Family!

Today was awesome.  We had a family dinner to celebrate my (late) and Double A's (early) birthdays.  The rain from yesterday continued today which meant that Flower's and Laughter's soccer games got canceled, which meant that their whole family got to come to dinner when we didn't think they would be able to.  There were 12 of us:  me, Mom, Dad, the Brother, the Seester, the Brother-in-Law, Double A, the Bean, Flower, Laughter, the Auntie, and the Uncle (who I haven't seen in a couple of years, so that was extra-special-awesome!).  We were only missing DJ and the hubby, which is very very sad.  There was German chocolate cake, which is never ever sad.  Sigh...it was lovely, and I wish it could happen more often.  Here are some shoes from the day:

The Auntie's thrift store boots.  They're crazy, and cool, and totally work for her.

Dad and the Uncle were both wearing Keene's today.  One of these days I should round us all up and take a Keene family picture. 

The Seester's adorable brown sandals, with a slight, unintentional photo-bomb from the Brother-in-Law.

So it was a pretty fabulous day.  So fabulous, in fact, that even going to the mostly terrible and very long Batman Vs. Superman couldn't ruin the overall fabulosity.

Memory Lane: 2013. 2014. 2015.

Cupcakes

Today is National Cupcake Day!  If only I had known this I could have stress-eaten a dozen or so.  Except, of course, that money is the source of my stress, so that wipes out that plan.  Damn, my plans always fail.  I will have to stick to imaginary cupcakes, which contain fewer calories anyway.  And I shall look at cupcake shoes.

Mmmm...I would eat wear all of these.

Today is also my Uncle's birthday!

Here is a picture from the day my brother and I were baptized, back when my uncle still liked me.  See how I'm reaching toward him?  Hopefully I was past it by this age, but as a baby I spit up on him every time he picked me up.  It's amazing he didn't stop liking me sooner!  I don't remember the spitting up, but I do remember lots of other fun and silly memories, and I have many, many reasons to be grateful he's my uncle.  He has recently lost over 100 lbs (maybe closer to 200 now?) which is awesome, so wouldn't be eating cupcakes today, nor would he wear cupcake shoes, but hopefully he found other ways to enjoy the day, and hopefully no one spit up on him.

Pinstripes

I received a text from my aunt the other day with the following message:  "You can pinstripe anything.  [Your uncle] and I went to a car show and saw these."  She sent 2 pictures in illustration.

They're actually pretty cool, and inspired me to go find some more.

I love these.  Of course the fact that they started off as shiny, red patent leather certainly doesn't hurt.

These are cool, too.  I love the colors of the pinstriping.

Very pretty, and although more detailed, they don't seem quite as well done as the ones before?  I still like them, though.

Is that supposed to be...marijuana?  Maybe I'm just over-thinking it.  I like the green accents on the pink, but I wouldn't want people staring at my feet wondering what kind of a statement I was making.

There were some other examples I found, but apparently, like tattoos, pinstriping can get creepy quickly, and I just wasn't in the mood for skulls and eyeballs and other weird stuff tonight (possible marijuana shoes notwithstanding).

Thanks, Auntie, for the inspiration!  Hope you are having/had a fabulous visit with your brother!

Hops

Between high school and college I took some time off and did daycare for a family in my home town.  KGH was 2 1/2 when I started and KAH was 3 months.  I was only supposed to take a year off, but I fell in love with those babies and 1 year turned into 2 1/2.  Both of them had some funny ways of saying things, like all kids do.  My family still says hot weeder hider instead of hot water heater because KGH said it and it cracked us up.  KAH had his own language, though.  I swear I should have been able to count it as my foreign language requirement when I got to college.  One thing he did was to call animals by their sounds instead of their names.  Dogs were woofs, cows were moos, etc.  My favorite, though, was bunnies.  Bunnies don't really make sounds normally, so KAH promptly switched gears and called them hops.  That was a rather long way of saying that today we will be talking about hops.  You might have thought we were going to talk about jumping, or possibly beer, from the title, but nope.  It's still Easter, so we're going to talk about bunnies.  And because the PF sent me some really fun bunny shoes:

Oh my goodness do I love these.  So very adorable!

 

These are also cute in a sweet and goofy kind of way.  I can totally see a 5-7 year old rocking these.

Adorable.  Must find a pattern.  Although my tension is usually off and my baby shoes end up being slightly different sizes.  So they would be sibling bunnies instead of twin bunnies.

These are not from the PF.  I found them and had to share.  I love the blue with white polka dots, and would love whole shoe if it didn't mean WALKING ON THE HEAD OF A BUNNY.  What is wrong with people? Poor little hops.  I'd bet they'd have lots to say about this.

And one last picture.  My uncle sent this to me the other day.  These are slippers that were given to me.  They were very warm and comfortable.  Weird to walk in, though, as the heads were heavy and flopped around some.  I've never really thought it was all about me, though.  It's a running joke in my family, especially with me and my aunt, where we say this, but never actually mean it.

Ah, hops.  KGH is now 23 and got married last summer (so I guess she'd be KGHK now), and KAH just turned 21 yesterday.  I am oooooold.