William and Melissa's shower...

Much of the entire family got together on Saturday to celebrate William and Melissa's wedding shower. It's basically a month away in September so we needed to get together for food, drink, laughs and plenty of gifts.

Tried to get as many people as I could in this picture.

William and Missy opening gifts with Maid of Honor Stephanie keeping close tabs on the action.

William is a firefighter and the plaque states, "A firefighter lives here with the flame of his life", I thought it was perfect.

So, Uncle Hags was working hard on Saturday...not really, but he made the cousins think he was. So they acted like his servants and fanned him to keep him calm and cool.

One of the handful of games we played during the day. Teams of three women dressed up four relatively coerced men into modeling wedding dresses made of toilet paper. I'm happy to report my off the shoulder, sweatheart ensemble won best dressed.

So, cousin Jason couldn't be there during the celebration...or so we thought. We're all just sitting there opening presents and we heard a distinct rumble of a very low flying armed forces helicopter immediately above the house. We bolted from the living room to circle around the deck and driveway to salute a fine pilot. I'm told he's from the OREGON National Guard.

One bird who wasn't having it was a blue heron perched in the trees. The heron is a family favorite and I miraculously caught this on camera.

In a rare show of restraint and calm, four of the five cousins posed for a quick snapshot. Adelyn had already decided two seconds of sitting still was enough.

It rained all day, but that didn't stop the quartet (this time Jocelyn didn't have time to get wet) from venturing out around the park with me and Jerrod.

Beautiful Brittany.