Congratulations Rosalie & Miguel!

The wedding we came down to San Jose to participate in is over! Rosalie and Miguel were married in a beautiful ceremony on Saturday evening. Amanda was the perfect flower girl - she is such a pro now, with this being her 3rd wedding as a flower girl! She walked down the aisle at just the right speed, throwing her rose petals as she went (this was a new twist - she'd never had to do the rose petal thing before - but we did lots of practice throwing ahead of time). She looked beautiful and she was so well-behaved...we are very proud parents!

The rehearsal dinner was on Friday evening at the hotel where the wedding party was staying. It was very nice, and it was good to meet the wedding party and Miguel's family, as well as to catch up with family and family friends. Amanda got to meet her cousin Vincent and the two of them had a good time running around, trying to avoid sleep:




The weather was a bit cooler on Saturday (like mid-80s instead of 90s+), which was great! The ceremony was held outside on a hilltop under a gazebo...it was a beautiful location. We had to be there quite early (2.5 hours before the ceremony started), so we had some time to kill but Amanda was extremely patient.




The bride was beautiful, of course...



It was a very nice ceremony, with many of the parts repeated in Spanish for the benefit of Miguel's family, who were originally from Mexico:



And then it was time for the party! Amanda once again had a fabulous time, dancing like a crazy person. She found a few little friends - her cousin Vincent, Miguel's two nephews, and a family friend who looked to be 1 1/2 or so:



We didn't leave until close to midnight, and we all had a good sleep and a late morning on Sunday!

(More photos on Flickr).

Update...

Another month, another lack of blog posts...sigh.

Oh well, here's our month in a nutshell. Although we're always busy, this month has been perhaps even crazier than usual - I started a new job! The company I started working for only last February basically ran out of money (yes, the joys of working in biotech) and laid off their entire staff. Did you know you can be "temporarily" laid off with no notice and no severance for up to 13 weeks? No? Well, me neither, until the middle of April. I was very lucky in that I was part of a very small group who were brought back in on a consulting basis, and I continued consulting until I got a new job after 4 weeks. So things worked out very well for me, although I know very well I'm extremely lucky.

So, now I have moved out of working in biotech - this experience really encouraged me to consider other options that aren't so shaky, and biotech is just not a great place to be these days in Vancouver, with a lot of companies laying off. So I've made a move into the other side of research and drug development, dealing with the grants portfolio for a major research institute here in town. I'm now working downtown for the first time in my life and I love it! I take the West Coast Express in and it's such a relaxing commute...plus, I get a couple of short walks in every day, which helps keep my energy up (especially important since I'm now up at 5:30 am to get to work by 8 am).

But enough about me...Amanda has adjusted surprisingly well to the earlier wake-up time and has been generally quite cheerful over the past several weeks. And, in other big news, she appears to have finally made the leap into staying dry during the day! She's been quite unusual in the potty department, as she has been fully #2 trained for many months now, but resisted #1 training (she would pee in the potty no problem, but wouldn't initiate it on her own). We knew she could, because she would have really great stretches or even full days when she was completely dry and would ask to go when she needed to, but then she'd lose interest again. All of a sudden something seems to have clicked and she is wearing her "big girl panties" and staying dry all day! We've had only a couple of small accidents all week, and both times she was just a bit too late (as opposed to completely ignoring the urge to go). So great progress! We're so proud of her...can't believe how grown up she seems all of a sudden. She also stopped using her potty seat all of a sudden and insists that she's a big girl and can sit without it. She hasn't fallen in yet, so I guess that's a good sign. :)

So, what else...well, we went to Denise & Danny's wedding a couple of weeks ago and got some great pictures. Amanda got a chance to wear her beautiful dress from Mike & Cristina's wedding again, and of course she felt like a princess. Here are a couple of pictures:






On the Victoria Day Monday, we headed out to the Aquarium, one of Amanda's favourite places. Here are a couple of pictures from that day:





And finally, big excitement - Amanda is turning 3 on Tuesday!! How is it possible that she has gotten so big? We had a small birthday party for her on Saturday and it was a big success (well, at least we thought it was). This was the first time that we tried inviting actual kids to her birthday party, which added a level of stress (since we had to make sure we had activities for the kids), but it all worked out great. We didn't tell Amanda her friends were coming, and the look on her face when they arrived was worth the lack of sleep in preparing for the party. She had a fabulous time playing with Isabella (Cristina's cousin, Amanda's co-flower girl from the wedding) and Maddy (her friend from daycare), as well as Isabella's younger brother Alexander. The kids were all extremely well behaved - no fighting or crying at all! They immediately set to work playing with every single toy Amanda owns and had a great time. We went with an "under the sea" theme, with cut-out tuna sandwiches, a goldfish cracker snack mix, blue finger jello in sealife shapes, and shrimp dip (courtesy of Mom). For dessert, we had a fish cake. The kids had a great time putting together foam picture frames with foam cut-outs and real shells glued on, and decorating sealife-shaped sugar cookies. I was really happy with the way everything turned out. Amanda received a pile of really amazing gifts, including a beautiful bike - she is so lucky to have so many friends and family who love her! It was a great day all around. Some photos...
















