TBT: Happy Birthday Kona!!!!! and More from Mexico!!!

First up- our throwback for this week.  It is Kona's 9th birthday today, so here are Kona Birthday pictures every year since 2010!

Thanks for being an awesome dog, Kona!  We love you.

On to Mexico...again!  I think I have enough pictures for 2 more posts.  This one will be more general resort/family pictures.  The next one will be more specific events and places.

First up, we have MEXICO CALLIE. She lounges like a boss, almost always wears cool shades, and manages to find salami wherever she goes.  She also uses the key card to open the hotel door on her own, watches shows on the iPad outside on the comfy resort chair, and enjoys lemonade...only sometimes.

And then we have MEXICO MAYA.  Her hair is totally affected by the humidity, she runs wherever she goes (when not contained with the stroller), and only eats a good meal if her tummy isn't full of chips and guacamole.  She enjoys anything with water, especially gigantic bathtubs and water walls that get her soaking wet.

Together, they are MEXICO SISTERS.  They rock their swimsuits or resort wear wherever they go.  They run and don't walk.  They are adorable.

And when they aren't swimming in the pool or running around, all they want to do is look for MEXICO FISH.

Lastly, we have FAMILY IN MEXICO.  There were many more family members than I got pictures of, but it was so fun to have so many people around to hang out with. 

I'll have a normal FTPDF post tomorrow, and then will finish up my Mexico posts on Saturday.

WEDDING MEGA-POST #2

Welcome back!  If you missed my first wedding post, you can find it here.

Right after the wedding, we took lots of different group pictures, starting with a whole group picture of everyone at the wedding.

There were about 75 people who came!

Then there were family pictures...which includes one of my new favorites.

The Hender-Gosse-Lind-Sharpes

And then we got Ekeberg and Henderson pictures.

Ekebergs
Mom and Dad
Hendersons

Before heading to the reception with everyone else, Laura and Craig went to take some sunset pictures on the beach.

So sweet.  Destination weddings are awesome.

Then the party began with a cocktail hour, including a MARIACHI BAND.

To keep Callie busy during this time, I gave her my phone so she could go around and take pictures.  She actually got some really good ones!  These are all hers:

Soon dinner and speeches followed.

THEN...DANCING (and cake)!!!!!

I'll end with a couple of videos of everyone tearing it up (and sweating) on the dance floor.


IMG 4553 from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

This one is the best- Uptown Funk might just be my new favorite song, because whenever I hear it now I just picture Callie having a blast dancing with her Auntie Yoda and Uncle Craig at the wedding.


IMG 4557 from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

So, does it look like we had a BLAST?  Because we did.

My TBT tomorrow will just throwback to a couple weeks ago, and I'll share more pictures of our adventures around the resort.

Grammy's 90th!!!!! And the first WEDDING MEGA-POST!!!!!

There are lots of reasons for exclamation points today!!!!  First off, it is my Grammy's 90th birthday.  She is in Colorado and we all wish we could see her and celebrate with her, but we'll just have to send her birthday wishes from here.  It has been way too long since we have seen her, and I'm excited to be able to go out there with my mom and sisters in May.

Happy Birthday Grammy!  We love you!

Next order of business...I promised you WEDDING PICTURES by tonight!  I'm pleased to be able to follow through with my promise.

I have many other non-wedding related Mexico pictures to share, but I figured you'd probably want to see more wedding related ones first, so here you go!  I had to put them in collage format to fit in as many as I could, so hopefully on your computers you can enlarge the collages to see them bigger.  There are some great ones.

On Saturday, February 28th around 1:00pm, Laura, Mari, Boom, Mariellen (Craig's mom), and my Aunt Mary (who took many of the pictures you'll see here) descended upon the resort's bridal suite.  Shortly thereafter, three hairstylists came to start our up-dos.

We had a great time eating snacks, drinking mimosas and slowly going through the process of getting fancified. 

As you can see, the bride was stunning

The guys got ready in Laura and Craig's master suite, and I'm sure it took much less time and involved a little more beer than the girls' experience.

The handsome groom, his dad Mark, and Bops

Once we were all ready, the professional photographers showed up.  We took some girl pictures in and around the bridal suite.

We even "got caught" taking a selfie

Then we headed to a bridge where Craig and Laura were going to get their "first look" at each other, as well as where we took some more bridal party photos.

Because I was part of the picture taking before the ceremony, I wasn't able to get the girls ready.  Thankfully Hanna stepped in and helped Chris.  They were ADORABLE in the dresses that G-ma made them! 

Are they not the cutest flower girls you have ever seen???

As people began arriving, the girls were able to play around.  They even did a practice run walking down the aisle. 

Melt. My. Heart.

As you'll soon see, we ended up not having them go by themselves for the real thing, but I'm so thankful that this picture exists from the practice.

The wedding was almost ready to start!  People were filled with anticipation!  Uncle Joe was hanging with his great-nieces, ready to perform another niece's wedding ceremony!

And at 5:00ish, it began.  We all walked down the aisle to a piece of music that my mom recorded with her church group.  It was a beautiful start to a beautiful ceremony.



Our Aunt Margie wished Laura "peace!" on her way down the aisle

Seriously, the location was amazing...with the ocean RIGHT THERE.

