Yesterday was the much anticipated wedding day for my cousin, Lexie! I was a little skeptical about Ava being a flower girl just because of how she can be so shy. So here’s how it went:
Heading into church for the rehearsal
The other flower girl was my cousin, Caroline, who is 4 weeks older than Ava. Two flower girls under 2 could have gone either way so we wanted to get in a lot of practice Friday night. This picture cracks me up. They’d start out together and then one would get ahead, remember they were supposed to have a partner, go back and get together, and then the other would get ahead. I love how Caroline is running in this picture to catch up to Ava! The rehearsal went well. They both made it down the aisle so we had high hopes for the wedding.
This flower girl traveled with everything but her dress on to the church! What a fashion statement! These are the stairs where we spent the 30 minutes prior to the wedding. They are also the stairs Ava fell down face first about 15 minutes before the ceremony…. oops… And they did NOT sit like this for most of those 30 minutes.
Sweet girlies
So they actually made it down the aisle after small mini-meltdowns right before go time. Caroline left Ava in the dust and Ava took forever to walk down and wouldn’t hold her basket but they made it! Caroline ran and had a mix of crying and laughing and just wanted to find her mama. Ava had her fingers in her mouth the whole way down but I was just proud she made it!
The beautiful bride!!!!
After the ceremony, the girls even went back down the aisle! I think they were just excited for another excuse to run free in church!
Our family at the reception Me and Lexie Can you see the goldfish in the centerpieces? So cool! Ava, Mom, Grandma, and me
And just to keep it real…..
I wanted a picture with Ava and when I took her from my mom, she got mad and started pulling my hair. So she’s pulling my hair, Mom is trying to get her attention so she’ll stop and Grandma is laughing…. don’t ya love my face?
It was a fun wedding and I’m so happy for you and Jared, Lexie! Congrats!!! :)
It feels like the weekend was just starting and now it’s about over! I guess it feels like that because we were busy! My PC parties went well and I had a lot of fun! I look forward to many more!! When I got home Friday night, Zach told me to check out a picture he took of Ava:
Ava seems to be changing at lightning speed these days. She’s really been into playing with this toy. She likes to pull it along and then when the song stops, she lets go of the string, pushes the button to start the song, and then starts again. She does this over, and over, and over… so cute!
She’s also showing an interest in the potty!!!! WOO!!!! She’s started telling us when she’s got a dirty diaper. Both yesterday and today she started pulling at her diaper and when asked if she wanted to sit on the potty, we got an enthusiastic “Yaaaaaay!” and running off to her potty. After a big glass of water and 20 minutes, she finally went yesterday but no luck today! I’m just glad she’s showing an interest! I will say that she has pulling off toilet paper and throwing it in down perfectly! :)
She is also really increasing her vocabulary. She’s started saying short phrases and really seems to understand most things we say. It’s so fun watching her learn and grow! I can’t believe how grown up she’s becoming!
Last picture! After cleaning out some stuff, Ava found these old socks of mine I used to wear in college to keep my feet warm in the drafty dorms! She likes to put them on as gloves and walk around the house! There isn’t a whole lot going on around here these days! Ava and Zach have two weeks of school before summer break so our routine will change up here in just a couple weeks! Even though I’m not off, I enjoy the slower pace of summers! That’s all I’ve got! Hope you all have a wonderful week!
Tomorrow night is my first Pampered Chef cooking show!!! I’m excited! My 2nd one is Saturday afternoon!! WOO!! I’m actually cooking the same thing for both parties so I practiced them last weekend… Can you say YUM?!!!!! These are called Kiwi Lime Dessert Cups! They were awesome! I took them with us to my parents’ house on Sunday and they were a huge hit! I’m looking forward to making them tomorrow night and am so happy to be having these parties!!!
Who else likes Words with Friends? I just wanted to share a word I played versus my sweet hubby today.. Sadly, it didn’t put me that far ahead of him. Last time I played that game I was beating him by 70. He gets super lucky all the time by playing words that we’ve never even heard of!
