Claudia and Marcus' wedding ceremony

On Sunday, Mama and I went to a wedding blessing ceremony for Claudia and Marcus.

Claudia is one of Mama's oldest and best friends....she has known her since they were both 15....that's eighteen years of friendship--more than half her life! Like Mama, I have known Claudia most of my life....she even came to see me in the hospital when I was born!

Well...here are the details....Claudia actually got married on Easter Sunday in St. Thomas, just like she always wanted and said she would do....just go away and get married. But at least she told people ahead of time so they could prepare and have some parties for her! Her original plan was to just go away and come back and say 'I done got married,' but thankfully, she let us do a little celebrating for her!

Well, we are all just so happy for her and thrilled to say congratulations to the new couple,
Claudia and Marcus!

The couple at the altar

Being 'bound' together

The vows (part 1)

The vows (part 2)

The choir singing

Video of the choir

After church, there was a big reception and celebration with food and cake....I kept thinking it was Claudia's birthday! Mama took a bunch of pictures, and I am just going to present them in random order, since I don't really know everyone who was at the party. I do want to mention, though, that Marcus showed everyone the pictures from the St. Thomas ceremony and Mama said that they were just beautiful and that she has never seen a groom that was so proud and eager to show off his wedding pictures and that made her so happy.

It sure was a fun day and a great party. Here they are:

Boppy and Lauren

You think Lauren is blowing the balloon....but she's just fooling you!



Shirley with Vanessa and Nancy

Becca with Teddy and me near the end...could you tell I was getting tired?
(BTW, I got to wear my princess dress. Yay!)

Daja and one of the cakes!

Trinity, Samantha, and her sister whose name I did not catch (sorry!)

Aren't they cute?

Taking a sip of punch

One of the cakes

Auntie Fran (Claudia's Mom, in the back), with Aunt Lovetta (on the left),
and Jan Boudart (on the right)

Sister Bridget giving Claudia her ceremonial broom

Claudia and friends

Karen and Stacey.....they are friends of Claudia's from nursery school!

Nancy (or is it Vanessa?) with the fancy cake...
does that make her Fancy Nancy?

PS....Marcus' mother made this cake. Yes, she made it herself.

She decorated it too! Mama could not get enough of it, especially the icing.
However, she could not bring any home because it had almond in it.

Claudia with Heather and her friend

This boy was so unhappy at first but he was so cute!

Becca with Lauren and Teddy....isn't Lauren pretty even with her angry face?

Sister Renee and me waiting for the food!

Another shot!

The only shot we got of Claudia and Boppy

This was funny....it was the group shot at the end of the party that kept growing....

and growing....

...and growing


and growing still...


until everyone just could not take it anymore!
Except Trinity on the right....who smiled the whole way through!


I was so tired after the party that when I got in the car, I fell asleep within four blocks....
yep, that's four whole city blocks, or one half mile.


In any case, congratulations and all our love to Claudia and Marcus!

At the kite festival

On Saturday, Mama, Daddy, and I all went to the Kids and Kites Festival held at Montrose Harbor by Lake Michigan....I wanted to go to the beach, but it was too cold!

There were supposed to be free kites for all the kids, but when we got there, they were all out....however, my Mommy is wily and found one that someone had 'broken' and discarded, so we picked it up, fixed it up, redecorated it, and had our very own brand new kite!!!!
(Actually, we found two kites, so we had one to give to another family who needed one...no wastefulness here!)


Here is Daddy and me climbing the hill with the other kiters...
or is its kitists?

You can kind-of see our kite....it's the little white one with the colored streamers.

This one person had a HUGE kite with a super-long black and white tail

Here it is coming in for a landing....on ME!

Flying my kite....or at least trying to




In this picture you can see the streamers on my kite and the tail on that other kite

People were flying all sorts of kites....
one man near us had this really cool dragon!

Someone had this awesome purple and green turtle kite!

Another shot of the turtle kite when it got tangled with someone's rainbow kite

It was super-windy, so the kites were way high up in the air....
check out the box one next to the turtle.

Some video of my kite and the others.

Here is Daddy and me with our kite (unseen) up in the air!


This is how it's done!

Mommy got her favorite ice cream from a vendor....arroz....it tastes like rice pudding!

Eating 'my' arroz ice cream pop....I stole it from Mommy!

Toward the end, I gave up and made Daddy fly the kite by himself.....

......and instead had great fun tangling up the string all around his legs!

After it was all over, Mama remembered that we never once sang the song "Let's Go Fly a Kite" from Mary Poppins......oh well. It probably would have just driven Daddy nuts!

Seeing the X-mas Trees at the Museum

In addition to zoolights, I also went to the 75th Anniversary of the Museum of Science and Industry's annual Christmas tree exhibit this winter. It was wonderful!

In fact, it got me so into my own tree that I kept mine up until just past Valentine's Day, when Da finally said, 'enough,' and took it down.....but not before we loaded it up with ornaments!

*Please note that Da carried the camera, so Mama is actually in the pictures for this post.


Engaging one of my favorite activities



They did a science experiment for us where they mixed up some common household stuff and made very colorful goop called a polymer. But they wouldn't let us take it with us because they were afraid we would eat it and it was poisonous.


Here we are looking at the Germany tree

A closeup for Heidi

Checking out more trees



My favorite?

My real favorite ornaments were all the red sparkly ones...like this one from India

Not sure where this is from, but it was sparkly!


Smiling in front of the Belarussian tree

And of course, in front of the Polish tree

A cute kitty ornament that I refused to take a picture with, but Mama snapped anyway

Okay this is here really as a joke because Mama wanted to send out Solstice cards this year....at least next year we'll know what to put on them!

We also saw the rest of the museum...here I am with Da looking at the train exhibit

And again in the DNA section....
there's a video of me pushing buttons, but it's pretty boring.


I also looked at the chick exhibit with Mama

This one was brand new....

...and this one was a little older

We stayed until they kicked us out.
Of course, I finished by doing one of my favorite things...pushing buttons