Happy 30th Kara!

My cousin Kara turned 30 yesterday.  She is my oldest cousin and the only one older than me!  I can't believe what grownups we all are!  Haha...  I went to her birthday party this weekend in the Minneapolis area so I will write about the weekend tomorrow or something.  So...this occasion calls for some pictures!

I scanned this one at my granparents' house...I thought the bunny rabbits making out were hilarious! Gotta love the 1980's...1980 to be exact!

Haha this is really cute! 

This is one of many disasterous "cousin" shots we have taken throughout the years.  7 out of 9 were born at this time.  I love the sweet matching pastel sweatsuits Andrea and I are wearing. 

This is Kara with my granparents.  She was their first grandchild.  It's really funny that my grandpa has a pipe hanging from his mouth! 

This was taken at my aunt's wedding in 1986.  Kara was the flower girl and the rest of us, I think, handed out little bags of rice wrapped in tulle.  Kara was the only one old enough to know what was going on.  Andrea and I also wore those dresses (made by my mom) to our other aunt's wedding and she made us magenta sashes so we would match the color scheme.  My mom was the maid of honor in this wedding and there is a lovely family photo of us in 1980's wedding splendor! 

I didn't have any good photos scanned of us from the elementary and middle school years.  I look really bad in all those pictures so I avoided them when I was scanning!  My aunt had some pretty amazing shots of Kara through the years in the birthday slideshow she made for the birthday party.  Especially funny were the school photos.  In the mid 1990's Kara was a pro at the high bang swoop!  We all used alot of hairspray during that trend...

This was taken on Thanksgiving.  Kara had crimped hair.  It's so nice that we all put on our nicest clothes for the holidays.  Riiiight...we shouldn't have been allowed out of the house!  I think I was a senior in high school because I remember that sweater I was wearing and that was a time when crimping made a brief comeback. 

This was taken  at my grandpa's 80th birthday.  So that means he became a grandpa at the age of 50.  I guess our generation is a bit slower because all of our parents are approaching the mid 50's with no grandchildren yet!

Kara and Laura looking lovely in Mexico.

Kara was in my wedding in 2007.  The photographer took a picture of just the two of us but I didn't reload the wedding photo disk when I got this new computer so I had to dig around on Facebook to find some.  This was a nice picture, even though she is walking with our friend and they didn't know each other! 

I love this shot...the photographer captured a fun moment when we were at the farm taking some outdoor shots. 

I can't believe how old we are all getting.  When we were kids we would have what we called "Camp Grandma".  Kara and Laura would come for a few days every summer and we would stay at my Granmda's house.  We would act silly and my grandma would indulge all of our whims.  We would go to a movie and Grandma gave us each $10 to buy whatever we wanted.  If we wanted something that was a few dollars more, she would fabricate some nonexistent chores for us to do to "earn" the extra money.  Haha.  Grandma would crash at night and be snoring away and we would stay up all night giggling and being stupid.  We always had a blast.  I wish we had taken more pictures of those times!

Happy birthday Kara!