Sorry for all the photos...hopefully this post won't take a year to load on everyone's computer. :)

In a few days, we are off on vacation for a week for Jeff's cousin Rosalie's wedding in San Jose. It will be Amanda's first plane ride, and she couldn't be more excited. She is going to be a flower girl at the wedding (her third time!) and we're looking forward to getting some relaxation time, too...maybe even a visit to the beach! We'll try to post while we're gone.

Diane & Richard

We went to a beautiful wedding on Saturday - Diane, one of the members of our church choir, married Richard. They are such a lovely couple and it was a beautiful day. Since Diane & Richard are both dedicated choir members in their respective parishes, a joint choir from both churches came together to sing at the wedding. We managed to fit almost 40 people into our tiny "choir loft"! Everything went wonderfully and both the ceremony and reception were great.

A few photos (see more in the Flickr set):

Diane and Richard singing a song with the massed choir just after the ceremony:


Us!


Dancing in the bubbles (their first dance was to "Young At Heart"...how cute is that?):


The happy couple!


Congratulations Diane & Richard...we hope you're enjoying your Hawaiian honeymoon!

Again!?!

Wow, once again it's been over a month since we updated this site! Obviously we're not very good at this. :) We've been very busy over the past several weeks as we've been getting ready for Mike & Cristina's wedding, which took place on Saturday. It was beautiful! Everything went according to plan (at least from our perspective!) and it was an incredible day - the weather could not have been more beautiful.

Of course Amanda was a perfect angel - she walked down the aisle exactly as instructed and sat quietly through the entire service (despite the fact she was sitting with the wedding party, with no parents or grandparents close by). She had a fabulous time at the reception, dancing literally from beginning to end. We couldn't even get her to sit down and take a rest, other than quick refuel stops for fruit and water. She didn't fall asleep until after 11:30 pm! Needless to say, Sunday was a sleep-in day and she is only now starting to get back on schedule.

All our pics from the wedding are on one Flickr set, but here are a few cute ones:


Mike and Cristina at the wedding rehearsal on Thursday evening


Amanda eating ice cream cake at the rehearsal dinner


Amanda and Isabella outside Cristina's house on Saturday morning


Married!!


Mom and I with Amanda after the ceremony


Our little "ballebina" having fun on the dance floor


Amanda twirling her skirt around

...OK, could post a million more but will stop now! Go check out the photo set! :)

Jo & Martin's Wedding

After returning from our vacation, we had to get ready for Jo & Martin's wedding! Amanda was a flower girl for the first time, and we were a bit nervous. For starters, she had picked up a bug on our trip - it started as the sniffles, but the Thursday night before the wedding she woke up in the middle of the night with a high fever, and over the following couple of days it got much worse. By Saturday morning she was pretty miserable.

We had to be at Jo's house by 8 am to have Amanda's hair done and get some photos taken, so we doped her up with cold medicine and hoped for the best.





She was OK until around 10 am, when we had to get her in the car to head over to the church. We hoped she would take a quick nap; however, she desperately wanted to hold her flower basket in the car, and we knew if she did so it would end up in pieces. So instead, we got to listen to her scream her head off for the entire 30 minute car ride (imagine "I HOLD IT!!!" over and over again in a hoarse, possessed-sounding voice, along with arms and legs furiously kicking in all directions, and you'd be part-way there).

By the time we arrived at the church, she was absolutely miserable. We headed to the bathroom to try to calm her down and fix her messed-up hair, and she wanted to sit on the potty. Unfortunately, she was exhausted to the point of almost falling asleep while sitting on the toilet, but every time we tried to take her off, she would scream "I PEE! I PEE!" and pull her Pull-ups back down (Pull-downs, perhaps?). It was to the point that we seriously doubted we would get her off the potty in time to walk down the aisle.

By some miracle - we still don't know how - Jeff managed to get her off and over to the front of the church just a minute or so before she was due to walk down the aisle . It looked briefly like she might be OK, but just as the doors opened, it became apparent she wasn't going to walk alone. So I ended up walking down the aisle with her - she had me on one side and her beloved Tyrone in the other. (The fact that Tyrone is bright orange didn't really help matters - she couldn't possibly have wanted to hold nice white Baby Beluga down the aisle, right?). As soon as she started walking, her face crumpled and she cried all the way down the aisle.



Of course, everyone else thought she was adorable and we could hear all the laughs and giggles during the long walk to the front of the church. We also got many comments during the course of the day and evening about how cute she was. If only they knew the whole story!

Once we were in the church, she promptly fell asleep on her Lolo's shoulder (thank goodness they had decided to come to see her debut as a flower girl!). She woke up part way through the ceremony and fussed a little, so Jeff and I had to sing during the signing of the registry with her on Jeff's shoulder - a little unconventional, but she was feeling so sick and unhappy that we were just happy to have her close.



Of course after the ceremony she was much more cheerful:





She spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's, and Jeff and I headed off to the reception at the Wall Centre, which was beautiful! Luckily she is fully recovered from her illness. We're hoping for better luck as she gets a second shot at being a flower girl at Mike & Cristina's wedding next month!