Friday Rehearsal

I'm back.  I'm exhausted, but I'm back.  I'm also really in no mood to be blogging right now, but I find blogging to be like exercise.  It's easy to do as long as you do it all the time.  But the minute you take a break and miss a few days it's hard to start again.  I worked out today for the first time since Wednesday so I might as well blog too. 

So here we go.

99.9% of this post is about Friday.  But first .1% about Thursday.

I worked on Thursday.  It was 39 degrees when I got to work.  I work on a reservation and my school is surrounded by farm land and dirt roads.  There is nothing to hold the heat in so it is generally about 10 degrees colder in the winter compared to in the city.  The same doesn't apply in summer though.  It's just as hot and significantly more humid.  Anyway, I had to use my space heater for the first time since last winter.  It ran the whole day and felt marvelous.  I texted this picture to Michael and he texted back a picture of the space heater in his office.  He works in the middle of Phoenix, but his office is just really cold all the time.  He uses his space heater year round.

On Thursday night we went to a lovely pre-wedding dinner at Kathy's house.  I just didn't take any pictures.

I got to work about an hour earlier than usual on Friday so that I could leave an hour earlier than usual.  I got to see the sun rise from behind the mountains in the desert.  The picture is really bad but trust me it was really pretty in person.

After I left work I rushed home to get ready for the rehearsal.  It takes about 40 minutes from our house to get to the resort with normal traffic and we knew we were going to be dealing with Friday rush hour traffic.

I took some pictures before we left, because, these kids! These shirts!

It took us way over an hour to get there.  Traffic was so horrifically bad that I almost cried at one point.  I really thought we were going to miss the whole thing.  This was on the freeway. See that traffic going the other direction?  They weren't moving and neither were we. 

Friday was the 6th so we needed to get Spencer's 8 year- 2 month picture.  Just in case you were curious, that's 99 months.  The big 100 months is coming up in December. 

This picture makes me laugh for two hours straight each time I see it.  His hands look like the size of, I don't know, Shaquille O'Neal perhaps, and his pants are too hilarious.

Standing was better. 

And standing at a different angle to the sun was even better.  Seriously.  The picture above and the picture below were taken about 30 seconds apart. 

Official 

I asked Brittany to take our family picture.

First, gremlins took control of the phone. 

 Then there was this gem. 

And then we had major issues with Michael's head being a sunburst. 

Better 

Finally, the rehearsal!

Brittany was very helpful keeping Elliott occupied. 

More gremlins. 

It got coooooooold as soon as the sun went down. 

Elliott with Layla, the flower girl.  She just turned four.  

The rehearsal dinner was at a restaurant a few miles away. 

That mango margarita was delicious.  And I was unable to legally and safely drive after one of them.

Getting our attendant gifts.  The ladies got jewelry to wear in the wedding. 

The guys got monogrammed travel bags and booze. 

After a much quicker and less angst filled drive home it was time for bed in preparation for what Monica and I have come to call "the day that would never end".