First wedding

Last weekend, a dear friend of Brian's (and mine) got married in Kentucky. Like the best man said during his toast, you will not find a man on this earth with a kinder, more sincere heart than the groom, Brandon. And itseems that he has found a woman of equally good character to make his bride. So we needed to celebrate.

Out-of-town weddings always raise a question mark for small children, and prior to this one, if Brian and I have attended one, we've left the kids with grandparents (we've done this 3 times in 5 years). But this time, we took Katy and David along and left Luke at home to get some quality time with Aunt Mel. This ended up to be the best decision, because Luke would have had a hard time with the schedule, but Katy and David thought it was fabulous to attend a wedding and stay in a hotel (!!).

The week before we left, Katy pulled out our wedding video and asked if we could watch it. This was actually the perfect prep tool to talk about everything that was going to happen and what was expected of them and explain what it all meant. She asked about a thousand questions and got very excited about the upcoming event.

When we arrived at the hotel prior to the rehearsal, you would have thought we had pulled into Disney World. The kids were exclaiming: "We have a BATHROOM in here?!? And a SHOWER?!? We each get our own BED?!? There's an ALARM CLOCK?!?" And the pool at the hotel? Heaven right here on earth.

I wish I would have gotten a picture of them sleeping in the same bed. I had to place a line of pillows between them to get them to keep their feet to themselves, but once they fell asleep, they did great.

Photos to tell the rest of the story:

Regretting that I didn't get a better photo of the bride and groom - they looked amazing!





Studying a caterpillar at the park where the wedding took place



Another bonus of the wedding was getting to visit with some friends that we don't see often, like Tyler & Arpitha and their beautiful baby girl.

Katy loved the dressing up part

Brian's friend Joey came and visited with us for a couple of days after the wedding.

I think my favorite part of a wedding (beside the life commitment part) is the cake. And we got to watch the girl assemble this one. It was fascinating! (and incredible)

Thinking of her next question...

When we stopped at a rest stop on the way down, he pointed at a snack machine and asked, "Is this the wedding?" At this point I think we got that cleared up.

Dancing their little hearts out.



Not pictured: the massive (and I mean massive) meltdown my kids had when they missed the bride and groom with their bird seed toss (their aim was bad and the pitch was too slow). Our friends Mark and Anne were incredibly good sports, and walked through several more times, pretending to be the newlyweds so that my kids could actually pelt someone with bird seed. (Overtired much?)

Congratulations to Brandon and Melanie! It was a great day!