I spy a hottie pastor…and a great looking bride and groom! Day 2.

And since my husband leaves now tomorrow to head back across the border, back to South Africa, and then on to Europe…these are probably the last few shots I have for you.  (And pretty much the only shots I have myself)

Hope you enjoy Day 2…

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I spy with my wife’s eye a hottie pastor in the back!  Do you?

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Making new friends

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And cuddling old friends (we have Auntie Tania in this photo…yea!)

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The parents/families of the Bride and Groom

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My princess at the reception…Adelyne Marguerite!

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And last but NEVER the least…the bride herself, Dr. Seun…wife to Kwesi! 

Well, Maxwell and the Belly and I greatly enjoyed the glimpses of the big days!  Hope you did too.

xo always,

the first half of crazy…Brooke

A safari and a wedding. South Africa to Botswana, what a journey!

In the words of my daughter, “Seun looked like an African Queen!”

In the words of my husband, “If I could go back and marry Brooke again, I would have a Nigerian wedding!”

(If you read my past posts, Seun and her family are originally from Nigeria.  Kwesi and his from Ghana)

There are not many photos, but I am sure that you can see why BOTH said what they did.  Again, congratulations to Seun and Kwesi.

(When Rich reaches Poland, I am sure that he’ll send me more.  But for now, these are LOVELY starting shots!)

Enjoy.

First photos…Safari shots and dinners with dad.  Lovely, lovely, lovely!

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And now to the wedding…First, the rehearsal dinner.

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The above are from the evening of the rehearsal dinner.  Daddy is SO proud of doing his daughter’s hair.  Well done, Rich!

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Mother of the bride…Stunning!

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Flower girl, Adelyne.  She had her hair in a headdress for the wedding (maybe those photos will come another time?)

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Adelyne and the handsome groomsmen!

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Adelyne and her “Cheeky Twin” Seun…The unbelievable stunning bride!

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Kwesi and his groomsmen go before Seun’s family!  Awesome. 

Should have had Rich do this at our wedding. 

Maybe an anniversary 🙂

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The groom and bride…

May God bless your today and all of your tomorrows.

We love you. 

Thank you for asking our family to be a special part of your days…

xo from afar,

Brooke and Maxwell and Belly Josephine

Here’s their personal website, if you want to get to know them even better:  http://seunandkwesi.ourwedding.com/view/5483962792241072/34042896

Copyright above photography goes to Richard Nungesser

Marital Un-Bliss and Lack of Sleep had a Devastating Effect on My Eyebrows

Once upon a time, there was a lady—and she met a guy.  And they thought the other was pretty cute (Well, maybe not initially—but, after a few dates, they were smitten).

Kiss.  Kiss.  Cuddle.  Cuddle.

Dun, dun, da-dun.  Dun, dun, da-dun! Here comes the bride…

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And then 12 years later we found ourselves here.

You know…

Old mom (give me old—because at 36 my body TOLD me it was OLD) to a newborn that went from…

This:

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To this:

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In just under 5 minutes.

And then we finally got him here:

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To send him back to this:

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Phew!  Back here:

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And now for his first international trip—German hospital, here we come:

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Finally, bringing him back home to us here…

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Besides being exhausted, everything’s looking pretty a-okay, right???

And that’s when we realize that sometimes photos are deceiving.

Here.  Let me give you some examples.

Look at how absolutely lovely (yes, I’m calling us lovely) we look together in these photos:

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And, yes.  Times, over the years, were good.

But, oh…

This past Fall it went from:  birds chirping and harps playing while choirs are singing to pictures off the wall, loud shouting, and lots of crying in approximately 2.4 (seconds, that is).

And then that’s when I did it…

Lack of sleep and marital un-bliss did me in!

I loudly announced that I was off to the hairdresser and I was CUTTING my hair!  (That’ll show my husband, eh?  My hair, that he LOVED, was going, going, going…Gone!)

And I drove to the nearest city (we live in a little Polish village) and trudged up two flights of creepy stairs (literally creepy stairs) and announced, “I want to CUT MY HAIR!”

Even the hairdresser questioned my decision making, asking me many times…

How short?

Are you sure?

How about just a couple centimeters?

Loudly did I protest!

