Updates, My Sister’s Wedding, and My Australia Blogs



The Ricketts Family and Mr. and Mrs. Logan and Elizabeth Strong

It’s been a while…  I had a pretty good summer.  The highlight was going to Santa Barbara for my sister’s wedding!  I had gone to the maintaining phase of Atkins to make sure that my bridesmaid’s dress fit for the wedding, but I didn’t do too great of a job, because it was a little big.  Not a bad thing to happen to me in the grand scheme of things since it means I did lose weight, but hiking that dress up every once-in-a-while was kind of a pain in the butt!

 



 

Okay, I have to mention these things, but only because it is too incredible to not share.  Just about anything that could go wrong with my sister’s wedding did.  The only majors that didn’t go wrong were the cloths and photos! 

 

My boquet

(1) FLOWERS.  My sister had family friends who were going to take the flowers that they bought from a wholesaler and put together the bouquets, boutonnieres, flowers for the church, and rehearsal table centerpieces.  Elizabeth had been in CA in March to visit and do some wedding planning and went to the L.A. Flower Market.  A vendor from the Santa Barbara area told them that all the flowers that Elizabeth wanted for her wedding would not be a problem for him, he grew them all.  All they would need to do was call two weeks before they needed the flowers to order them.  They called three weeks ahead of time and left a message (with no call back); again at two weeks (with no call back); and again at the week before (with no call back).  Thursday night before the Saturday wedding, the guy finally called back and said that he hadn’t called back because he didn’t have the flowers…  Really????  The Saturday morning of the wedding, the family friends hit the farmer’s market and got flowers together…they were BEAUTIFUL and you would never have known that they were not what my sister had originally wanted!


Tabel centerpieces



(2) FOOD.  A family friend was going to be doing the dinner at the reception, but couple of weeks before the wedding, he had some serious heart problems and had to bow out.  In under a week my family had another family friend (who was a professional caterer) lined up and willing to do nearly the same meal!  The food was awesome and, again, you would never have known that there was a mini-panic about that!



Chicken penne pasta, mixed green salad, and garlic cheese bread



Dad's wedding cake:  yellow cake layer; chocolate cake layer, and funfetti layer



(3) CAKE.  Another family friend was going to make the wedding cake for Elizabeth and Logan, and she had made several wedding cakes for other friends from church before.  The Wednesday night before the wedding, her husband came over to let us know that Joanne had been to the doctor and she had pneumonia!  Her doctor had told her she couldn’t even leave the house, let alone bake a three-tier wedding cake!  We were in luck, however, as my dad bakes and decorates cakes as a hobby.  He had originally wanted to do her wedding cake, but thought it would be too stressful.  It probably would have been, but since he didn’t have that much time to be stressed out, it went well!  The cake was beautiful and yummy…go funfetti!




The teasing up...

(4) MUSIC, HAIR, and MAKE-UP.  Although these issues were not as major as the others, they did cause a little bit of stress!  On Friday at the rehearsal, we found out that the woman who was going to be playing piano and doing Elizabeth’s hair and one of the other bridesmaid’s hair had injured her back!  She made it to the wedding, but was in a lot of pain.  A friend of Elizabeth (who is a make-up artist) had flown in from Canada to L.A. for the wedding and was doing Elizabeth’s and another bridesmaid’s make-up…she got stuck in L.A. traffic coming up on Saturday, and she didn’t get to the church until about 1 hour before the ceremony!

The final product!



All-in-all, everything went beautifully and you would have never known anything went wrong, but I cannot believe how crazy those two weeks were!



I jumped off the “maintaining” phase, and back into the weight-loss phase…I’ve only lost about 10 more pounds since the wedding, so I think I may have caused a stall.  We’ll see how it goes, and hopefully I’ll be back to losing soon!



Since then, it has been pretty much the same-old, same-old.  I did, finally, get a smart phone, so yeah me! 

 

And last, but not least, I’ve been working (very sporadically) on my blogs about my Australia trip in 2010.  I wrote in a journal while my friend, Caytie, and I were there, and I am using that to write a blog for each day we were there.  So far, I’ve written about Sydney, the Blue Mountains, Canberra, the Snowy Mountains, a scary drive out of the Snowy Mountains, Bunurong Coast and Phillip Island, Melbourne, and the Great Ocean Road (to Portl Campbell, to Portland, and on to Adelaide).  I have recently begun writing about our stay in Adelaide.  We were in Australia for 21 days, and Adelaide was our 12^th day there!

