It’s a 14-Year Moon River Mystery

Kevin and I have been married 14 years on Wednesday. I was trying to think of an appropriate gift and all I came up with was a blog post. I know. It’s that good. Oh, and I’m caught up on the laundry.
Here we are 14 long years ago on our wedding day. Frankly, we feel much older than we should now and we look about twice as old as this. 

Kevin and I planned everything ourselves. We had an outdoor wedding at Reiman Gardens at Iowa State. We designed and printed our own invitations, rsvp cards, programs and the like. We were very orderly the week of the wedding. We had to-do lists taped to the coffee table, one page for each day of the week leading up to the wedding.Then, we typed a master schedule for ourselves and each of us had our own copy. We even handpicked the black-eyed Susans from the side of the highway. (I’m sure this is illegal, although I waited until afterwards to tell Kevin I thought so.)
 
I never formally put together a wedding scrapbook. For now, everything is in a clear storage box in the closet. We really need to get around to scanning photos and all that. (If you are one of the people who took video at our wedding, please lose it! I don’t think either of us could stand to watch it. Lord, we were annoying. I mean, more annoying than we are now. Maybe by “annoying” I mean “young” or maybe I mean “in love” but anyway you call it, I don’t want to watch it on tape.)

We did make a cute little flipbook with black and white snapshots from the wedding using the backsides of rsvp cards.

We also made things like the guest book. I always hated those generic store-bought ones and this is the slapdash one we threw together and one of the entries in it. The creative guest book encouraged creative entries. (I see a lot more of this now at weddings than I did back then.)
 
 
This is one of my favorite photos from the day—me and my cousin Chantel. Can you believe she’s gonna be 20? Seriously.

There were so many random photographers (as we didn’t have a professional photographer and asked friends to take photos for us) that we have few photos with Kevin and I looking the same direction at the same time. I have one photo I took of all the people taking photos of us and it’s a bit ridiculous; we were cute, but still I hate to think of all the film spent that weekend and all the money spent developing it.

People still talk about our wedding. It really was a lovely day. One of the highlights was that both sets of Kevin’s grandparents were able to come, one from Florida and one from California. People talk to me still about getting to meet them. We enjoy this photo of Grandma Frances and Grandpa Hubert with their adorable hats.

This blog post is not ivory, nor is it a clock. But it’s what I got. Happy Anniversary, of sorts.

Do We Think I've Got Four Garage Sale Posts in Me? Part Three

C'était bon. Fin.

Let me start over. I was very well prepared. I didn't have everything out in advance, but it was mostly out and everything that wasn't was by the door and ready to go. Signs were up in advance (which I'll discuss in part four if I ever get there), and I advertised on Craigslist, and a site called gsalr, which will map a route for you, so I figured all there was to do was wait for the people. Benjamin had a rough start to the morning. He'd had a long Friday, which ended in a school dance and song program, and he didn't sleep well. When he and Kevin left for the grocery store about 7:00 a.m., Benjamin took a nosedive in the street. He's still got scabs. It was a hot, fussy day for the kid.

The early birds came the day before. Seriously. I saw dozens of cars go through the neighborhood on Friday, even though the sale was Saturday. I'm so glad Kevin's mom was with me, because I even had a guy come up to the house and into the garage to "just say hi" and see what we had. He stayed and chatted a while and then even came back the next day during the sale. He didn't buy anything. As a matter of fact, he didn't even look at our stuff. He just chatted.

Our lovely elderly neighbor and her daughter, who came to squat in our garage and sell some of their wares, were delightful and we had fun getting to know them as well as meeting random neighbors and shoppers. The dog did rather well when other dogs weren't invading his turf. And, Benjamin and Kevin ate 12 donuts between them, so I think they are still in recovery. (I took this photo before we'd pulled all the stuff out. For some reason the driveway was fuller at the end of the day. Huh?)

The best part is that we sold most of the big stuff, which meant I don't have to haul it anywhere. We forgot to put the stuff on the side of the house out--after Benjamin fell we got distracted and then by the time we remembered we just kind of gave up on it--but other than that we have relatively little going to the thrift store and some of that is my sister-in-law's.

Unfortunately, I've still got the crib. I am N-O-T having another one, so someone is gonna have to take that off my hands. We bought it used and it's been through Benjamin (who was a biter and jumper) and Zoe and DJ (who was a climber). It may look like it's from a 1990's Sears Catalog--at it probably was--but it's rock solid and can hold a few more babies. (For those of you who don't know me yet, Benjamin is mine; Zoe and DJ are my sister-in-law's kids.)