Doppelganger: The Return

Last Summer, around this time, Josh and I spent the weekend in Vegas and happened upon a man who looked startlingly like my brother-in-law Kaly. This year, we happened upon someone who looks startlingly like my little sister (not the one married to Kaly) working at Devils Tower, Wyoming.

Judge for yourself:

My sister

My sister?

I wish I could have found a picture where my sister was making the same face as her doppelganger because she does make that face too. I wasn't even stealth with my picture-taking this time. I full on, shamelessly camera-phoned her. 

Summer Weddings, Had Me a Blast!

We went to a couple pretty special weddings this summer, including Josh's baby sister Olivia's in June.

 (From L to R): Josh's step-mom, Josh's dad, Josh's sister Samantha, Josh's sister Chelsea, Josh, Olivia, Olivia's husband Mike, Josh's mom, and Josh's step-dad

They were sealed in the Columbia River temple (in TriCities, WA) and we got to see Josh's aunt Olivia and uncle Jerry King. We're pretty big fans of theirs. We love hearing their stories about traveling and they are nice enough to let us stay with them when we're driving through Utah.

Olivia and Mike then had a garden reception in Hermiston in the backyard of a friend.

Josh is pretty serious about his role as the Big Brother to three sisters. Olivia is the last to get married.

They had these cute cards for reception guests to fill out with little bits of advice to the married couple. We, of course, wrote about the importance of attending the temple, seeing movies during the day, and laughing often.

Then Josh and his siblings decorated Mike and Olivia's car. 

 The second big wedding we went to this summer was the sealing of our friend Caroline in Dallas, Texas. You may remember when we visited Dallas previously, but this time we got to see the basement.

It was very hot and awfully windy

We know Caroline from the Eugene Institute. She was in the RS presidency before I was and was good friends with Josh's previous girlfriend. She lives in Shreveport, LA now, but Dallas is the closest temple.

Isn't she cute? Caroline has a distinct sense of style.

They then had their reception in Shreveport, LA, which is on the Red River and is the birthplace of my niece Michaela. 

The waterfront is home to several riverboat casinos

Their reception started off with a wedding parade through town.

They even had a band walking along with us and playing hits such as "When the Saints Go Marching In."

It was pretty hot and everyone was pretty sweaty, but how often do you get to participate in a parade through Shreveport?

They even had a police officer to stop traffic.

Their reception was adorable. They had hot dog and Popsicle vendors, this cute painting (done by the groom):

and this map so that attendees could sign on their hometowns:

Mr. and Mrs. Eckel:

The ShepAlders and the Eckels:

Summer weddings are so much fun!

Doppelganger

I have a brother-in-law named Kaly.

He's a pretty distinctive-looking guy. Josh and I can always pick him out of a crowd at Autzen.

When we were in Vegas, we saw a guy who looks just like him. Almost. It resulted in this picture:

Yes, I posed on purpose just to get a picture of this guy. Josh and I are no strangers to the stealth picture-taking.

Side-by-side:

This is the kind of stuff Josh and I do on vacation. Totes.

Fly Like a Baby Hawk

We got to meet our new nephew yesterday when we drove up to Great Wolf Lodge to spend time with my sister's family for my niece Alice's 4th birthday.

Alice was born a couple weeks before Josh and I got married. Here we are singing Beatles songs to her when she was a newborn:

Here she is on her birthday:

I guess there is a book about a little girl that eats so many pink cupcakes she turns pink, so Alice was rubbing the pink cupcakes on herself. It was pretty funny.

I made these:

I was trying to experiment with sanding sugar. The original idea (to have tiaras made from silver sanding sugar) didn't work, and I didn't have tons of time, but of course Alice didn't care. She just wanted pink and purple cupcakes, so everything else was a bonus.

Now for pictures of Hawk:

He is such a good baby. He fussed a little when he was hungry/tired and he drooled A LOT, but he has the cutest smile and is super aware of what is going on around him. 

