boy off of his mother and forced him to dance with her.  The little vixen even kissed him!

For the last full weekend of July we took it a little easier and spent a day with Linda, Wes, Tina, Bill, and Sammy at Lake Easton.  Linda took the kids out on her little boat where they did a little fishing.  They used toy poles so for dinner we had to resort to hamburgers and hot dogs.

I'm pretty sure that will be the most I'll have to report for any month this year.  Not that we're deliberately slowing down yet, we've got lots planed for August.