My Big Sister's Wedding Festivities, part 1

Sara's wedding was a little over 3 weeks ago and it was a great weekend.  I have a lot of pictures to share so I am splitting this up into two posts.

Our cousin Jere came home from his deployment only about 2 weeks before the wedding, so luckily he was able to make it out for the special occasion.  Here he is hanging out with Kalea as we were loading up the cars to drive down to Temecula.

We had the rehearsal the day before the wedding and I just love this picture.  Colleen is on the left making one of her usual faces and Heather is standing in for Jacque on the right with a wonderful look on her face.

Kristin, Katie, and I 

Adam made quite a few faces during the rehearsal, he was having a great time!

John making one of his many faces, Pat with Kalea and Danny during the rehearsal.

Adam's mom Lucy, Jere's fiance Kate, Aunt Carol, and Gma hanging out while we practice the wedding.

The Rehearsal Lunch crowd.

Sara with my parents

I love her guest book.  She ordered it on Etsy and it is so cute!  

Our cousin Katie's son Forrest was the ring bearer and my mom made him a super-hero cape...he loved it!

Kalea and Sara taking a picture break during the wedding day prep.

Unlike at my brother's wedding, Kalea managed to take a pretty good nap before the festivities began.

Jere escorted Gma down the aisle in his dress blues.  Now that I am going through these pictures, I see that our family sure does like to make funny faces when taking pictures!

Colleen during the ceremony on the right, and Jacque with her daughter Aydan walking down the aisle.

Kalea and I walking down the aisle.

Our Dad walking his first born down the aisle

Adam waiting for his bride-to-be.  Notice the flower ball hanging behind him, my sister made those and they turned out so pretty.  There were supposed to be 9 of them hanging from the gazebo, but the site didn't have a ladder tall enough so they had to put some of them on the steps.  It still looked pretty though.

Colleen, Jacque, Kristin, Katie, and me all lined up during the ceremony.

Forrest relaxing on the steps eating his popcorn during the ceremony.

They are almost married!

Getting ready to take formal group pictures after the ceremony...it was pretty cold that night!

Thanks to my Uncle David for taking the pictures during the ceremony, and a lot of the reception ones still to come.  The next post will be from the reception...  there are some really cute ones of Aydan and Forrest on the dance floor!

11 months on Turkey Day!

Kalea's first Thanksgiving was also her 11 month birthday.  One more month to go until the big day (which means I don't have much time left to plan for her 1st Birthday party!)  We had a wonderful small Thanksgiving with my parents, siblings (all of us together) and my sister's mother-in-law.  Pretty tame for our usual family gathering.  

I haven't had a chance to weigh her and get her height, but I will get it when we go back home tomorrow.  

I have been taking all of her month pictures with the purple blanket my mom had made her, but I forgot to bring it up to her house so I had to use an alternative blanket, oh well!

She has grown up a lot this last month.  Especially over the last week or so, there have been so many new things she now does.  She is now officially crawling, though it is her own unique way.  She gets to where she wants to go, including climbing over our legs. 

She is eating pretty much everything we eat now, which is very helpful in keeping us eating healthier.  She is a pro at feeding herself, even with slippier foods.  

She has become very vocal  when she wants something, with lots of early morning chatter.  Yesterday morning she woke up the whole house and we think it was just because she wanted everyone else to be up with her.  

She just started waving the day before Thanksgiving, sometimes waving to herself.  I came home from work and she waved to me from down the hall.  She is still figuring it out so she has to be in the right mood to get a wave out of her.  She loves waving at the kitties in the morning.  

She LOVES looking at pictures and pointing to different things to hear what they are.  I have a few pictures below of her with her new favorite book.  She loves to look at our fridge and at pictures on the wall to look at familiar faces and hear their names.  

She has changed so much this past month, luckily a lot of our loved ones got to see her at Sara's wedding (post coming soon, I promise).

One last thing she is now able to do is to get into a seated position all on her own.  This of course means that we have now stopped using the bassinet attachment on her pack-n-play and will soon be moving her crib setting down.   Full on baby-proofing of the house is next (just in time for Christmas decorations!)

Now for some pictures, some from our Thanksgiving family time as well.

She loves turning the pages herself, and with the opposite hand.

Here she is pointing to the picture, wanting to know what it is.

A couple days before her 11 month photo shoot, I took some pictures for my Gma to use for her Christmas card.  Here are a couple of my favorites!

And now to the Thanksgiving pics.

Here is our first family photo with everyone married!  Both Grandkids/dogs as well.  

And here is our group shot with a timer on my camera.  It took us quite awhile to get it right, but it finally worked!

Our table this year

My dad was showing all of his sons how to carve up the turkey.

John loves to make faces.

Our first family thanksgiving as 3!

Kalea loved her turkey day feast!

Aunt Sara with a bundled up Kalea ready to snuggle.

The end of a wonderful family day and 11 month Birthday.  She was sweating so bad in this outfit, but she was so comfy on her Daddy.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Halloween fun!

For Kalea's first Halloween, she dressed up as an adorable elephant.  My mother-in-law very kindly sent us the costume, which really saved us from having to think about a costume, especially since there is so much going on with my sister's wedding fast approaching.

I took her to work and brought her costume so that all of the ladies (and a few guys too) could see her all dressed up.  I quickly decided to be a lacrosse player in my half-hearted attempt at dressing up for the occasion.  All I had to do was look at my husbands side of the closet, and voila!  a costume.

 All ready for trick-or-treating!

 Pat used my Grandpa's varsity letterman sweater for his trick-or-treating look.  I love the little tail on the back of Kalea's costume.

 Quick family shot while we still had some daylight.

 Heading down the hill in the stroller

 Pat bought a bucket earlier in the day and there wasn't much left, so Kalea gets a skull bucket!  We basically walked around our neighborhood and stopped by the houses of people that were here hanging out on their driveways.  Kalea is so cute, they all just wanted to give us candy.  It was a good thing too, because we ran out of candy from trick-or-treaters so we used some of our treating stash.  We don't usually get very many visitors at our end of the neighborhood so it was a bit of a surprise.

 She made it the entire night without being upset.  She was just taking it all in; the people, lights, and being out in the dark.  She even went through a scary house without getting upset, of course it was still daylight and the people were not fully dressed up yet, but she did it!

Pat and Kalea by our wall on the way to the front door.

 Kalea by her pumpkin, a little bit tired now, but still hanging in there.

Her first Halloween went really well.  We are so excited for next year when she will understand a little bit more about what is going on, and maybe even get her to say "Trick-or-Treat!"

I wanted to share a couple of bath photos just because they are so cute.  Her hair is long enough now to give her a nice "Alfalfa" hair-do.

 She love bath time!