He is a lot skinnier than I thought he would be and has long arms and legs. I think he's going to be tall. He's just the cutest baby in the whole wide world and has these huge eyes that would make you melt. We love him so much already!

Please Give a Warm Welcome to...

... the newest nephew in my family: Hauxhurst "Hawk"!

He's originally from Ethiopia, but my sister and brother-in-law were (finally) able to bring him home on Saturday. They wasted absolutely zero time putting him in a Ducks jersey and preparing him for his inevitable future as a Duck fan.

The other kids in their family are excited to have him home, too, and they have been preparing for over a year for a new sibling. 

My sister says he's very well-behaved, which might be a byproduct of living in an orphanage, but might just mean he'll be mild-mannered and nothing like my other nieces and nephews (ha ha). 

Previous to Hawk coming home to Oregon, we weren't allowed to post pictures of him due to Ethiopian adoption laws, but this has been big news in my family, and something for which we've been waiting excitedly. 

Hawk's full first name (Hauxhurst) is a family name from my mother's side. The Hauxhursts (my great grandparents) adopted all of their children and established the importance of adoption in my family. Another of my sisters also has an adopted child, and we're very lucky to have both her and Hawk in our lives!

We haven't met him in person yet, but Josh says that he "can't wait to squish baby Hawkeritos." You can look forward to those pictures in a couple weeks!

Itteh Bitteh Kittehs

We were in Eugene this past weekend, visiting family and generally being bums. We finally got to see my sister Helen's house and her baby kittens. As a way of explanation, my sister volunteers for a no-kill animal shelter and finds homes for displaced/unwanted kitties. She ended up with the kittens (and their mother) because they were found on someone's farm land while she was picking up cats to be spayed.

We call this a "cat stack"

Helen tried to see how many cats she could stick in her mouth. The answer is one.

I think this one was Moonbeam.

They have the cutest blue eyes

My mom was either wearing this cat as a hat or this cat was wearing my mom as a belt.

This cat was so snuggly!

Josh played a video of cats meowing and the kittens freaked out. Uh-Door-uh-Bull!

While in Eugene, Helen and Josh also jammed on the banjo, guitar, and ukelele:

Easter with the ShepAlders

My family already celebrated Easter without us (for various reasons that I will, hopefully, be able to explain later... unless you've seen me in person, in which case I've probably already blah blah blahed about it). So I missed out on the egg hunt and the infamous lamb cake (a cake that looks like a lamb, not a cake made from lamb). Instead, when Josh and I went down to Eugene for the weekend, my mom and I made duck cupcakes.

They were supposed to look like this:

Hold on to your suspense!

We started off with cupcakes:

After we frosted the naked cupcakes for a base, we then added marshmallows cut in half crosswise for the tails and doughnut holes for the heads:

We were supposed to dip each cupcake in frosting, but the heads kept falling off. Instead, we did this:

It kind of worked, except the frosting at that point was so runny (for the dipping), it kept dripping off. I also used starburst for the beaks and feet:

 This required me to spent an hour squishing and molding. There was much debate about how best to do the feet. I think they turned out okay.

 We did finally get it all together, get the beaks on, and tried to keep the heads on. The turned out like this:

I think these duck bums are the cutest:

They are kind of deformed, but they just look so hopeful:

The unfortunate thing is that it took so much frosting to make everything stick together. It was a little too much sugar for me:

But people still ate and enjoyed them, so it was a success! 

 In Other News:
Remember how my dad requested we visit the Lego store in Chicago to buy odds and ends for his Lego projects? One of those projects is a Lego version of their house:

Isn't this ridiculous? 

My dad was planning to make it so you can take off the roof, but the design didn't work so well. So you miss that inside the house is all relatively (as close as you can get with Legos) architecturally accurate. There are even minifigs for most of the members of my family. For some reason, we're all in the den eating turkey.

Here's the back side: