Jade’s mom Sharon walked her down the aisle. So sweet.
Everyone laughing… love this photo.
Now husband and wife.
The cousins… absolutely beautiful. None of my siblings have children yet, so these are the only first cousins our girls have. The wedding was very fun and fit Jade and Karsten perfectly. We are so blessed that we were able to be a part of their day. The girls did a great job and were so well behaved through everything and we were very proud of them. Plus they looked totally adorable!
Click on the photo to see album This is from the upstairs loft the girls slept in at the Little Red Cottage.
Our niece Jade and her fiance Karsten asked if the girls could be their flower girls for the wedding and of course we said yes. Here are some of our adventures while in Eureka Springs, AR and I will do a separate post for the wedding because we have so many photos. We drove in to Eureka Springs and found our Hidden Hollow cottage literally in a hidden hollow. It was so far down and surrounded by so many trees that there was no internet or cell phone service.
This was Nadia’s third time as a flower girl and Amelie’s first and I love how much she is laughing in this photo. She was so excited!
We had fun visiting at the rehearsal dinner.
The morning of the wedding we decided to go check out Eureka Springs and have breakfast at the Mud Street Cafe. It was a pretty cool, hippie sort of place with wonderful food. After that we walked the streets window shopping and taking photos until all the shops opened.
Power rings… it’s all superheroes all the time with this family.
Flatiron Hotel Building modeled after the one in NY.
We stopped in this place called Silly Chili so the girls could ride this elephant. It was just a quarter and actually went for longer than you would expect. A side benefit was that we ended up finding some really unique gifts for friends in this cute little shop. At the candy shop we also picked up some salt water taffy and rock candy. Then we headed back to the cottage and had pizza for lunch and made the girls take a nap to get ready for the wedding later that evening.
I LOVE taking photos of random signs that make me laugh.
This years VBS theme was “Upward Bound.” Once again I was on the skit team for the start of the day and did the fundraising information for at the end of the day. Just like last year, the girls got a kick out of coming early and seeing us rehearse the skit. Nadia especially liked knowing what was going to happen in advance. I was a puppet names Molly and our Youth Pastor Jacob was a puppet named Calvin. Pastor Darwin was Dunbar the Mountain Goat and Ian was Timothy the wanna-be goat herder.
The girls had a wonderful time with their friends and learning about God and following the “guidebook.” Nadia told me each day that I did a great job as the puppet and mid- week she asked me to come see her in crafts each day to take a photo.
It was fun, fun, fun!!! And by the end we were all tired, tired, tired. The best part of the week was telling the kids about the 2 children we were going to try and sponsor for a year. Rose from Bangladesh for the girls and Clerson from Haiti for the boys. The kids broke a record and raised a combined $768!!!!! The grown ups made up the last little bit to get them a full year. It was wonderful and I was brought to tears many times by the stories the kids told me about how they raised the money for the kids. This year I think it meant a lot to them that it was real kids that they could learn about that the money was going too. It was VERY exciting.
And one day this week Nadia said she wanted to “work for real” to earn money to help Rose. Mike had her working for a full hour. She swept the front and back patio and then sprayed the back patio & patio furniture down with the hose. She was sweating and guzzling water and saying it was so hard. But she kept at it and we used that time to remind her that most of the kids in the world don’t have the life she has and that MANY children work hours and hours everyday. Mike paid her $8 and told her she could do whatever she wanted with it. She kept .50 and said the rest should go to help the little girl Rose. *proud parents here*
Nadia said that the singing and dancing was her favorite thing for the week. Amelie said playing a game in her class was her favorite.
Last Wednesday we went to Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Amelie’s cast removal. This video has footage from before her surgery, an interview with the cast on and the day the cast came off and we saw her new fingers for the first time.