First Few Days in Santa Barbara, CA

Sunset at the Breakwater in Santa Barbara, California

I flew into Santa Barbara on Friday afternoon, and dad, Carol, and I walked State Street for the afternoon / evening (after dinner of curried meat and rice). We went to Yogertland where I proceeded to fill my own cup with double-chocolate Oreo yougert (one of about 12 favors) and added my own toppings...brownie bites, caramel, and fidge sauce- yum!

My brother Jonothan drove up from Westminster, CA on Sunday evening. Dad had to work on Monday, and Carol, Jonathan, and I sat all day and watched movies and played Mario Party and Super Mario Bros. it was nice and relaxing! Tuesday Jonathan and I went Christmas shopping.


The new Santa Barbara airport!

Today Elizabeth and her boyfriend Logan flew in from New Hampshire. Santa Barbara has a new airport since I last flew in in 2009, and it is beautiful! This afternoon the family and a few of Elizabeth and Jonathan's friends went down to the Breakwater to walk along the beach it was beautiful out. As we walked back to the car about an hour later, the sun was setting.

Jonathan on the rocks at the Breakwater

Walking along the Breakwater

 

I only walked along the wood beam partially because I have this issue with short heights...then I had to hop down the rocks back to the beach to walk the rest of the way...rock hopping, no problem! :)



The family with the shoreline in the



Dad and I a the end of the Breakwater




The siblings at the Breakwater with the wharf in the background

 

 We returned home and had tacos for dinner and are now watching Source Code.



The walk back to the car at sunset (Logan and Elizabeth and Dad and Carol)

My Baby Brother Graduates...

What can I say except that I feel really, really old right now. My youngest brother graduated from Highschool. That is a complete WOW factor to me. My trip to see my CA family this year included Jonathan's graduation, which is crazy in and of itself. My last sibling out of highschool!


I only had a few hours with my sister, Elizabeth, but it was fun to be able to see her school life and hear a little more about Ignite. I flew into Santa Barbara on Friday night and on Saturday morning, we got up early and drove down to San Diemas to visit with Elizabeth. We went to lunch at a great place called Mexican Food. Really creative title, I know, but the food was good.

We spent the day shopping for some final things that Elizabeth needed, like snacks, a bag, and some shoes, before her missions trip to Spain and Moracco. After an afternoon of shopping, we went back to Elizabeth's school and hung outside at the volley ball courts and just sat and talked for a while.


Besides the regular family, we had my cousin Seth's daughter with us who is just adorable! She was totally fun all day long and a total cutie! In this pic, Carol, Sierra, and Elizabeth are sitting outside at Elizabeth's campus by the volley ball court. Jonathan was taking about a million pictures with my camera, and this is one.

Here's another picture of Sierra that Jonathan took...she's beautiful!

We had a great time! After a while, we went into Elizabeth's dorm and helped her finish up packing her stuff, both for her trip and to load up for us to take home for the summer for her. We said good bye later that night, and she flew out on Sunday for her first stop on her mission trip (Spain).



The next few days were filled with me kicking my brother's butt (for once) at Mario Party 8. I've never beaten him in my life, so that was pretty exciting. The problem was, I had been practicing here in MN on Marisa's Wii and he hadn't played Mario Party 8 since the last time we played together...

Just before Jonathan's Graduation, Sierra's sister was born. She was really cute too! We all got to go see Savannah, but only two were allowed in the room at a time. She's just a day or two old here.

And then came the time for Graduation. So weird to have my youngest brother graduate! The ceremony was great, other than the change of the year on the hill from 2009 to 2010 by the incoming seniors (which really made the outgoing seniors mad).



Debbie and Michael came up for the graduation, Ashley joined us (who is in school at UCSB and who I used to babysit!!), as well as Janet (New Life Church's former paster's wife). After the Graduation ceremony, we went out to dinner for mexican...nummy!



I also got to see Staci, my childhood best friend, while I was in Santa Barbara. It was a blast to catch up with her and see here two beautiful kids.

Santa Barbara was great. Although the fire/burnt area was just weird to see how far it came down into the city itself. My parents had to evacuate their home because of how close it came.

The pic here is from about a mile from their house. Crazy! You can see the burnt hill and how alot of the trees around it have burnt or dried out. It looks like the leaves are turning for fall, but they aren't...they are burned! I only got a few pics of burnt area because I spent more time just hanging out with family.