No…Cut it all.  To my chin!  Get rid of my hair.  Oh, and, by the way, color it while you are at it!  Color it…This color!  (I pointed to a color on the chart).

Again the hair dresser questioned…

Are you sure?

How about this color instead…???

Boy—I must be very opinionated and protest loudly because I INSISTED…

No!  This color.  This short!

And, so, reluctantly, she did it…

And, yes.  She was RIGHT.  I was WRONG!

My hair.  Oh, my once rather decently glorious hair went from decently glorious to ‘scarecrow in a field’ worthy in just under 2 hours.

Ugh.

Well.  Nothing I could do now.

(Speaking too soon, obviously)

Ooooooh, look!  A lady that can pluck my eyebrows!  Here I go, I’m gonna clean up my brows.  Yes!

(Laying myself down on the table)…

Nothing too crazy, okay?  Just normal eyebrows, okay?  I said to the eager looking cosmetologist.

Okay…she responded.

And that’s when I felt it…

A refreshingly warm liquid being painted onto my eyebrows.

I thought—What?  Is she going to wax my brows?  I thought she was going to pluck my brows.

And then she did something else.  She wiped the liquid off.

That’s odd.  I thought.  Maybe it’s a new treatment for brows—kind-of like a brow-cial (instead of facial).

And then she did something else.  She plucked my brows.

Now curiosity was KILLING me.

Hmmm.  It appears she’s done.  I sit up.  She hands me a mirror.

Friends, that’s when I realized that my husband—although the CULPRIT in this original bit of marital dispute-was The Winner.  I was CLEARLY the loser.

And to prove that he won and I lost, I’ll post these:

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While he still looked like this:

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Sigh.

Moral of the story…

When you are in a time of marital un-bliss and you feel like you NEED to do something crazy in order to simply survive, sit back, open your computer, and take a look at my eyebrows.

If those suckers don’t convince you, well, then, perhaps counseling will…

God bless counseling.

Infertility made me hug a goat…in Norway

We were in Norway for this:

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ImageImageImageDid you spy the handsome American pastor at the

Norwegian-Sri Lanka/Tamil wedding?

Oh yeah.  I’m in there too.

But we also got to see this:

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A moss covered home & The Pulpit

And we got to play, fully clothed because we didn’t bring swimsuits (it’s Norway, duh…cold), in these:

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Fjords

 But what I didn’t expect was this:

ImageJust call me The Goat Whisperer!

Let me backtrack.  My husband and I got married many moons before this picture.  At least 4 years worth of moons.

At this point, we pretty much knew that children were not on our horizon.  So, I did what any woman does when she can’t have babies—I had animals.  Yes, my husband is a wild beast, too…Rrrrah (that’s a growling sound)!  But I am talking cute and fuzzy ones.  Like rabbits.

In Norway…Well Norway, God bless Norway, gave me a gift.  A baby goat!

What’s better than having a baby of your own?

A precious baby goat bleating at you to “Come and pick me up.”  I promise that is what it was saying to me when I saw it all alone on the side of the hill in the wild fjords of Norway (Yes, my imagination often runs wild.  Whoops).

I scrambled up that hill and engulfed that goat into my arms.  Together at last—me and my goat.

Nuzzle.  Nuzzle.  I held that goat tightly against my chest and just kept nuzzling it.  I knew that this goat was going in the car with me, on the ferry with me, and back to Poland with me.

The problem is—I was nuzzling the goat.  But the goat wasn’t nuzzling me.

In fact.  The goat wasn’t even happy that I picked it up.

And, before I knew it, my baby (yes, I bonded that quickly) began to head butt me.  Me!

And then I saw her.  The real mother.

Goats can be scary chargers.

So, I gently released my baby what shall now be called the rebellious kid, and backed away-quickly (if you know me, I don’t like to move quickly).

My former captive kept bleating at me…I guess I finally understood.  Goat language is a little more difficult than I originally thought.

It was saying, “Back off, crazy lady!”

How in the world did I ever misunderstand that for, “Come and cuddle me!”?

Needless to say, I gave Norway back her goat and returned to Poland with only my beastly husband.  One wild animal would have to suffice in my life for a while longer…

Then it happened.  Nearly two years later we had our own kid-she didn’t bleat or headbutt.

And, guess what—I was now the charging mother!

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