Parties

Over the last couple weeks, we had a slew of parties we attended. One was a reunion of sorts with some of my old high school classmates. A barbecue was originally planned, but weather caused a change of venue to Red Robin. It was so fun to catch up with old friends, some of whom I hadn't seen since our graduation almost thirteen (yikes!) years ago! And although the wait for tables and then food was exceedingly long, the kids did a fabulous job and allowed me to do quite a bit a visiting (it was a blessing in disguise that Jake wasn't feeling well, so I had left him with my mom - there's no way he could have waited 1.5 hours for his food!!!). Unfortunately, a picture wasn't taken until just after we left, but here's a picture of my friends they posted on facebook with my chair tagged. :)

A completely different type of party occurred last weekend: a going-away party for Kevin's nephew Josiah who is headed into the Air Force. Although there were tons of people crammed into my brother-in-law's home, we still enjoyed some good visiting and the kids had fun playing with all the other kids that came. It was bittersweet knowing that it will be last time the Marks family will be all together for an unknown amount of time.

Now Kevin and I each have a nephew in the Air Force (Josiah in active duty and Stephen in the ROTC). Funny how that worked out. And so hard to believe that just a few years ago they were the ring-bearers at our wedding! Time flies!

We also had two birthday parties. One was Jake's (I'll include that in his 2-year-old post) and the other was my nephew Aiden's first birthday. It was just the kids and me and my sister and her son, but we enjoyed the leftover birthday cupcakes from their big party the day before, a yummy dinner my sister made, and the kids had fun playing with all of Aiden's new birthday toys and seeing all his birthday decorations. While we were there, I also took Aiden's one-year photos, as my sister has asked me to do each month since he was born. This one was my favorite from the photo shoot:

This one was cute too:

But this one makes me laugh the most - how he hated that birthday hat! :)