And now for the little Miss. She has been SO cranky the last two days. I’m not sure what’s going on, but we’re definitely over the whining. I think whining is way worse than crying! She had been fighting this AWFUL rash… Isn’t that horrible? I took this pic on my phone to send to my wonderful Dr. SIL! I just wanted to make sure what I was doing was ok. We think she had an allergic reaction to sunscreen!! She looked like this everywhere she’d had sunscreen put on, but her face was by far the worst!!! Both sides of her cheeks looked like this! Thankfully it didn’t seem to be bothering her and it’s mostly gone away! I called her dr. Monday just to see if we needed to take her in. They said to just keep using hydrocortisone and to give her Benadryl if she acted like it bothered her! Call me vain, but I was a little worried about getting it gone before her flower girl debut next weekend!!! Thankfully I think we’ll be ok! :)
That’s all! Tomorrow is FRIDAY, and that makes me a happy girl!!! :)
I've had someone say that they weren't able to comment on my last blog post. Would someone mind checking out to see if they can comment on either this post or the last one so I can know if I'm having a problem?! If you try to comment and can't, would you mind emailing me at sarah825@gmail.com? Thanks y'all! :)
Edited to add: Thanks, ladies! It seems to be working ok now! :) I would hate if comments were unavailable! That would be no fun! :) Thanks for making a girl feel better!!
I can remember when you fit in the palm of my hand. You felt so good in it; no bigger than a minute. How it amazes me – you're changing with every blink. Faster than a flower blooms, they grow up all too soon. So let them be little, 'Cause they're only that way for a while. Give them hope, give them praise, Give them love every day. Let them cry, let them giggle, Let them sleep in the middle, Oh, but let them be little. I never felt so much in one little tender touch. I live for those kisses, your prayers and your wishes. And now you're teaching me how only a child can see. Tonight, while we're on our knees, all I ask is: Please, let them be little, 'Cause they're only that way for a while. Give them hope, give them praise, Give them love every day. Let them cry, let them giggle, Let them sleep in the middle, Oh, but let them be little. The so innocent, precious soul: You turn around, and it's time to let them go. So let them be little, 'Cause they're only that way for a while. Give them hope, give them praise, Give them love every day. Let them cry, let them giggle, Let them sleep in the middle, Oh, but let them be little. Ava, I thank the Lord each and every day that you are the reason I am called Mommy. Being your mama is the greatest joy in my life.
Thank you, Lord, for my precious daughter! And thank you for my wonderful husband with whom I share this journey of parenthood! I also know this day can be hard for those who have suffered loss or are longing, and I pray for those people too. I pray that God gives them a peace about whatever it is that makes this day sorrowful for them. God is good, ALL THE TIME!
Oh, what a weekend! My girls weekend was beyond fun. We laughed until we cried and from the moment Sally got there, it was like we’d never been apart. We had the best time, and the weekend couldn’t even be dampened (hahaha) by the horrendous rains, flooding and almost getting stranded in the city.
For those who don’t know, we went to Nashville and we barely made it out. The devastation there is indescribable and it’s incredible today to see pictures of places we were standing Friday night completely submerged in water. Our day Sunday went absolutely NOTHING like we planned but thank the Lord we made it home safely (even if it took 13 hours, instead of 8!!!)!!
