So life has finally calmed down again. Yeah!

Last weekend was Katie and Jason's wedding. It took a lot of work to pull it off (8 hours of set-up on Friday), but it turned out wonderful. It was fun to see the transition from church wedding to luau reception. Katie looked beautiful and very happy, so that's all that matters. After 3 whole days of wedding (Friday= set-up, Saturday= wedding, Sunday= party for friends and family) I was very content to go home and curl up in bed with my husband and kitties. Luckily, my cats figured out this time to cuddle early and then leave me alone at 2 o'clock in the morning. They are notorious for wanting early a.m. cuddles!

The weekend before the wedding was the bachelor and bachelorette parties. It seemed the boys put together box cars (with welding and everything) and then raced them down a very large hill. Personally, I was a little concerned about the groom possibly having a black eye and/or cast for the wedding, but the bride was very calm. Maybe that is because we spent Saturday relaxing at Glen Ivy and Sunday wine tasting. All in all, a very fun weekend.

As is our current trend, Robert and I spent the weekend of our wedding anniversary celebrating another's wedding. It seems that we married during at a very popular wedding time. However, Robert took Monday (the actual day of a 2nd anniversary) off of work, and we spent it together. Rob gave me this amazing gift. It was a collage of pictures of us (and of course the cats, too) that was then turned into a puzzle. We spent a good chunk of Monday putting the puzzle together, and still have quite a way to go. You would think that putting together pictures of yourself would be easy... but it was a bit harder than expected. I gave Rob the Wii Sports Resort game that he kept on looking at. That was fun to play with too. I have to say, Robert has done a better job on the thoughtful gifts this past Christmas and anniversary. I think it is because with my family I was trained to give practical gifts. It's something I will have to work on.

We also currently had a discussion about gift-giving with my mother. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but we were talking about how Robert gets up at like 6am on Christmas because he is so excited about giving me my presents and opening his own. I guess that when he was a child, it was common for him to get up even earlier. As a child, I didn't even know a time before 6 o'clock in the morning existed. Instead, we slept in, ate breakfast, cleaned the dishes, and then opened presents. I think we came down to the conclusion that though Sean's and my presents were very exciting, they were either something that we couldn't play with at right that moment, or couldn't use ALL day. For example, when Rob asked what presents we remembered the most Sean's response was a telescope and the wheels for his old car. Obviously, the telescope wasn't used during the day and the wheels didn't go on the car until a week or so later. While Rob's presents growing up were something that would keep his attention all day. So either my brother and I are ADD and don't have Rob's attention span, or his family worked really hard at finding/making something really creative. It was definitely food for thought for when we have our own kids. Though I agree with my parent's philosophy of practical gifts (which helps makes the cost of Christmas presents be something that you needed to spend money on anyway), we also need to make sure that one present is like Rob's childhood Christmas. That way our kids will have Rob's adorable excitement and memories about holidays.