Callie hung out with me in the front, Maya hung out with Daddy in the back.

HOORAY!!! CONGRATS TO UNCLE CRAIG AND AUNTIE YODA!

That's all for now.  Come back tomorrow for group pictures and the reception!

Weekend Wrap-Up

We had an altogether lovely and chill weekend.  The girls were great.  We didn't have too many plans.  The weather is warming up making us all happy with spring anticipation. 

And spring anticipation leads to summer anticipation.  This is going to be the longest summer break I have had for awhile (minus my whole maternity leave thing after Maya was born).  I am done with work the first week of June, and won't go back until August 31st!  That is crazy!

I can't wait.

Anyway, the big event on Saturday was our cousins Donald and Frederic's BLAST OFF birthday party.  The girls had a BLAST (haha!) running around, playing with balls and planets and legos.

Happy Birthday Donald and Fred!

Today was also fun and chill. 

Maya played hard this morning in her headband of choice.

Auntie Cat and Hanna came over to play, and then they accompanied Callie and me to a delicious brunch, with gluten-free toast and all.

The snow is melting like crazy so the ground is kind of one big gross puddle, but we went out for a couple of walks today anyway.  Fresh air feels amazing!

And later, Callie wanted to learn stuff like kindergarten.  So we set up some letter and number posters, but the girls were the best and cutest teachers in the house.

I'll leave you with a goofy Maya video, doing what she does best- proudly messing up and then cleaning up what I have already cleaned up.



IMG 4855 from Baby Goose on Vimeo.

I'll also leave you with a promise of more wedding/Mexico pictures by Tuesday!  We are all slowly compiling the pictures together, and I'm already overwhelmed at how I'm going to pick and choose ones to share.  If you are on facebook, you probably saw Laura's epic upload, and there are SO MANY GOOD ONES, even beyond the ones she posted. So, be prepared for some of the biggest MEGA POSTS of all time.

FTPDF

Hello! Happy weekend!

I'm blogging from my phone because our laptop is being stubborn, so I apologize if this post is sub-par.

We have recovered from vacation, though still basking in the memories. I can't wait to see all the pictures (hopefully this weekend!) and then I'll work on sharing them all with you. 

On to the pictures from being home this week...

Favorite Thing #1: How much lighter I feel  after getting my hair chopped off. She took off about 5 inches from the back! I figured I'd continue living out my 2015 words CHANGE and BRAVE, and do something fun and different. I love it!

Favorite Thing #2: Family time at home

Favorite Thing #3: Back to grandparent daycare

Favorite Thing #4 (but not really): This one got a bad cold after vacation. She also likes to throw herself down and tantrum while the rest of us laugh at her.

Favorite Thing #5: Dinner with G-ma and G-pa

Have a great weekend!

TBT

Happy Thursday!

I had fun with this week's throwbacks because I was able to use adorable swimming suit photos of the girls (yay for visiting Mexico in February)!

And then I did a couple comparisons of the girls to their younger selves, because that is fun too.

The Wedding Weekend: A Preview

HOLA!!!!!

I don't even know how many times I said "hola!" in the past 5 days.

Why, you ask?  Because WE WERE IN MEXICO celebrating Auntie Yoda and Uncle Craig's WEDDING!!!!!!!

It was an amazingly fun weekend and it will take many blog posts to share all the special times we had.

There were so many people there taking so many pictures, that I only have about one-twentieth of what I want to show you at my disposal right now (from my measly little iPhone camera). 

There were professional pictures taken (obviously), as well as lots of other people taking lots of pictures with much fancier cameras than mine, and I can't wait to see ALL OF THEM.

So this post is just a teaser for what is to come the next few weeks.  Here in a somewhat chronological order, I have picked out 10 of my favorite pictures that were taken on my phone.

#10: An adults-only catamaran ride party thrown by the groom's family on Friday morning.

#9: Tropical Maya and her flippy hair

#8: Bar hopping in the resort on the night before the wedding!

Hanna, Henderson girls, and a photo-bomb by the groom!

#7: Swimming and sliding with Daddy.

#6: Callie with the pretty flowers (and Hanna's sunglasses!)

#5: The newlyweds and flower girls!

#4: Our family

This is Callie "smiling with her teeth"

#3: We were so thankful that Uncle Dan and Hanna came along to watch the girls for the times that we were needed to do adult things (like catamaran rides and putting the girls to bed so we could stay and party at the reception).  The girls had so much fun with them!

#2: Dancing!!!

It doesn't look like it in this picture, but she had
A BLAST dancing with all of Auntie Yoda's friends.
I will show you video evidence in a future post.

#1: Chips and Guacamole.  Maya ate her weight in guacamole using chips as a spoon, and Callie ate her weight in chips, NO guacamole, usually rocking cool shades.

These pictures barely skim the surface of all that we did and the fun we had, and I'm so excited to do more posts and share more pictures. 

A family wedding is an incredibly special time- especially when it is your sister's wedding to a guy who could not be more perfect for her.

We are so happy that they are so happy.

Okay, I'll throw in a #11, taken by my little 5-year-old photographer in training.

Stay tuned...much more to come!