CONGRATULATIONS!!

CONGRATULATIONS 

BECKY AND WAYNE!!

My aunt got married on April 20, 2013!  What a wonderful day to celebrate these two and such a special time with family!  They had a casual Hawaiian themed wedding at a beautiful outdoor garden.  We enjoyed a wonderful ceremony, dinner and dancing into the night.  It was great to have the whole family together and celebrate with such a joyous occasion.

Our immediate family sure has grown!

Grandma and Grandpa with the grandkids.

Parents of the Bride

My beautiful cousins!

My mom was a beautiful Matron of Honor.

Kacey the adorable Flower Girl

 The kids did GREAT!!  We sat in the front row and they were really into the whole ceremony.   It was so cute to watch with them.

 Cooper spotted an elephant planter across the way and made a couple outbursts, but otherwise they were silent.

 It was really laid back and allowed the kids room to run around and not get bored.  PERFECT combination!

Here comes the beautiful bride!

The Reception

Cooper throughly enjoyed the cupcakes as well as Uncle Johnny!

My parents gave a great toast!  My dad has known Becky since she was 9!!
I don't have a picture because I was pretty much laughing SO hard, but my unafraid little daughter marched right up to the open microphone and started wishing Becky and Wayne congratulations on their marriage!  She threw quite a bit of other things out there {even mentioning that she loves her mommy!}.  She was so adorable and proved once again just how much spirit she has inside of her!

Dancing was definitely Cooper's favorite!!  It started late in the evening and he was a completely different kid!!  He got up there in the middle of everyone and DID.NOT.STOP.DANCING the whole time!  My silly little boy!  Pretty much the most adorable thing you've ever seen!

My grandparents won the anniversary dance!  56 years and counting!!

He's still going!

This pretty much sums up the night!  These were the centers of attention right here!  Everyone had a wonderful time and it was so fun to be together!

Arizona Fun

We arrived in Arizona to celebrate my Aunt Becky getting married!  We arrived a week before the actual wedding day, so we got a lot of time to soak up family!  It is so fun to see all of these cousins grow up together!

Cooper, Kacey and Caroline having fun at a pretty neat train park.

Caroline HAD to make sure she got a picture next to a cactus.  They made sure everyone was aware of the difference between a cactus and cacti.

The last time we visited Fountain Hills was when Caroline was 9 months old.  It was so fun to go back with the kids a little older.  They were able to take full advantage of everything there was to do!  

Just across the street from my parents' condo is a really big park with a lake, a splash park and a big playground.  We visited at least once a day!

The kids loved feeding the ducks!  Pop Pop always came prepared!

Uncle Paul had his own way of "feeding" them.

Cooper was thrilled that the park had these animal statues.  My little OCD boy had to visit them in the same order every time... FROG...

TURTLE...

And his favorite of all: GIRAFFE!  Each day we had to take new pictures with the giraffe.

We got to spend a lot of quality time with Gigi Jean and Papa John.  They had the BEST toys at their house!

Of course there was dress up!

We got to meet our NEW cousin, Jayce!  My Aunt Married Wayne and he has a 3 year old little boy.  He fit perfectly in line, 9 months younger than Caroline and 9 months older than Ellie.  Cooper was so excited to have another boy in the family!  He followed him around every where and loved that he had Mickey Mouse and Jake toys!

We were quite the sight to see in a quiet, mostly retired town!

32 hours of...

DRIVING!!  

Sound fun?!  Well, we just finished a trip to Phoenix and we drove.  I can tell you that it actually wasn't that bad!  It was 16 hours each way and we did both in a day.  We're more early morning people, so we left about 5am and arrived in Arizona about 8pm.  I can't say I want to do this every day or even every year, but it was worth it for all the fun we got to have!

I held out for four hours before giving the kids the iPads!  An hour after that, one screen cracked and started coming apart... the one I had just had fixed days earlier.   Luckily we were still able to use it and we just had to be careful.  Getting that fixed again is a whole OTHER story!

The most amazing dad who drove ALL 32 hours and flew back and forth so he could work during the week and drive us home.

Josh and I always made fun of people who drove every where and just did not understand why.  Well, we are officially those people!  I guess we should watch what we say because within the next month we have another 12 hour drive planned and then a 5 hour one.  Good thing these kids are so good!!

The Lord Has Risen!

We had a wonderful Easter this year!  We started by going to the 9 o'clock service at church, working in the nursery and then headed over to Grandmother's house for a nice Easter lunch.  The day started off really rainy, but the sun was out in full force come afternoon so we were able to have an Easter Egg Hunt!!  Suzanne had hid eggs all over her front yard and there were quite a lot of them!  The kids had a great time!

Cousin Sam sure is the coolest!!  They fought over who got to sit next to him.

And what's better than eggs and presents??  ANIMALS of course!  Grandmother's house sure has lots of those.  These kids were in heaven!

We had been gone all day and didn't make it home until around 4 that day.  This is how both kids spent the car ride home AND the next several hours.

We are so thankful to have such a wonderful reason to celebrate!! 

"He is Risen!  He is Risen Indeed!"