Kate's blessing

Kate was blessed last Sunday Sept. 5th. It was really sweet. Justin's parents came up from Washington DC and so did his sister Janae and her husband and kids. Matt and Colleen came from my side. It was really sweet. I love it when we have a chance to get together with family. I made the dress she is wearing. It's hard to see the details, but the bodice is smocked. This was my first smocking project. It was really fun to learn, but took a long time. I really didn't anticipate it taking quite so long, so of course I was scrambling to finish it on Saturday night. Justin's mom actually hemmed it and did the facing while I made dinner on Saturday. She's great!

The weekend went really well. We've never really lived close to Janae and Tyson, so it was fun to spend some time with them and their little family. On Monday we went and toured Yale and went to the park, then grabbed some Thai food and played games at night.
Tuesday was a little dramatic. We went to Brooksvale park to see the animals, but got home a little late. As I was speeding to get Tyson and Janae to the train station to make their train, the power steering went out in the car. Then a few minutes later the temperature light came on. I kept driving because we were kind of close to the station and I didn't really know what else to do. Then the battery light came on. Then the car just started beeping constantly. I dropped Janae and Tyson off and the car completely died. The battery was dead. I was in the drop off lane blocking cars behind me. Luckily a taxi driver pushed me to the side of the road. I was still parked in front of the bus stop, but didn't really have any other options. I called Justin from work and he came and rescued me. We had to get the car towed to a car shop and got it fixed. It was a broken serpentine belt. The annoying thing is that we just spent a significant amount of money on it last week to fix a big oil leak that we had. Apparently this wasn't related (at least that's what they tell us). Hopefully the car will run for a while longer. We started looking at replacement vehicles, and let's just say it's not cheap to buy a car that seats 8. I would like to go a little bigger too, but don't really want to have the really big van, not a lot of options. Hopefully we'll just make it a while longer so we can save up some more money.
Here are some pictures of Kate in her blessing dress. Of course I couldn't find my camera on Sunday, so these pictures were taken a few days later, but you get the picture.

I normally really dislike collars, but it works on this dress. I love Kate's hair! She's actually wearing one of my barrette's, but has the hair to keep it in. So fun!