wind and veils are awesome!

Lets hear it for the macro lens, I didn’t even know their rings were engraved until i saw it on the LCD screen. 

The first dance was certainly non traditional!

but oh so fun!  And so so them!

And speaking of new love, my friend Marci got married!!  I was so lucky to have a front row seat as she married her sweet man.  Marce, I hope you enjoy your preview!

Despite all of these dislikes, we had an amazing camping trip!  There were 13 children, 14 adults, delicious food, a nice cool river to relax in, a sandy beach, two hammocks, my brother Brett, Mikes brother Jason from Montreal, my brother in laws sister Mary,  and some of the funniest campfire stories I have ever heard.  Special props must go to Mike for seeking out some of my camping dislikes and attempting to remedy them.  We had a tent trailer, a heater, a shower, and flushable wipes.  I love him for trying to make me comfortable.  I love him even more for the rugged beard he grew while we were there.   He shaved it before I got any snaps of it, sorry readers, you will just have to take my word for it, it was handsome.

Here is a sampling of all the fun, Uncle Jason surely was the hit of the trip, it was so great to have him out.

Uncle Jason humored me in a little camping activity I call “fun in the pitch dark with a flash”.

I believe her exact words here were “No mommy, I want Uncle Jason to push me”. 

Playing hide and seek was also a great time for the kids.

“Uncle Jay, you can’t get me….!!!”

The following two pictures are only a sampling of the flower shrines the little girsl kept leaving all around. 

The tin can in the background is actually a chipmunk trap, i think the flowers were to entice the chipmunk into the little area. 

Uncle Brett, most likely laughing because all the kids keep chasing Jason around, while Uncle Brett hides discreetly in a hammock doing sudoku puzzles.  (sidenote about Sudoku puzzles.  Seems like too much math to be any fun.  Thats all I am saying.)

Real quote from the campfire, “I can’t tell if this is a zit or a bug bite.”  “Pop it anyway.” 

What is more fun then a bunch of kids with glow sticks?  Two grown men with glowsticks and a slow shutter speed!

For Mikes parents, who were unable to join us this year, we sure did miss you.  And here it is, written in the air with glow sticks as proof. 

Thanks Butler Family for another great camping trip!!!

There are two very important exceptions to my lack of knowledge.  The first being the Oakland A’s between the years 1986 and 1989.  I can rattle off important sounding names like Walt Weiss, Jose Conseco, Mark Maquire, Ricky Henderson and Dennis Eckersly thanks to the free tickets we earned by reading a select number of books from the book mobile that came around once a month and parked itself close to our bus stop.  Yes the seats were in the nosebleed section and yes we had to smuggle in our own snacks, but we could still see Ricky Henderson steal a base from our aerial vantage point. 

The second exception of course  are sports players that have made appearances on Saturday Night Live, in particular Payton Manning (you must must must watch this clip ) and Lebron James.  I have been reading a lot in the way of angry facebook status updates and news articles lately about the latter these days, and while I won’t even pretend to know or care what everyone is upset about, I will tell you one thing, Lebron James is hilarious and that is all I really want to know. 

Unrelated to my limited understanding of sports related topics, here are some pictures I snapped of Paige on our way to San Diego last May.  She was dancing to the Black Eyed Peas and was begging me to put out a bowl so other gas station patrons could throw in coins if they really liked her “moves”.  She cracks me up!!

Danny and Emily, thank you so much for letting me hang out with you on your wedding day, in your hometown of Portland.  It was a real treat for me to visit, I loved it! 

The girls were so excited for Stinky Eyeball come out of the temple that they let him use them for weights!

It threatened to rain all day but we stayed dry.  We did get a rainbow out of all the damp weather, so that was a great omen!

What?  Isn’t this how good friends usually pose for the camera?

Here is the link to the slideshow.   www.carriebutlerphotography.myshowit.com/dannyandemilywedding

I made potato salad to bring to the Butler Family dinner today. Not just any potato salad, but the special potato salad that I learned to make at the feet of my mother, as she learned to make it at the feet of her mother, and so on. Ever since there has been Hellman’s Best Food mayonnaise and Lawry’s season salt the women in my family have made this hot German potato salad. And it is D-E-Licioius, if I do say so myself. So awesome in fact, that as kids, we would sneak downstairs after bed and steal bites out of it where it was cooling in the fridge. My mom would invariably wake to find the foil pealed back and at least 8 spoonfuls missing. The potato salad is not easy to make, it takes a lot of literal slaving over a hot stove, although as I made it today it occurred to me that while a task of this length would ordinarily drive me to swear, I enjoyed every second of peeling those hot potatoes straight out of the pot. With every potato I was reminded of being a kid, of watching my mom on Fourth of July morning armed with her kitchen towels and paring knife.
A house with 8 children and two parents is bound to have its fair share of turmoil, and our home was no exception, it seems as though we kids were always getting up to something. Like the time we filled up water balloons and hauled them up to the tree house and pelted our neighbors grand kids that were there visiting. (the sissies ratted us out) Or the time we let out our dog out and she bit the kid that lived down the street. There was the time my brothers got caught hauling shopping carts to the roof of the library and throwing them off (trust me, not the worst thing they got caught doing as crazy youth, or even the dumbest for that matter..) Or when we girls talked the otherwise innocent neighbors into forming a toilet paper posse and sneaking out to TP the *Smith home (*name has been changed to protect us from them ever finding out who it was..) so badly that the home was unrecognizable from the street. There were times when we would all 8 get sent to our rooms at the same time and we would make up songs about getting out and shout them at the tops of our lungs. (I think I better teach Paige to sing the “can we come out, can we come out, can we come out, rockin, rockin” song, it was awesome) There was that time that in an effort to hide from his church teacher my little brother climbed up onto the basketball hoop and had his buddy raise it up till he was stuck on the ceiling.. and no kid that lived within a two block radius can forget when we filled up an old water bed mattress with air, put it on the trampoline and paid kids to jump onto it from the balcony. Couple these things with the intricacies of running a household on a tight budget and lets just say my parents did their fair share of yelling.
Yes there was a lot of turmoil in our home. But Potato Salad day? That was a good day. Was it because we were so happy in anticipation that we were better then normal? Was it the ritual of my mom feeding that first spoonful to my dad to see if it needed more onion? Was it the proud look she wore knowing that she had just made something so delicious that it would postpone even my brothers from the days antics? The world may never know, dear readers. But as I made my very own potato salad this morning, guess who wanted to learn how to make it? Paige and Mia. And they were so good the whole time! Anyone want the recipe?