John and Melanie's Wedding

On Madelyn's second birthday, (August 29th), Brad had the privilege of performing his third wedding for a former youth group student. It never ceases to amaze us at how fast time flies by! Melanie was only in 8th grade when we her youth pastors, and now she's all grown up! It is such an awesome transition when they go from being your "students" to becoming your friends. Coming to Seattle has been such a fun season of life, not only do we get to see a lot of our former youth group students, but we get to go to church with them, watch their families grow, and still be a part of their lives. It is a blessing beyond measure.

Here are some super cute pictures from the wedding. Not only did Brad perform the wedding, but Reagan was the flower girl, and Josiah the ring-bearer. Brad and Reagan were flawless... Josiah, well, he kept us entertained! =0)

The rehearsal.

Josiah made me nervous at the rehearsal. He refused to walk down the aisle. I bribed him with getting a new monster truck if he did, but even that looked like it might not work...The day of the wedding arrived and bad mommy moments began... First off, I forgot that they wanted Reagan at the church in the morning so they could fix her hair...oops! So when the bridal party came up for pictures, Reagan was very noticeably the only one that didn't have her hair fixed. Oh well. She didn't say anything, and I wasn't about to point it out! Here are some cute pics of them at Scott and Jeannie's.

I love the fact that you can get boys all gussied up
but yet they still remain boys! =0)

The kids were such troopers! It was a super hot day and they had to wait forever to get their pictures taken. They were having fun playing with tractors until we started getting worried about them staining their clothes before the wedding actually started.

Josiah looked so handsome in his tux, the only thing he absolutely couldn't stand was his bow-tie. He kept pulling on it and saying, "I hate these chokers! They're choking me!"..... Brad agreed whole-heartedly!

Finally the time came for pictures, and they were well worth the wait!

I love this picture of Josiah! We asked him if he would give Melanie a kiss, and he turned his head away shyly, so Melanie leaned over and gave him a kiss instead.

We asked him to give Melanie a hug, and he was more than happy to do that!

This was Reagan's second time being a flower girl, so she knew exactly what was expected of her. She wasn't the least bit nervous, and actually rather enjoyed being the center of attention! =0)

This is probably my favorite picture of her!

Soooo cute!

The flower girls and Melanie

The wedding began, and so did my next bad mommy moment. I wish I wouldn't have felt the need to bribe Josiah to walk down the aisle. He actually did a great job on his own! We told him he had to pretend to be Nehemiah's big brother and teach him how to walk down the aisle like a big boy... he did awesome! He took his role very seriously, but was so super sweet with him. Here's a super cute pic of the two of them!

Josiah and Nehemiah

But then I had to go and ruin things. I told Josiah that if he walked down the aisle Daddy would give him a piece of candy. In my mind I envisioned Brad passing one piece of candy to him every 5 or 10 minutes whenever he started to get antsy, but instead when Josiah got to the front of the aisle Daddy unloaded his entire pocket of candy to Josiah. Although, this kept him busy for a little while, it was almost more of a distraction than anything because he smacked on it all through the service...

Digging for candy!

About this time during the service, I think the sugar was kicking in!

Although he didn't do anything outrageously embarrassing, the entire service, I was frantically making all kinds of "sit-down", and "be quiet" motions...something a four year old knows nothing about. During the candle-lighting, he managed to walk to the center of the stage so he could get an up close and personal view of the couple lighting the candle... I was slightly panicked he was going to blow out the candles, but he behaved! Then later in the service, he got bored and sprawled out on the stairs, only to later start crawling underneath the communion table... Oh the joys of mothering! =0) I had lots and lots of comments after the wedding about all the entertainment he provided! All of them were very sweet, and reassuring comments like, "I was actually hoping he would have blown out the candles!" But I'm sure most of them were just glad it was not their son up there goofing around! All in all, he did a great job! And how you can be upset with the poor little guy when he keeps flashing this super sweet smile!