Mr Tommy's wedding

So, September 4th, just a few days after we got home from our Wisconsin trip, we drove back up north to what SEEMED like Wisconsin, but was only a far north suburb of Chicago. We were to be guests at the wedding of our favorite contractor of all time: Mr Tommy himself.

He got married to Crystal in a forest preserve and it was a very Mr Tommy-ish ceremony. No frills: just get it done. After the guests milled around for a while, Tom walked up the center aisle and announced: "lets do this".  And the wedding began.

The flower girls and ring bearer. The ring bearer is Crystal's son.

Crystal and her dad, Jeff. He actually did some work at our house back in the construction days. He's a great guy.

Mr Tommy and his bride. Vows were exchanged.

This is one of Tom's older daughters reading a verse.

They did something very sweet since they have six kids between them. The pastor sort of married the whole family and had the children take vows to love and protect each other and their family as well.

Then each child got a necklace. This is one of Crystal's sons.

And Mr Tommy's son, Justin.

Mr Tommy really loves his girls: Danielle and Lori. You can tell they adore him too.

Then, it was over.

I had run out that day to TJMaxx because we got fall weather unexpectedly. I had to abandon our ideas for sundresses and shorts and instead find sweaters and long sleeves for everyone. I'm a terrible shopper so this was a project I struggled with. I got home from the store about 30 minutes before we had to leave for the wedding. This is what you call "pulling a Susan".

Then, Tom and his brothers put the chairs and decorations into a truck and we drove over to his house.

He had a tent all set up in the front yard.

And, like he had said ahead of time, the kids would just play in back the whole time. He had a swing set, a trampoline...

...and a rabbit!

Then there was this character. I don't know if he was a friend of the family or a relative but he started out cool enough.

Then Matt realized that he was following Claire around the whole time doing everything she did.

Then Matt overheard his friends teasing him for "liking Claire". WHAT????? Look how she's looking at him. I don't know what he said to her, but I think she was a little shy of him afterwards.

That's the last time I let her wear leggings. Later that evening, his family left, but before he left he ran up to Claire and I on the dance floor and said "Yo! Bye!" and took off. Claire looked at me with a confused face and said "well, that was weird!"

Here's Tom's oldest son.

And Justin again.

Sammy had these little twin boys pushing him around in this car all night.

But what he REALLY wanted was to get into the big boys' football game.

At first they said no and he just paced around the perimeter. I told Matt to get him into the game but he said "you don't want to be that guy whose dad 'got you into' the game. You gotta do it yourself."

And, surprise! He worked his way in.

 The flowers.

The cake...well, the bottom tier.

The dance.

The little boys were fascinated by all the dancing and kissing so they watched from the garage door laughing and making "grosed out" faces when there was kissing.

Here it was from the street.

A fun time was had, but then we had to turn around and drive the crew back to the city. Sammy announced that he wanted to live with Mr Tommy. Maybe he could!