get me to the church on time (because it will be very crowded)

If it’s true that we eat our feelings, then I guess I ate lots and lots of joy last weekend. That is when my cousin Mary Henry married my new cousin-in-law Brad at Kanuga. I am pretty happy about this arrangement, to the point that if anyone had objected during the ceremony, even as a joke (something I often daydream of doing), I would have fought that person right then and there. Especially if that person was my arch-nemesis.

Yes, I managed to acquire a new arch-nemesis at the wedding, even though the whole festivities only lasted a weekend. Hey. What can I say. You get on my bad side and you are dead to me. But let’s not dwell on the negative. Let’s dwell on the positive. The most positive thing was that Mary Henry and Brad got married.

The second most postive thing was that there was a TON of food. For the rehearsal dinner on Friday night, there were specialities from Buffalo, NY, which is where Brad’s family is from, including hot dogs, roast beef and wings. As well as two kinds of cake! Then, on Saturday morning, my side of the family had sausage biscuits from Bojangle’s because we couldn’t wait til 10 am for brunch. Then we had the just mentioned brunch; I had french toast with strawberry topping, sausage and egg bites and bacon, among other things.

Then a few hours later was the reception, where I feasted on spinach and artichoke dip, meatballs, ham biscuits, cheese straws, cheese and cake. I had more than one piece of cake at the reception, for which my first cousin once-removed Sophie chastised me, but I pointed out that she didn’t have much of a case because she was eating sugar straight from the packet at the time. I guess that was just a snack to tide her over before dinner, which included roast beef, chicken, potatoes, green beans, and salad..and that’s just what I remember. And poundcake with fruit for dessert.

Then the next day we had a breakfast that included eggs, biscuits with sausage gravy and also sausage on the side. There was a lot of sausage. And that’s not even including all the food there was in the hospitality suite, which is where my family hung out between mealtimes. In the hospitaly suite there were goodies including cookies, pretzels, M&Ms, cheese straws and spinach dip. As I said before, I ate lots and lots of joy this weekend.

But the wedding weekend wasn’t all about food, of course. It was also about drinking. My brother William showed up with his custom beer pong table, and many a good game was had, including one monumental game that had three overtimes. At one point my cousins and I ran upstairs to Brad’s family’s hospitality suite and took them on in a game of flip cup, which we won, thanks to a little bit of cheating. I would like to take this opportunity to say that I was not aware that I was cheating at the time. I was just unsure what the game was.

This was a multi-keg wedding, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t wine and spirits as well. And the younger folks had lemonade and soda available, but what they really loved was water. That’s because they played water pong for most of the weekend. Stylistically, water pong is very similar to beer pong, but the scoring is much different, particularly if you play against a child. Children tend to give themselves half-points for a lot of things, such as being close and for cool throws. At one point I was down 7 ½ to nothing despite the fact that I had gotten several balls into cups and my opponent had gotten no balls into no cups. But such is life.

Other than eating and drinking, I guess there was the wedding itself. That was an extremely nice event that is too difficult to explain in blog format. But everyone looked wonderful and everyone in the whole chapel cried, but in a good way, and everyone was very happy to be there.
I’m trying to think if anything happened that didn’t involve eating or drinking or a wedding ceremony but I’m coming up with very few examples. I took a nap. My cousin Worth played music. I looked at the pictures my first cousin once removed Maggie drew. We all played with Baby Sarah. I conspired against my arch-nemesis. Mainly, though, I think I will remember the eating. And so will my waistline.

Cousin Reunion #9: Other random things we did

I mentioned in the last entry that we spent approximately one-seventh of the cousin reunion doing things that were not eating or drinking. Some of those things, such as running road races and playing ladder golf, have been covered in other entries. So I have just a brief list left of things to recap:
--We sat on the porches of the cottages and talked.
--We sat on the porches of the cottages and talked about how cold it was.
--We sat on the porches of the cottages and wondered if we should go inside cause it was so cold (this part took amazingly longer than you might think)
--We sat inside and talked.
--We had a photo shoot, in which a photographer took pictures of us.
--We took informal photos as well.
--We relived things that had happened just hours earlier by looking at the informal photos that had been taken.
--We took naps
--Some people went for walks.