When Sally arrived Friday, we decided to hit up all of our outdoor destinations because of Saturday’s forecast. So, our first stop was downtown to the Hermitage Hotel. We’d been told they had a great lunch and that the men’s restroom was a sight to see. They have someone who will take you into the restroom. We didn’t get to stay in there long as some man was coming into use it (I mean, really – didn’t he know we were sight seeing?) Anyway, it wasn’t so impressive – it was black and teal and also had a shoe shining station. After that we just explored some around downtown Nashville. We peeked in the Wildhorse Saloon and had some good picture opportunities there! Iva was rocking out with toy guitar that doubled as a drink container. The guy working there told us it held 80 ounces! Wow!We also stopped to let Iva peruse some cowboy boots. They had a ton in here and were all super $$$$!! I sent Zach a text with a picture of a pair that were $1,995 and asked if I could get them! :) Needless to say, I didn’t… After leaving downtown, we headed to explore a little more and then set out to find a gelato shop. If you haven’t ever had gelato, well, then I feel sorry for you! (just kidding… kind of) I loved it when we were in Rome and I worked with these two right after going to Europe so they knew of my love for the stuff. It was fun getting to share it with them!!!! That night we went to dinner at The Melting Pot. Oh.my.word. I had heard it was great, but it was so beyond that! We had such a great time that night. We laughed and talked and ate to our hearts’ content!!!!! One of the reasons I love these two so much is because of how we can all laugh together. Our senses of humor just click and we are all just a little bit goofy. Case and point: top left picture: the waitress told us how many minutes to cook our meats and they took it seriously!We had planned to spend Saturday exploring our hotel, the Opryland, which is sadly now under water and closed indefinitely. We spent the last night they were open there. This place was absolutely gorgeous and it has been so sad to see what happened to it just a day after we left.
After exploring our hotel, we spent the afternoon at the Opry Mills mall, which I can assume is also under water. We had another fun dinner (mmmmmmmmmmmm!) We got some dessert at our hotel and when we settled into our room, most of the area was in a tornado warning. We heard some reports of flooding and decided we should probably move up our departure time. I’m so thankful we did.
After waking up and checking the highway dept. website, it appeared that I-40 was not flooded and was passable. Sally knew her interstate was closed but thankfully her alternate route was not too far out of her way. We also checked with the concierge who confirmed I-40 was ok. I’ll just go ahead and say it wasn’t. Iva and Sally went to get the cars and I waited with our stuff. When I saw this, I realized it might be worse than we thought… It poured buckets from sometime early Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon… Shortly after leaving, we came upon a dip in the road and saw about 1/4 mile of backed up traffic on the other side. It wasn’t long until we came to the same on our side. Part of the road was flooded so we had to get off the exit ramp and get back on. It took us 45 minutes to go 6/10 of a mile. We’d barely been on when we found the same thing. The difference here was we saw cars coming back down off the on ramp. We turned off and headed the way the gps said. We were in an area called Bellevue. There was no electricity and a lot of water. We could see the interstate and thought we were good…. until we got close enough to see that under the interstate there was probably 10 –15 feet of water. We pulled over a minute and I was able to catch this picture. I started getting slightly worried at this point. We thought we’d head back to I-65 and just go south into Alabama. However, every route we tried, we had to turn around because the roads were impassable. It felt like water was closing in on us from all directions. We even went around trees that were down in the road! We found a gas station with electricity and praise the Lord, a guy that I asked directions for got us safely back to I-65. Almost three hours after we left, we were still in Nashville. And we found it humorous to call Sally and inform her of that! :) We ended up having to go south into Alabama.. Didn’t think we’d be there – ha! We also had a giggle fit when we passed the sign into Mississippi because with all the emotion and anxiety we didn’t even realize from the map. We also came upon some flooding in a small Mississippi town, so after all of our detours and delays and heavy rain for most of the day, we finally made it home 13 hours after we started! I am so thankful we got out when we did because if we’d waited just a couple hours longer, we would probably still be there. We had no clue when we picked Nashville or this particular weekend that we’d witness such an event. Here are some pics of flooding we saw on the way home. As desperate as we felt for a moment, our problems were NOTHING compared to what the people in Tennessee are going through. Many of the people there who have damaged homes did not have flood insurance and they are going to receive no help.
I saw this video and it just made me so sad. This place was so beautiful. A lot of the damage was in the Cascades where we stayed. I also can’t imagine the number of people just from here who are going to be out of work.
Please be in prayer for all of the people in Tennessee affected by this.
Iva and Sally – I had the BEST time with you two! I’m SO glad we did this. It was so much fun and what an experience to live through! I’m so blessed to have you as friends! Next time let’s end with a little less excitement! :)
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