family

My cousin Erik and his beautiful wife are officially hitched! (Lloyd has a beautiful cousin Heidi on his side, and I have a beautiful cousin Heidi, now there’s a third! They’re taking over like the Rachels did!) It was a gorgeous service and we had a wonderful day visiting with family and seeing St. Louis.

The reception was in the evening at the zoo, but we didn’t get to dine with any animals. I was a little disappointed that zebras weren’t our servers. It was beautiful even without them, though. We were in the Lakeside Cafe that they had all dolled up for the event. Very, very cool! Something that I’d never seen before was how they stocked the ladies’ room. They had candles all along the counter and trays with every little necessity that a girl could need – lotion, hair spray, band-aids, bobby pins, stomachache/ headache medicine, Girl Stuff, floss, clear nail polish – it was genius!

For those of you unfortunate enough to have never met my Grandpa Ernie, may I offer my sympathy.  He was a very funny guy, and worthy of his own website.  He owned a paper warehouse in Mattoon, Illinois, that I remember was full of every single thing in the world. (They make Lender’s Bagels in Mattoon, y’know.)  We only visited my grandparents – both sets – once a summer, and I remember the trips of being long and hot in the old white station wagon.  Grandpa Ernie would do impossibly wild things with us – like swinging us by our ankles – earning a scowl from Grandma Norie – “Oh, GAWD, Ernie!  Put her down!”  He made me my first screwdriver – at age ten I believe.  A glass of orange juice with a drop of vodka. Ahhhh.

My cousing Heidi wrote a sweet memory of him on her website, and I just thought you should see his picture.