Portland

Our adventures this summer took us to Portland for a wedding. Tyler, Jayson's younger brother and Jessi Leppert were married in the Portland temple on August 2, 2007. It was a great time, even though it was a quick trip. Here are some shots from our trip. To see the pictures from the wedding taken by Scott and Jayson, visit http://apertureartistry.smugmug.com.

The drive is a long one (I know there are longer drives, but it's long for me); 12 hours. The last hour of the drive is awesome; you drive through a beautiful gorge. It almost makes the drive worth it.

We arrived on Wednesday, and spend most of the day prepping for the wedding and the lunch. Joy and I also stole away for a bit to get our nails done.

Thursday was the day of the wedding...

Here are the kids at the temple. Mae found good friends in her cousins, Ammon and Kaleb. They loved to play with her and she loved the attention. Notice Kaleb is holding a gummy hot dog. Delicious....


After the wedding was the lunch. Tyler and Jessi wanted J Dawgs for their wedding lunch. So we brought the stuff and the crew (thanks Joy!) and cooked up a delicious meal (at least I thought it was delicious!). We made the dawgs, Sandy Boyd's coleslaw (mmmmmmm...), and these baked beans that have bacon and velvetta cheese and other delicious things.

Here was our table spread. Turned out pretty nice. Thanks Deb for buying such great decorations! It looked so great!

Many years ago when my sister got married, she had bottles of root beer. My dad feels like he's never lived it down. Something about a bunch of mormons walking around with long neck brown bottles. I thought it was hilarious, and a lot of fun, so we tried to get some bottled soda for their wedding.

Here we are working on the get-away car. Evidently there is such a thing as window paint? I just used shoe polish, but I think it gave them some trouble. Now I know for next time!


Here is the rear view of the car. We forgot almost all the decorations, so we made due with what we had. It turned out pretty sweet, I think.

After the wedding, we went over and spent some time at Grandma Marcella's.

Here is Mae and her great grandma, Marcella. Great grandma is good to us; and she had so many fun things to play with.

This probably was the funniest thing that happened on the trip. Jayson was playing with a big red ball, and somehow it ended up in this huge tree. So...it was an adventure getting it out. Here is a picture of the first attempt--3 rakes/brooms taped together. I believe a fourth one was added shortly after this picture.


Yep, four. Four brooms lassoed together. Alas, it was still inadequate, and the ball remained lodged.

Jayson decided to climb the tree. Adventurous, but successful.

It was quite a spectator sport. That ball in the tree held everyones attention for at least 3o minutes.

Finally, the ball! We had some good laughs about that ball.

Jayson didn't believe that I was capable of doing a cartwheel. I sure showed him! Jen and I had a competition to see who could do the most. I think we both topped out at 3. I've got some practicing to do!

Here's Haylee!

Mae found a chicken nugget on the ground and it, like everything else, went straight to the mouth. This was her first chicken nugget, and she LOVED it. Looks like we have a McDonalds junkie on our hands.


Friday was a relatively free day for us. We spent some time setting up for the reception (Saturday), but also got to spend some time together.


Whenever I am in Portland, I always try to do at least 2 things: eat at E-Sans and go to Powells books. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to Powells, but we did make it to E-Sans. Here is some amazing mango sticky rice. I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE this place.

Here's the crew: Jayson, Scott, Brandyn, Jen, Deb, Heidi, Joy. Do we look satisfied? After dinner, we went hit up opening night of the Bourne Ultimatum. Jayson had been reading the books and we watched the first two movies in review. As far as movies are concerned, it was probably my favorite I've seen in the theater this year.

Saturday was reception day. I spent some time helping the girls get ready and Jayson brought Mae a little bit later. The reception took place in a beautiful historic LDS Church building. It was beautifully decorated and a lot of fun.


Here is one of our reserved tables. You can see some guitar picks on the table. They had them engraved to say "tyler picks jessi" with their wedding date. pretty sweet.

Ty, the groom, and one of his groomsmen, Ryan.

Joy and the mother of the bride, Wendy. Bust a move ladies!

I have never seen anything like this. Joy is doing the hot dog dance, based on her career at J Dawgs. Right here she is putting sauce on the dawg. I was laughing and laughing. You can tell Jessi, the bride thinks she should learn that dance too.

Joy and I had a great time dancing.

Aunt Donna and Uncle Gordon were shaking a leg too!

Jayson and Grandma, looking extra sweet.

I wish I would have gotten more pictures at the reception; Katy looked phenomenal, and Grandpa and Grandma Edwards were there, and a whole host of other relatives I was getting to know. I was mostly concerned about Mae that night. She was pretty miserable, and we actually had to take her to the E.R. after the reception. She had some virus, which seems like it shouldn't be a big deal, but she was having an asthmatic reaction so she was struggling breathing. We were there until 4 in the morning. The good news is, Mae seems to be doing just fine and we haven't had to use her inhaler for awhile! Yeah!