And one highlight, at least for the female cousins, was an activity that involved perusing the latest celebrity gossip magazines. Mary arrived with an arsenal of guilty pleasures that included the People, the US Weekly and the OK! from the week of October 27. And we kind of read parts of them aloud, laughing at how crazy celebrities are. Some people, particularly those that have toddlers or who have been out of the country, needed to be schooled in the ways of Hannah Montana, High School Musical and Gossip Girl, because you really need to understand those three things to understand celebrity magazines these days.

But I thought I would present some choice highlights from the magazines, with apologies to Worth who was off with much higher-brow reading material and to Grant who is on record as preferring jigsaw puzzles to trashy magazines.

First off, I wanted to start with the Celebrity Gossip Magazines Trifectas, which means that all three magazines covered the same item, sometimes with the same photo. These items included:
--Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal's trip to a London lingerie store. All the magazines agreed that they seemed quite happy.
--Salma Hayek and her cute baby on the set of 30 Rock
--J-Lo renewing her vows with Marc Anthony

Near-trifectas, or coverage in 2 of 3 magazines, included a picture of the Olsen twins pushing their own luggage, the only unattractive picture of George Clooney ever taken (he was sunbathing, has a weird mustache and was making a face), and pictures of Hugh Jackman celebrating his 40th birthday with his kids. Also, 2 out of 3 magazines agreed that "The Secret Life of Bees" is a good movie. US Weekly was unsatisfied.

Here are highlights from each individual magazine!

People
--John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston: Totally hanging out!
--DJ AM is glad he survived a plane accident
--Toni Braxton had a heart problem. Now she's on Dancing with the Stars. Or she WAS.
--Maureen McCormick wrote a book about all her problems. Just get a blog, Maureen!
--Suri Cruise got custom shoes
--There's a new thing called vibrating mascara! I don't wear mascara but I'm intrigued!

OK
--Kelly Ripa wore six inch heels one day
--Tori Spelling's boobs look weird in a picture where she's playing golf. (big topic of conversation on the porch!)
--Sarah Palin and Tina Fey look a lot alike (My father would probably like me to point out at this moment, as he does whenever Tina Fey comes up, that she went to the University of Virginia)
--There's a thing called cut-out booties. It's where boots have cut-outs. According to someone who holds a position of editor (it doesn't specify what she's an editor of), "These are the hot item this fall, but if you don't pair them with the right thing, it can look like a mess. They work best with dresses and skirts, with or without tights. They're also great with jeans and pants that are tailored with slim-cut legs, where you can see the detail of the bootie."
--The weekends might be ruining your diet
--You know the guy who plays Bree's son on Desperate Housewives? It doesn't matter if you do or not. But just listen to this thing he said: "Right now, I'm making an ostrich filet with butternut squash puree and a raspberry reduction." I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.

US Weekly
--This magazine spurred serious discussion about autism because Jenny McCarthy was on the cover
--US Weekly concurs with OK! that John and Jen are back on.
--Shanna Moakler sad about that plane crash. I didn't even know who Shanna Moakler was before that plane crash.
--Some people on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition had their homes foreclosed. Then my cousin Elizabeth told a sad story about some people who were on a home improvement show and did not get what they wanted out of it!
--Also US had a tidbit about my arch nemesis Jennifer Love Hewitt. She is planning a wedding and it's going to be very intimate, so intimate that somebody's Great Aunt Sylvia can't come. Not very LOVE-ing of you, Jennifer LOVE. If that is indeed your name!

Anyways, I'm glad I got to keep the celebrity magazines after everyone was done looking at them because it made this entry much easier to write. And now you have a better idea of things we did that were not drinking or eating. The only things that we really planned to do but never got around to were a basketmaking class and a game of Tripoley.