Mary and Amy

Elliot took this picture of my cousin Amy and me when my family reunited in Louisiana for my grandmother's funeral this past June.

Amy and I are just 2 months apart in age, so there are a ton of cute baby pictures of us hugging and kissing and playing on the floor together. It's so weird that we're all grown up now-- we're both married and Amy has 3 sons!

Happy Wedding again to Jonathan and Nicole

Yesterday we were honored to attend our friend's Hometown wedding reception! Here is a shot of us all together. It was a good time with good food.

A Giant Among Men

Sara and I look so short next to Elliot.

Hootie

This owl and its mate live in our neighborhood. They spend a lot of time in our yard, and Elliot snapped this picture while the two of them were sitting under the roof of our pole barn.

Mary and I had a great time hanging out with Parker and Ella!

Last weekend ended up being tons of fun because we got to hang out with one of our nieces and nephews each. We played games and ran around and had a good time.

Culturally Diverse Kitchen

For reasons that I won't go into now, Elliot and I have decided to make a very positive change in our lives by trying to create a regular rotation of meals that is inspired by cuisine from all over the world.

Now, neither one of us is a master chef, neither one of us has time to cook long and complicated recipes, and we eat a strictly vegetarian diet at home, so the recipes that we are making might not be entirely authentic. For example, the Greek soup recipe that I love to make (click here for the link to my soup blog and this recipe) is traditionally made with chicken broth, but I make it with vegetable broth instead. However, I feel like we maintain the spirit of the recipe and therefore embrace a little bit of the culture that it originated from.

I'm having trouble locating good African recipes, but I checked out an African cookbook from the library tonight, so hopefully I'll find something in there. Anyone have an African-inspired recipe that they want to share with me?...

The Rest of the Wedding Party Photos...

There are almost 200 pictures, so I hope you have a few minutes to look through them.

These are all the rest of the photos that were taken of the wedding party before the wedding. Some of me and my sisters, some of Elliot and Katie, some group photos. I left the pictures of just Elliot and Brendan out, since I posted those yesterday. (Click on the picture below to view the web album.)

Wedding Party

And here's a How-To article that has nothing to do with weddings:

Learn how to make a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron (and some aluminum foil).

Happy 4th of July!

Elliot and I celebrated America's birthday by watching the movie Transformers, which was quite good. We both grew up watching the Transformer cartoons, so it was great fun to see them in a live action/computer graphic movie.

We've been posting so many wedding photos that we haven't really been able to update you on what's been going on in our lives since the wedding. I'm participating in an externship this summer, and working part-time at a pre-school. I took all of the necessary tests and I've been certified by the state as a pre-school instructor! Yay! Elliot has been working and playing video games and reading interesting books.

If you click on the web album, below, you'll see all of the pictures of Elliot and Brendan that were taken before the wedding.

Brendan and Elliot

My Sisters

Kelli took this picture of my pretty sisters the night before my wedding. Thank you, Kelli!

(PS~ The wedding photos start on May 8th, or click on the "wedding" link below.)

Elliot and Katie = CUTE!

This is one of the cutest pictures from our wedding photos. Elliot and his sister look adorable!