John and Gennie's Wedding

Jess's younger brother John got married to Genevieve Kyle in July. We don't know Gennie very well yet but they're planning on living in Edmonton while John finishes law school so we're looking forward to lots of time together. Plus I already know Gennie's family from Ottawa - I was friends with her older sister Heather when we were teenagers.

John and Gennie are both younger siblings from large families so they have a lot of nieces and nephews. Here they are with 38 (!!!) of them.

Here's my old high school friend, Heather, Gennie's older sister.

Here's Heather at Girls Camp one summer back in Ottawa when we were about 16:

And here she is in the bottom right corner at a good-bye party for me before I moved to Alberta when I was 17:

Anyway, back to the wedding:

Heather gathered all the nieces and nephews and had them sing "Kiss the Girl" from Little Mermaid to John and Gennie:

Here they are watching the slideshow of all their childhood photos:

And playing the "shoe game" to test how well they know each other:

They had a really fun dance at the end of their reception.

With so many nieces and nephews (and brothers and sisters), their car was bound to get "decorated":

And finally, here are some videos from the reception.

John sang an awesome Hamilton-esque song to Gennie at the dinner:

From the dance:

A Day at the Zoo

Jayna and Travis stayed with us for a couple of days for Spencer's bar call and so they could spend time with us at the zoo. Brinsley and James adore my kids (Brinsley still hopes to marry Connor when they grow up) and the feeling is mutual.

Spencer's Bar Call

Jess's younger brother Spencer and his sweet wife Hannah have been living in Edmonton while Spencer finishes law school and for the past year, his articling. He is officially done being a student-at-law and has been admitted to the bar. We got to attend his swearing in and then we hosted a party to celebrate in our backyard.

We got there a few minutes early so we played around with my camera while we waited.

This is Spencer reading his oath.

Afterwards the judge invited Spencer and Hannah and Jess's parents, and the lawyer who presented Spencer to join her on the bench.

Then, after she left, the kids were allowed a turn up at the bench.

And Spencer pretended to grill Hudson in the witness chair.

Drama Camp

Maira had a blast at the drama camp she did last summer at the Citadel Theatre in downtown Edmonton. So this summer, she asked to go again and Connor asked if he could try it too.

They went to camp all day for five days and then on the final afternoon, they performed their plays for us.

Maira's play was a shipwreck set in the 1920's. She chose "Hazel Hunt" as her character name and their teacher wrote the script. Maira didn't have as many lines as she would have liked but she did an excellent job delivering the ones she had. We could hear her very clearly and she had a lot of expression.

Connor was in an older age category and performed a different play. Instead of being a narrative, it was a series of short skits all based on the theme of language. Connor's fun personality and humour shone through in his performance.

His teacher asked us not to videotape his play (I assume because there was a lot of copyrighted music in it?) but she had the cast make funny faces for their parents at the end so we could take lots of pictures. She'd give them a prompt and then they would react.

"You're cool"

"You're not cool"

"You're lost"

"You're found"

"You're scared of the audience"

"You love the audience"

"You need the audience"

"The audience stinks"

And I don't remember the prompts on these ones:

Jayna was staying with us that day because she was up for Spencer's bar call the night before so she and Brinsley and James came and watched the plays too.

We stopped by Churchill Square after to check out the Street Performers Festival but there had just been a giant rain storm so there was nothing to see.