A lot of this and that!

This post is probably going to be a pretty good length and no pictures yet sorry. I'm posting in southern Alberta and will have to wait until I'm back in Sylvan before getting some pictures up. But enough of that and on to the fun!
Tuesday morning I left Sylvan with the boys at 6:30 am to go to Zane's dentist appt at 7 and then we headed south. We made pretty good time and got to Raymond just after noon. We spent the next couple of days playing with Grammie and Grandpa Dooley when we could, helping with last minute wedding stuff where we could, and helping move Great Grandpa Knibb into the Lodge in Raymond. We were pretty busy but the kids were troopers! Cliff drove down Wednesday night and headed straight to Barnwell. He had a tee time the next morning at 9 with a high school friend so we took our sweet time getting to Barnwell on Thursday and ended up all at Grandma's house at the same time. The kids love Barnwell because they have a little more freedom to run between Grandma and Grandma Great's houses, jump on the trampoline, play crash on auntie's play station and pretty much run the show.
We went out with Cliff's family Thursday night to Cheesecake...so fun - good food and 11 of us! We didn't really think to call ahead so we ended up sitting in 3 different booths that were all together but not too great for conversation. Oh well. We still had a great time and the kids did pretty good. While we were waiting to get in Cliff and Kristie stayed in the van with them and watched a Backyardigans movie over and over - I did take them some cookies to combat the munchies! After supper Cliff's parents were great and traded us vehicles and took the kids home so we could run to the mall and get Cliff a new phone. His decided to suddenly die when he got here. Not good to drop every call when work is trying to get a hold of you! We've had his old one for about 5 years so really it didn't owe us anything and Cliff got the one he's been wanting for quite awhile.
Friday was pretty relaxed. We didn't really have a lot to do until the evening when it was time to do wedding stuff for Lish and Jay. I do have to say that Lish gave me a pretty good scare when she called me that morning in tears saying something was wrong...my first thought (and Kizzy's and her 2 best friends) was that the wedding was called off! Thank goodness we were wrong! There was a snag with the decorating time and a few other things but everything got sorted out. We met everyone down at the Lethbridge country club that evening for a quick run through rehearsal and then went to the Regent. I LOVE the Regent. I'm not a fan of Chinese food in Red Deer and we haven't been brave enough to try any in Sylvan so I was really happy to get some great food! Thanks Lish and Jay for including us in your day!
Saturday was a great day in so many ways. Of course we had Lish and Jay's wedding this weekend but Barnwell was also celebrating Centennial days so they had lots of fun things planned Friday and Saturday. Grandma Great decided to do a float for the parade on Saturday and Zane has been so excited about it since he found out about it. All he wanted was to ride the float and throw candy. So we started off the day by going to the pancake breakfast - yummy yummy. The kids played at the park for awhile and then we headed back to Grandma's to jump on the trampoline. We found Grandpa a little while later hooking up the tractor to the trailer for the float so we hitched a ride to Grandma Great's house and helped with the decorating for awhile. After lunch the boys went with Grandpa to take the float over to the church and we met them over them. This started the longest part of the day for Zane. He's on the float, has a bucket of candy and we're not moving anywhere yet! We sat for about 35 minutes before starting off and he was just thrilled! By the time we had gone about 1/4 of the route he had thrown all of his candy and even got to throw some water balloons. Oh the bliss of it for him. Rhett either sat on my lap or stood in front of me and ate a very sticky, very green sucker. By the time we were halfway done he was one big sticky mess all over. Cliff had ditched his socks so we dunked one in a bucket of water from the water balloons and used that to clean up most of the mess. I hate being sticky and was not holding him for the rest of the way like that. Yuck. As we finished off the route Hansens were handing out ice cream sandwiches to everyone so of course the boys thought they were in heaven. Zane decided to stay at Grandma Greats and play some games while I drug Rhett back to Grandma's for a much needed nap. He can't make it yet without a nap and although it was late I thought mom and dad would appreciate a happy Rhett while we were gone rather than a grouchy-can't stand you - Rhett. And I was right! Cliff and I left around 4:30 and headed for Lethbridge so the rest of the night for the kids is what I have been told. They did more jumping, played at a park, rode the go-cart at Grandma Great's with cousin Rebecca and apparently LOVED it, had a bath, popcorn for a snack, and got to stay up and watch the fireworks. Zane really liked the fireworks but Rhett wasn't too interested. I'm so glad they had such a great day! Thanks again mom and dad and Kristie for watching them and making such good memories for them!
On to the wedding. I got to see Lish as she got to the country club and immediately teared up - she was gorgeous and mom and Kizzy looked fantastic as well. I was sooo emotional all day but that's ok. Everything went great and really smooth during the ceremony - minus the one pause the officiator had to make to allow a helicopter to fly over. She just couldn't out shout the thing. Mom, Kizzy, and I leaked tears through the whole thing and Lish and Jay had their moments. They looked really happy and we're glad that year of planning paid off for them! Some quick family pictures after the ceremony and we were off to run a few quick errands before the reception. Lish asked if I would take pictures of people after they signed the guest book ( a photo album) so they could match pictures to people. A fun idea that went pretty smoothly. I took a lot of fun candid shots too so I hope they have a lot of good memories. The rest of the night went really well. Food was great, slide show that Lish did was fantastic, all the toasts were well done and I cried through the dance of Lish and Dad. We were finally able to convince the bride and groom to go so that we could clean up and Cliff and I made it back to Barnwell just after 1:00 am. Minus one drunk cousin that I really don't like it was a great day.
Mom and dad were great this morning as well. I got up with the kids at 7:00 and mom sent me back to bed for more sleep! THANK YOU! We have a family dinner here and we're going to try and get some family pics - the last big ones we did Zane was maybe 2 - time for some new ones! And then Cliff is headed home to Sylvan and the boys and I back to Raymond until after the long weekend!
Whew - that was a long one but it's all things I want to remember and if it interests you - great!