A Wedding and a Birthday

Saturday Dec. 17th my niece got married and my son turned 13!

 My two daughters and their cousin at the wedding luncheon

 My two daughters and their two cousins at the wedding breakfast

 Me and my mom at the wedding breakfast. She came out for Thanksgiving and wasn't going to be able to come to the wedding, but the groom surprised us all and won our hearts by flying her out.

 My big brother and his wife came with one of their sons. It was so fun to have them there.

                      The beautiful bridesmaids. My two daughters are on the far right.

 The bride and her maids at the reception

                  The proud mom and dad dancing at the reception

              The two proud grandmothers of the bride at the reception

                      The bride and her brother dancing at the reception

 My husband and my mom. the photographer told him to hide his "sausage" fingers in the family photo so he's purposely showing them here.

                   My oldest daughter and her friend Andrew

                My younger daughter dancing with her dad

                 Me, the birthday boy and his cousin at the reception

                           My mom, the groom, and my sister at the brunch

My mom, my sister and me at the brunch

The proud parents of the bride

Me resting my sore back and my mom resting her sore leg at the reception.

All in all it was a joyous weekend of celebrations with family. What could be better than that?

Merry Little Christmas pictures and video of performance

Clink on the link below if you want to watch the video:

                                           Wingers Performance 

This is Scott Graves and me performing at the Wingers open mic night. Luckily he was playing with me so that when I messed up no one heard it!

 Gotta lean into that mic a little more to be heard over the background noise!

 Finally, a smile!

 It was fun to have my cute daughters and lovely sister there.

Here's the whole gang of family and friends who came: my two daughters, my son who's not in the picture but probably standing and watching the performers, My sister and her hubby, my two awesome writer friends Letitia and Rose (Rose took the pic and I think Ava is hiding behind my daughter) and my sweet hubby who came straight from the airport and ran to get there on time. Now that's love!

New Christmas song and upcoming Christmas performance

I was asked to write another song this year for a Christmas program at church. The theme is how we become stronger by weathering the storms of life and how sometimes our most difficult trials can turn out to be our greatest gifts. Here are the words I came up with.

Snow Flakes

Frozen Flakes flutter down from the sky
Filling the air with a flurry of white
Before me a mountain looms high and steep
I don't know if I can climb this peak

Chorus:
When snow flakes fall and heart aches call
When dark clouds hide the sun
When winter winds blow and silent tears flow
You can always run
To the one who makes rainbows from rain
He creates joy out of pain
When snowflakes fall and heartaches call

If you're lost he'll lead you by the hand
if you stumble and fall he'll help you stand
if you are stranded out in the cold
He'll find and gather you into his fold

Chorus

You may pray that he takes it all away
But sometimes the greatest gifts
come from ploughing through the deepest drifts

Chorus

Also, I'll be performing a couple of Christmas songs on Saturday the 10th at 8:00 at Wingers in West Valley. If you'd like to enjoy a night of all-you-can-eat wings and Christmas music, come and join us!