wedding mishaps

my bloggy friend ace is hosting wedding mishaps today. and this comes at a perfect time, seeing as it was our anniversary on monday. what an opportune moment to reminisc about the good & not so good events that took place 7 years ago!

at first i was having a hard time coming up with mishaps. all i could think of was crying bawling in the bathroom at mcdonalds 2 days before the wedding because my mom told me we were going to have lemonade at the reception. lemonade. i was crying my eyes out about LEMONADE!! (remember that mom?!) now i look back and laugh equally as hard about it as i remember crying! and i realize i was maybe a slight bit stressed and a tad bit more PMSy!

but as i went through today, thinking back to that day, a few things came to mind.

morning of the wedding: our reception was going to be outside at a park with a big white tent (without sides) for everyone to sit under (the tent was going to be right next to a pavilion where the food and cake were going to be). so that morning my parents and some other people were getting stuff set up. it was a beautiful day! we prayed away rain for weeks before, but forgot to mention anything to God about the wind. it was a beautiful windy day and stuff was blowing around and off of the tables. my parents had the tent people put a side on the tent, but that didn't help with the pavilion part where all the food was going to be. so my parents went home, dug through their camping gear, and grabbed all the tarps they could find. they went back to the park and somehow secured the tarps to the side of the pavilion. although it didn't look the greatest, in the end it was better than all the food flying around!

right before the ceremony some of the groomsmen were decorating the car. that's not such a bad thing, right? until the spray foam/car paint stuff that my soon to be brother in law was using exploded all over the front of his tuxedo. and it wouldn't come out. i was hid away in my little room (so ben wouldn't see me) and i knew something happened, but no one would tell me what. ben's sister was scrambling around to fix the problem and after the ceremony i found out that she put black mascara on the front of her husband's tux to hide the color. and it worked... we were even able to return the tux without additional fees!

the ceremony went pretty well. no one fainted, it wasn't too hot, and ben didn't cry too much (when we were standing there he had tears in his eyes and i was smiling and kinda laughing at him. ahhh... he was so cute!). but... my pastor forgot ben's last name. so at the end when he announced us he said, "...i now present to you mr. and mrs. ben... *pause*...ben...." everyone started clapping so we didn't have to tell him what to say. but yes, we are mr. and mrs. ben ben.

reception: remember how i said it was a beautiful day? well it was... to us minnesotans! but ben's family came from missouri and illinois and they were FREEZING. i guess we didn't take them into consideration when we planned an outdoor reception. but thankfully walmart and target came to the rescue---they were much warmer with their hoodies on!

i originally planned to write about our honeymoon mishaps... but maybe i'll save that for another day!

so go check out ace's blog to read some more hillarious wedding mishaps! and join in on the fun! even if you're not married, i'm sure everyone has a great wedding story!

me? i'm gonna go have a glass of lemonade...

saturday cell phone mosaic

if you follow me on twitter, then you already know this past week has been fun! we had a day at the park, samantha got her sparkie award, of course, we had a tea party with her new tea set! more to come later in the week.

visit ace's blog and join in on the picture fun!

thankful thursday

today i'm thankful for the amazingly wonderful picnic the kids and i went to earlier this week. because of spring break we didn't have ladies' life groups at the church on tuesday morning. so instead we met at the park for a picnic playdate. it turned out to be more of a potluck, as everyone brought food to share. from subway sandwiches, brownies, chips, grapes, goldfish, and apples, to cookies, PB&Js, juice boxes, crackers, bananas, twinkies, and cheese singles, we had a FANTASTIC lunch! and one super smart mom even brought wet wipes for the whole crew!

it was a gorgeous 82 degree day. all the kids had a blast on the playground, and i'm sure they all had equally as good naps!

being the wonderful mom that i am, i totally forgot to take pictures of my own kids. but for those of you who want to look at pictures of people you may not even know, click here!


what are you thankful for today?

nature's frosting

we took advantage of another gorgeous day and went for a walk this afternoon. along the way we stopped to play at a little park consisting of an old, rusty slide and swings.

while ryan, ben, and i were swinging, samantha was having fun on the slide. i saw her touch something on the top of the slide, then put her finger in her mouth. so i asked her what she ate and she said "some white stuff." so i replied, "why in the world would you put 'white stuff' in your mouth?!" (she has been taught that only food goes in her mouth, as she has tendencies to chew on her fingers, hair, and clothes...) she answered and told me the reason that she put the white stuff in her mouth was because she thought it was frosting and wanted to taste it.

so when we looked at the slide we found this:
(notice samantha's fingernail scratches through it)



needless to say samantha was a little embarassed and lot grossed out when we told her she ate bird poop!

71...

...was our high today. it was a beautiful sunny day, so we had a playdate at the park! the only downside was that it was super windy. but i CAN'T complain!

we packed our lunch and met at the park with at least 7 other moms and their kids. samantha had so much fun playing with her friend toni and her sister tori, and ryan had fun playing with his friend isaac.

isaac helped ryan by pushing him down the slide!

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

cutie pie!

samantha and her friend carter eating lunch.

samantha's friend toni. isn't she cute?!

the only picture i got of samantha playing. she was too busy running around!

now i can't wait for spring!

catching up

my parents came down for a visit on tuesday, october 7th. we had a wonderful vist. when they got there on tuesday evening, we had a quick dinner then went to ben's softball games, in which he skinned up the sides of both legs..... let me just say that you should be glad i didn't take pictures because it was pretty bad!


on wednesday we worked on miscellaneous projects around the house. i don't know how this happened but my mom ended up helping me wash the windows. i never wash the windows. i haven't in about 2 years. so why we ended up washing them i have no idea. what a nice way to treat my mom on her vacation, huh! :-)


on thursday mom, ryan, and i went shopping while samantha stayed home to play legos with papa. little did we know we'd be gone for 5 hours. oops!


on friday we went to penguin park and had a picnic. right when we got there samantha got stung by a bee. thankfully i had a princess ice pack in the cooler so it didn't swell up.


we had a fun filled day on saturday. we went to a children's farmstead in overland park, kansas. we had a great morning there. i thought it would be a fun field trip for samantha, but i think we all enjoyed it.


on monday the 13th my parents had to go back to minnesota. and the kids and i went with them. (yes, it was planned!) the kids were pretty good, so we had a nice 10 hour trip!

playdate at the park

yesterday the kids and i went to smithville to play with samantha's 3 year old cousin, karma. they don't get to play together very often, so they had a lot of fun playing at the park.

ryan must have taken a chill pill before we got there because he was so relaxed in the swing. he looked like he could've fallen asleep!

going for a ride with sissy. that was the extent of ryan's playing on the playground.

this picture cracks me up because the girls both wanted to do a "train" down their slide, but neither of them wanted to go to the other one's slide!! so they were leaning forward talking to each other trying to figure out a solution.

they finally figured it out!

ryan had fun playing with the rocks. he kept trying to eat them though!

samantha and karma. someone asked me if they were twins.

nothin' better than playing at the park then going to mcd's