My Little Brother's Wedding

So there is a little back story here.  My little "brother" is technically my cousin.  My mom's younger sister's son.  We grew up living together and have the typical sibling relationship, so it just got easier to tell people he was a little brother vs telling people he was our little cousin who we lived with growing up!

Anyway!  Rodney and Marysol got married in her hometown of El Paso (well one of her hometowns, she also grew up somewhat in Juarez)!  Marysol asked me to be her maid of honor and I accepted of course!  I am so humbled by that honor!  She is truly like a younger sister to me!  Rodney also asked Travis to be one of his groomsmen!  Such a blessing!

Here are some pictures of the wedding weekend in El Paso!  It was a beautiful ceremony.  It was everything a wedding should be, it was the most beautiful way for two amazing people to start their marriage, and what an adventure we all know that to be!  :)  We laughed, we cried, we laughed some more, we danced, we hugged and we united two families as one big happy family!

Us, ready to head out to El Paso!

Apparently when our kids are not around to supervise us

we get a little wild!

The final fitting for the guys!

Luke (the best man) got some awesome suspenders!

Rodney and Marysol at the rehearsal!

Marysol!

Mother of the Groom and Grandmother of the Groom

Rehearsal dinner!

So yummy!

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Our cousins Dan and Delicia

Rodney and his best man before the wedding 

Our little cousin!

First dance

Father daughter dance

Travis is a hottie!

We missed our kiddos

their cousins missed them too!

Rodney!

Rodney and Grandpa 

(Grandpa was also the minister who officiated the wedding)

Guy talk

The mother and Grandmother of the Groom

along with a little cousin!

Luke and Grandpa!

Such a beautiful Bride

Her beautiful mom is in the background!

The father, brother and "sister" of the bride!

She took pity on poor Travis and gave him some shade!

Ready to walk down the aisle!

Familia!

The little girls learning how to dance!  

We had such an amazing time and enjoyed the hospitality of Marysol's family!  They fed us TONS of amazing food!  We had such a great time we definitely plan on going back to visit all of our new family out there!  We also had even more fun times in El Paso the day after the wedding, but that will have to wait for another blog day!

Blake's 7th Birthday Party!

We love to celebrate all of our children's birthdays!  We love to create an atmosphere where kids and adults alike can just have fun and enjoy life!  We try to make Blake's birthday parties an extra special celebration of another year of his life because we could have lost him, and we didn't.  So, while Blake's birthday is at the very end of August, we are posting this blog a few weeks after his party because we have been taking action against Childhood Cancer this month, along with other family gatherings, etc.  

Here are some fun pictures from Blake's birthday celebration!  The theme was Shark Attack and it was a water fight party!  We had a blast!!!

Aunt Brianne and Mommy worked together to host this party!

Shark welcome sign

Shark Attack sign on the big kid pool 

Photo Op

Briana

Blake

Before the party we made sponge balls to throw at each other

They were tons of fun to make and Lex was very excited to use them!

Some other cool signs by the gift table

Refreshment tables

Most of the party guests!

Some had not arrived yet, but we wanted a before picture!

Mommy in the pool

Grown-ups got to participate in the water fight too!

Fun for all ages!

Lex and her lifelong friend Ella!

One of Blake's cool new shirts!

Blake's First day of School (better late than never!)

Blake's First day of First Grade!

This year he wants to be a firefighter when he grows up!

Love!

The girls were so excited to pick him up after school!

They walked like this all the way to the van!

Ready to head home!

After school snack!  

  Blake had a wonderful first day of school!  We all love his new teacher and can not wait to see how Blake does this school year!  Now the really neat thing about Blake's school (it is a public Montessori style school) is that he will get to keep the same teacher for 3 years.  That is right folks, 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade with the same teacher!  This year he is one of the youngest in the class, he is learning with second and third graders and part of their learning process is helping their friends learn.  That is just something I thought was really cool about Montessori!

  We really missed Blake at home, but he had a great time at school!  I am writing this quite a while after Blake's actual first day of school, so I can say we really love our school experience so far this year!  We loved it last year as well!  The learning environment is so wonderful for Blake and the other kids he is learning with!  Blake's teacher and his substitute teacher are wonderful!  We still get to see his wonderful teacher from last year as well!