Labor Day Weekend 2008

Gosh...has it been that long since I blogged last? No wedding update, no grandkid photos and related bragging. I have a dozen reasons I could offer for not blogging. Some of them are good, some bad and some down right smoke and mirrors.

Here is the bride and myself getting primped for the wedding. Katie had two hairdressers come to the house and one makeup artist. I must say everyone looked like a movie star.















Katie was an absolutley stunning bride. Her sister Laura looked ravishing in her dress and the flower girls stole the show. My grandson as a ring bearer proudly walked down the isle with the grooms nephew who carried the ring pillow. It was a very rainy blustery day. The showers cooperated with the bridal schedule. It rained only when the guests and bridal party were under shelter. At the moment the vows were spoken the sun burst through the clouds and the evening cleared providing the perfect backdrop for an outdoor reception. I don't have photos yet they are on a disc being passed around the family and I haven't gotten it yet. You can see some photos the father of the flower girl and ring bearer (my son) took at his web site http://www.kazimir.net/.





Here is a picture of Katie and I. I realized that the haridresser place the veil all wrong. So I had to fix it.

Here is the Maid of Honor and her daughter one of the flower girls. Little Kait was just fascinated by all the preperation for the wedding and all the little things like flowers, shoes, necklaces and all.
















Just as exciting as the wedding was watching the newly married couple depart on their honeymoon cruise. They left the following Saturday for a Royal Carribean Cruise out of Baltimore to Bermuda. We staked out a choice spot at Hemingways (a bar restaurant at the east end of the Bay Bridge) to watch the ship go under the bridge. We had the patio guests and wait staff all excited and on the lookout for the ship. This was a mighty challenge because the Bay was locked in a pea soup fog. But see the ship we did-even if it looked like a ghost ship. All us folks at Hemingways cheered the bridal couple and wished them well.

Maya is now six years old and starts kindergarten this week. Ethan is four and loves his movies, puzzles and any gadget he can get his hands on. Kaitlyn is three and swims like a fish. She can swim the length of the pool and back faster than I can! Ouch! Dick's little granddaughter who is also three spent her first overnight this summer and now regularly packs her bag and wants to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house. We also hosted Dick's fifteen yo grandson for a weekend of beginning sailing at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. I think he enjoyed himself. It's hard to tell with teenagers. I am also in the process of making a formal dress each for his eight yo and 13 yo granddaughters.

The day after Thanksgiving Dick will celebrate his 80th birthday. We will be on a Royal Caribbean Cruise with his entire family ( all 22 of us). Hence, the reason I am making formal wear for the granddughters. We discovered that their mother, the 13 yo and I all wear the same shoe size and with some minor alterations we can all fit into the same size dress. How cool! To be honest I have to take in a few stitches on the 13 yo, take in a few other stitches and let out some on the mother and let out a whole bunch for me...but it is still the same dress.

In the midst of all of this my mother's younger sister passed away 6 August. She died peacefully in the midst of her husband and all of her children. She had been in hospice for a month and had been in failing health for years. We are an Irish Catholic family so her death though sad was also a celebration. We will all miss her terribly but we also know that her suffering here on this earth has ended and that is a blessing. My mother's oldest brother and younger sister are still with us. Her older brother is in failing health but my aunt is as fiesty and full of life as ever. This is good because my aunt is the only relative that is keeping me from being the eldest surviving female of the clan. Scary thought. Here is a photo of Rita taken in the 1960's. This is the Rita I remember.