It was so wonderful to see family - better than Christmas! And the area that they live in is beautiful. When Emily first saw a rolling, green mountain she said "That's so pretty, if I had a camera, I'd take a picture!" I don't blame her, poor little flat-lander that she is - it is absolutely gorgeous there. And despite the fact that we got lost several times on the winding mountain roads, and that 2 of the kids get rather violently motion sick, Joel and I could completely invest in dramamine and live there.
Rachel looked beautiful - like she stepped right out of a wedding magazine. Jamie looked so pretty - they picked a great color for her. In fact, the whole wedding was lovely. Danny did a superb job - as did everyone involved in the planning. I loved that the whole family got to get together - the pictures hold particularly fond memories and I'll post all mine when I get a chance. I looked back and was so amused by the difference between the last get-together for Grandma & Gandpa's 50th Wedding anniversary and this time. It's amazing how five years changes everyone!
It was great to finally meet Ezra, Michael and Joseph in person - Emily had a ball with them. Seeing Becca and Nicki looking so cute made me a little nostalgic - but I got over it when I remembered that I neither looked, nor felt, cute pregnant. Hannah looked all grown up, and Josh was great - as usual. I guess he and Caleb were amused by the sheer volume of pictures taken. All that and I got hardly any pictures of my own children - I'm such a negligent picture-taking mom. I'm sort of resting secure in the knowledge that Uncle Dan is an expert photographer and will be willing to share. We were so happy to be able to spend even a little time with Uncle Dan and Aunt Denise - our chances of visiting them in Germany are, unfortunately, pretty slim. Our Chick-fil-a lunch is probably as good as it's going to get for a while! Caleb, Alex and Emily really want a back-yard like Uncle Delvin or Uncle Danny. I think it's the most fun they've had outside in a long time!
Our only grievance was that it wasn't long enough. There just wasn't enough time to visit with everyone we wanted to visit with. We could spend a week with each branch on the family tree and still not have our fill - but we were so thankful for the time we did have there!
We did make it home in time for Alex & Emily's play on Sunday night. We pulled into the parking lot at the church at around 4:05 (and if you think Alex wasn't sweating those five minutes; well, you don't know Alex). We dropped all three off (Caleb was doing the lights) and Joel and I headed home to unpack the car. I brought back a change of clothes for Alex and Emily - she was supposed to be in dark clothes (white pants and a bright blue gingham shirt didn't really work) and I picked up a new t-shirt for Alex (he was wearing Caleb's due to an unfortunate incident with hot chocolate at breakfast). He still managed to get frosting on the new shirt I gave him - wh
ich he was NOT wearing at the time, go figure - but I got it cleaned up and told him to avoid all snacks until after. (At which point he walked toward the nursery and said "oooohhhh, cookies" and started laughing - just to mess with me).They both did great. Alex knew all his parts, cold - and he slowed way down (thanks, Becca!). His deadpan delivery was great, and he got lots of laughs. Emily did great, her little solo sounded very pretty - although I did at one point think she was going to take out one little boy who kept stepping in front of her and (as one of the other teachers told me) was elbowing her. But she kept her cool and there was no mass bedlam on stage. I'll have to see how the video turns out to get the whole story.
All together, it was a spectacular weekend! I'm so grateful that we got to go - I hope it's not another five years before we do it again.
UPDATE: OK, so I figured out how to do a slideshow in iPhoto using some of the pictures. Let's see how it works out -
