The wedding!!!

My daughter's wedding in Spokane was beautiful -- we laughed, we cried, we hugged, we rejoiced in the perfect weather with the rose garden at Manito Park in full bloom.

It was sunny and warm on the wedding day, sandwiched in between two chilly, drizzly days. We really lucked out! Julia and Jade absolutely glowed with love as they walked down the grassy aisle together into married life.

Above is the hug at the end of the ceremony, and below they're hugging with happiness at home before the wedding.

I think this photo of me with Julia before the wedding is my favorite of the whole weekend. My hand is on her pregnant belly, so there are three generations of us in the photo. And she's wearing my 40-year-old wedding dress! It has an elastic waist, so it fit both of us.

She did some last minute vacuuming as I was trying to get them out the door for the ceremony. After the reception everyone went to their house, so she wanted it to be perfect -- which it was.

At the rose garden, guests milled around, took pictures and met new family before the ceremony.

Here I am with my family and Jade.

With my son, Keith, and his wife, Rachel.

Above is my sister Terry and her family, and below is my sister Kathleen and her husband, Peter.

Kathleen and Peter's dog, Zoomie, was a big hit with Terry's granddaughter, Metta.

These are my very good friends Paula and Duane, who we've known for almost 30 years since Julia was in first grade.

And here are some of Jade's family.

The officiant, Audrey, is a friend of Julia's and they hammed it up with the rings.

After the ceremony it was off to Allie's Vegan Pizzeria and Cafe for the reception meal. Julia saved up glass containers of various shapes and sizes for a year to hold the flowers, which she bought at Trader Joe's (below).

My brother, Kevin, shows off his hot pink shirt and matching wedding paraphernalia. The wedding colors were bright pink and orange.

Keith and Rachel got down to business when the pizzas arrived. No one went away hungry.

Then it was off to Julia and Jade's house for cupcakes, munchies and yard games. Allie's made triple chocolate cupcakes, chocolate with creme de menthe icing, chocolate peanut butter, and lemon raspberry. Delicious!!! They even gave me my own six-pack of chocolate cupcakes (specified in the contract) to take back to my hotel because I've been known to get a little upset at previous family weddings when I didn't get seconds on the cake.

It was definitely sandal weather with all that sunshine and a high in the 70s. Mine are the ones with flowers, which I bought because the ceremony was in the rose garden.

Here I am in Julia's back yard with all of my kids and I couldn't be happier!

 

The next day we went back to Manito Park to wander around some more. The roses were just spectacular.

Here's Julia with a friend from her college days in Bellingham who she hadn't seen in years.

We also gathered for many family meals. This dinner is at the Saranac Public House, where Julia wore a smoking hot red maternity dress.

Above is our first meal together, at my favorite Thai restaurant, Bangkok Thai. Below is our final meal together at Rut (with two dots over the "u").

 

Last but not least, there were bunny snuggles. 

Have a colorful day

Headed to Spokane for the wedding

I'm headed to Spokane today for my daughter's wedding to this wonderful man, but truth be told I'm even more excited about their baby who's on her way in four months!

Look at how much she's grown! The top photo was a few weeks ago and the bottom one was in June. My old wedding dress still fits her, thanks to the extra elastic that I inserted in the waist.

She had her 24-week checkup yesterday and the midwife said the baby is very strong and active and may come out kicking like a soccer player. Julia has always been spunky, and I'll bet her daughter will be too. Tell me she doesn't look spunky here when she was three:

 Anyway, I'll catch you up when I get home next week. 

Have a colorful day

Another yellow bowl

I just made another big yellow bowl because I have a buyer for the first one. I can't get enough of the sunny colors!

I finished off three spools of thread. All that zig zag stitching between each row uses a lot.

I meant to keep track of the hours that it takes to make it, but I forgot. The photo above was yesterday morning and below was in the afternoon, with breaks in between. I like having a mindless project like this so that I can work on it whenever I feel the urge without any planning. 

I covered the end with a big button tied on with gold metallic cording.

I love this quote by Patti Smith that I just came across. It's taken me awhile to shed my skin. I think I'm finally becoming myself at a few years shy of 70.

Last night I went to another Tucson Pops concert at Reid Park with Beth, Sandy and Meg. It was so much cooler than last week's sweaty concert. By cooler I mean around 89 instead of 99 degrees. But with the sun down and an occasional breeze it was very pleasant. Good music, too.

This morning I had my poor mesquite tree removed after it was decimated by the monsoon storms. With each assault it became more of an eyesore, but now the yard looks too bare. I'll have to replace it with something, but I'm not sure what. You'll notice that we don't have grassy yards here in Tucson. Everyone has rocks and gravel around their plants because we're in the desert and we don't want to waste precious water on grass.

Have a colorful day

Cloud Appreciation Day

Today is Cloud Appreciation Day, so I'm going to show my appreciation by posting a sampling of the thousands of cloud photos I have taken. Most of these are from Tucson in the southern Arizona desert, where I moved to three years ago. We have the most phenomenal skies!!!

Here's a link to the Cloud Appreciation Society's newsletter, which will tell you all about Cloud Appreciation Day and how you can take part in it by photographing clouds today and submitting them to the society: cloud-appreciation-day-2023

Photos from my house

I've taken all the photos in this first section from either the front or back yard of my house, where I have a direct view of the sunset. The eastern sky behind me also gets some nice reflected sunset color, and the western sky has some nice soft clouds at dawn.

 

(The one above is an amazing sunrise.)

These next photos are from near my neighborhood:

Santa Fe clouds:

Grey clouds:

Blue sky white clouds:

Clouds with the moon from my yard:

Clouds over water:

Clouds in my quilt,

"Desert Rain"

Have a colorful day