The Fish Gets Married

I'm the oldest of four girls.

Kenna is next in line--she got married in December of 2010.

Marah is next, then Bethany, who is still in high school and 

has been forbidden to marry for at least another decade.

Marah has spent a lot of time with our little family.  She lived with us for two summers while she was in college, once when Seth was a baby, once when Catherine was.  We still call her Aunt Nanny Marah.

We were very excited for Aunt Nanny Marah to get married, especially because she ended up marrying her best friend, a boy she's known since they were nine or ten years old.  How cool is that?  

Plus his family and our family have been friends forever, so the whole thing was just a big reunion/party!

Of course, breakfast is the most important meal of any wedding day, especially when said breakfast is complimentary and delicious:

Mmm...danish...

Breakfast is even more important than getting ready for the wedding,

as you can tell from my mid-hairdo breakfast eating: 

The grandpas, pestering the grandkids.  

Totally can't tell those two are father and son, can you? 

And then, despite our best attempts to be late to the sealing (and to get pulled over on the way there),

we made it to the temple to see Marah and Stephen be sealed for Time & all Eternity.

I may or may not have bawled like a baby.

And here they are:

Mr. & Mrs. Koford!

We don't have the official photos back from the photographer yet, so here are the best of our amateur shots:

(okay, this one is one of the real photos.  I just noticed)

The line 

(notice that I'm taller than Kenna for once?  Thank you, ridiculously high wedges!)

(and let's not pay attention to the whiteness of my legs, shall we?)

Groom, Dads, & Groomsmen

I love this picture because somehow Jon looks like the runt of the litter, when he's really not.

We all know who that is, don't we, Dad?

Bridesmaids (sisters of the bride & groom)

Four sisters

Catherine & Marah Catherine

Seth would not cooperate for a single picture.

Did I mention that it was 110 degrees that day?  I was very grateful to NOT be the bride being photographed for hours in my hot wedding dress.  Poor Marah.

We had a delicious lunch at a local restaurant before making the drive back to Tucson.  Of course, traffic was awful due to a truck fire, so we had some very unhappy children in the truck with us.

Luckily we made it back in time to get things set up for the reception.

Like the cake:

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, despite some of the ribbons getting out of place.

Top layer was cookies & cream, middle was chocolate with salted caramel icing, bottom was yellow with raspberry filling.  The chocolate was the biggest hit!

I had a lovely time visiting with people I haven't seen in a LONG time and snatching all the blue cheese off the cheese platter.  It was a beautiful reception--the perfect end to a gorgeous wedding.

Instead of throwing rice or blowing bubbles, we sent the bride and groom off with gigantic sparklers:

Kenna, Aunt Lori, Beth & Me

Contrary to all of my expectations, there was no lighting of hair on fire or accidental burning of eyeballs.

A true miracle, considering the age of some of the guests wielding those things.

Congratulations, Marah & Stephen!  

We love you!

Wedding Trip

My little sister Marah was getting married in Mesa, Arizona on June 22nd and I was making the cake.  Which meant we all got to go to Arizona for a week!  Hooray!

Let us not speak of the horrid flights that got us there.  Like the one that was delayed leaving BWI, only to finally board and find out that we had AC problems, delaying us longer.

Or the one where we missed our connection from Albuquerque to Tucson thanks to said delays and were instead put on a flight from Albuquerque to Vegas, where we would catch a flight to Tucson.  

Which is the equivalent of going from New York to D.C. by way of Chicago.

Or the one where the flight from Vegas was late (which it always, always, always is), meaning that this picture was taken at approximately midnight Eastern time:

Possibly, he was a little giddy.  

Possibly.

By the time we made it to my parents' house it was 3:00 am our time.  Thank you, Southwest.  I am just pleased that our kids were amazingly cooperative during the whole ordeal.  Of course, Catherine did have a screaming bout on one of the last flights, but I didn't care.  I frankly felt like screaming myself.

We recovered quickly and got to spend our time enjoying the Arizona summer. 

 I'll take 110 and dry over 98 and humid any day.

Swimming in Grandma's pool

Making the wedding cake:

Seth, Marah, Stephen (the groom!), and Catherine.

Oh, and me.

Two days before the wedding we drove up to Mesa to go through the temple with Marah.

I'd never been inside the Mesa temple before--it's beautiful.

Marah was more nervous about her endowment than her wedding day, but she seemed to survive just fine.

    

Bride, Groom, and Favorite Sister-in-Law (right, Stephen?)

And no, we didn't coordinate our outfits.  

We're just awesome like that.

By happy coincidence, Jon's sister Mary & her family were in the Mesa area for an internship this summer.  Since we were staying in Mesa the night before the wedding, we spent the afternoon and evening with them.

Mary took us to this awesome pool where the kids had a blast.  

I took zero pictures of said pool.

In fact, this is the only picture I took:

Catherine & Andrew, the twin cousins

Lovely, huh?

We had a great time visiting the Bears and eating their delicious food before heading back to our hotel room.

There is nothing quite as awesome as sharing a hotel room with a one-year-old.

Good thing she's cute.

Sometime in June

We got miserably sick.  All of us.  But some of us got it worse than others:

Poor little Seth man.

What started out as a pretty nasty cold turned into a horrid eye infection for Seth.  We spent a sad evening with a little boy whose eyes were so infected that he couldn't even open them.  He was terrified; he kept crying, "I can't see!  I can't see!"  

Then his sweet daddy gave him a blessing.  After it was done I laid on the bed with him and sang him some songs.  Eventually he was able to open his eyes and his reaction was so sweet: "Mommy, I was blind, but Heavenly Father made me all better!"  It's been over a month now and he'll still talk about when he was "blind."

This one was sick, too, but not nearly so badly.

Our hierarchy of sickness went (from lightest to most horrible): Catherine, Jon, Seth, me.

Mine turned into a fantastic sinus infection that just barely (one month later) disappeared entirely.

These are the awesome blocks we made/had made for the kids. 

Here they are in the 'van' Jon made for them.

Seth in a firetruck at Angelina's birthday party.

Funny story about this one:

When we were getting ready to go to Arizona for Marah's wedding, I asked Seth who he was going to marry. His answer?  "Angelina.  And then Brie.  But Brie will have to wait because Angelina is first."  When I asked him why Angelina was first, he responded, "Because she had a firetruck birthday party."  Apparently Brie's butterfly party just didn't cut it for him... 

And also, polygamy is totally cool with the three-to-four-year-old crowd, apparently.

Smores

One dessert, two reactions.

Number 1:

Number 2:

Let's just say the Princess was extremely offended by her sticky marshmallow.

Birthdays!

I know.  It's been two months since I posted last.  Which means you're in for a glut of posts (provided I actually get around to posting said posts).

Anyway...our birthdays.  27 for me, and the big 3-0 for Jon!  Nothing too big for me, although I did spoil myself with some new makeup and a nice pair of jeans.  I tried to put together a little birthday party for Jon, but Memorial Day is just not a good day to get people to show up to things.

Jon's very exciting birthday present was a remote control monster truck.

Of course, guess who was the real beneficiary of Jon's birthday present:  

Seth was one very happy three-year-old. 

Until, that is, Mom wanted a turn.  Then things weren't so fun anymore: 

After some severe whining, he got what he wanted: 

Of course, some of us were more interested in playing with the garbage we found on the playground:

Happy Birthday to us!