Congrats to Joel and Shannon

Good friends-- the cutie on the left is expecting in September!  I had a good time blowing bubbles with her daughter at the wedding. 

I was home this weekend for a good friend from high school's wedding.  In fact, Joel and I have known each other since we were in diapers.  The wedding was beautiful and, frankly, one of the most well-attended weddings I've ever been to!  The couple could pack a church, that's for sure!  It was so comforting to see such a good friend so happy with his beautiful bride.  Congrats Joel and Shannon and thanks for the awesome party!  Joel and Shannon actually dated in high school and reunited years later and fell in love.  How romantic is that? 

This wedding had a few wow-factors.  One was the dinner table vases filled with water and live flowers floating in the water.  Such a cool effect and so pretty!  Another neat-o touch were that we each received a pouch of seeds to plant flowers and on that pouch was a sometimes romantic, sometimes funny phrase that we were to use as conversation starters with the bride and groom.  What a fun idea!  We laid ours out and had Joel explain a few of them to us.  So cute!  I also very much appreciated the bottle of red wine on our table.  Wine at a Wisconsin wedding?  Yeah, Joel's classy like that.  Another fun idea was handing out bubble wands to all of the guests, having them circle the bride and groom during their first dance, and add to the mood by being surrounded by love and bubbles.  I'm curious if the photographer was able to snag any good pics of this effect.  All of my pics of the bride and groom are on my mom's camera, so I may never see them, but it was worth having the good camera to get the high quality pics that I snapped from the balcony of the church.  Maybe I'll snatch them when I'm home in August. 

The best part of the wedding was catching up with my high school gals (one not pictured above, sorry, NavyGirl), their husbands, and parents.  Joel reins from this crowd himself, but was clearly too busy to sit down and chat with us all night!  I can't tell you how easy it is to talk to people who knew you best when you were 16.  These girls have always been there for me, and even if we have to wait for Christmases or weddings to reunite (running out of weddings here, people), it's as fun as it has ever been.  Most people I know look back at their high school years negatively.  Every single day I had adventures with these girls (and Joel) that made high school an absolute blast.  They taught me how to be confident, work hard, but have fun!  Not all young girls are so lucky to have such positive influences in their lives.  Some people are just worth flying home to see and will always feel like family.  Thank you, girls, for making it so worth it!  I will continue going through withdrawals until we meet again. 

I got to spend some good time with local family back home as well!  It makes me super excited for our upcoming family vacation in August.

I flew back Sunday early afternoon, am back in Boulder teaching summer school, and I really needed a moment to sit and collect myself after a long Monday.  I was contemplating a nap, but sometimes it feels good to blog, even if it's only for 15 minutes!  Thanks for reading.