Wedding reception

OK, it's night and my internet is so far functional...lately it's been crashing at night, so we'll see if this works so I can actually post something.

On New Years Eve we had a wedding reception. The plan originally had been to have an outdoor mountain picnic in June of '08, but that didn't work out with Steph's treatments and such, so we moved our target back to October. The impending birth of our new nephew delayed that, since Jeff and Kelly wouldn't have been able to make plans to be here. It turned out that they couldn't come anyway, but in any case the party was pushed back to New Year's Eve, which has become my favorite holiday over the years anyway. The shindig was small, with just family and a few of our very close friends invited. There were still some last-minute no-shows (Wendy had the nerve to have a baby the day before her due date, which we knew might happen, and Kath had a migraine. We love those.) but then my uncle Steve happened to be up skiing in the hills with his family and they were able to come down, so that was a nice surprise.

The party itself took place at our home, with food prepared almost entirely by Steph & me. We had fun putting it together and the whole thing went off nicely. So now...pictures! (Photo credits and thanks to my sister-in-law Erin, previously mentioned here as the designer of my tattoo)

Since this was a wedding reception, we did have a couple traditional things...I gave Stephanie a wedding ring finally (which had been offered when we got married and declined at the time):

And of course there was cake.The kids were able to pretty much entertain themselves, the adults sometimes wandering in on their action...Tim enjoyed telling them scary stories at their request. I can't wait until he has kids and I can repay his kindness :-)

The evening was spent hanging out with friends and family, eating, talking, the things you do at a reception.

And just 'cuz...some gratuitous pics of the happy couple:

Steph thinks I don't open my eyes when I smile. Where would she get that idea?!
But seriously, am I lucky or what?

I'm glad we got to celebrate our marriage. The meaning of the celebration kind of changes when it's over a year after the fact, but more than anything this was a celebration of where we've been and where we're going. We face the future with our eyes wide open to the curveballs life can throw, but we're happy to have each other, to be a family, and to build our future together.