My Brother is Married!

We went to New Orleans this past weekend to attend my brother's wedding. He is actually my older brother - 31 - and really caught us off guard with this whole getting married thing. He met Kristin in July when he moved to Shreveport and they started dating in October maybe. They started talking about getting married in early November and got engaged the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I do love my new sister in law. She is really sweet and fun. I told her mom she was my hero for being able to pull off a beautiful wedding in 3 weeks! Lance & Kristin wanted something different than the traditional church wedding, so they decided to have a small wedding at a hotel in New Orleans with mostly family attending.

Nathan and I took the girls and drove most of the day Friday to our friend's house in Baton Rouge. They let us stay the night and we got to meet their adorable little girl also. The next morning we got to New Orleans and walked around for a little while. It was amazing weather, probably almost 80 degrees! We had a little rehearsal dinner that evening and then rehearsal. I also got to see a lot of family who were in town for the wedding. My grandparents and aunt & uncle from Birmingham were there, and some aunts & cousins from Lake Charles. They got to meet Avery & Alexis and help out with them a lot since Nathan and I were both in the wedding.

Kaleigh got to be a flower girl and she was so excited about it. Of course being a 3 year old, the only thing you can predict is that they will be unpredictable! We had the rehearsal Friday night and there was this white paper "carpet" laid out in the aisle. Nathan told Kaleigh to stop running up & down it b/c it was starting to tear. Of course she didn't obey. It turned out not to be the one they were using and we didn't think any more about it. Kaleigh was so cute during practice, meticulously pulling out one petal at a time and taking her sweet time, so we worked on getting a handful of petals and sprinkling them around. Well, the next day during the wedding she came out and started to walk down the aisle. She still seemed to be going pretty slow and some people were starting to laugh, but I couldn't see what she was doing. Kristin's sister next to me who is taller whispered to me "she won't walk on the paper". Kaleigh was sweetly obeying Nathan from the day before, trying to walk in the small space between the paper and the chairs. If she dropped a petal on the white, she even picked it up and moved it to the carpet! When she FINALLY got about 3/4ths of the way, we told her to come here, and she tried to give the basket first to Lance, then to my dad, who was officiating at this point. I finally got it from her and sent her to sit with my mom. She was so good during the rest of the ceremony. I hope to get a video one day and post it. Cute, cute. Well, she'll get another go at it in May.

My Past Week -
Last week was so busy. It always seems like there's that one week in December when everything happens to fall. I can't believe I managed to do so much, and it wasn't even that stressful! Here's what I did, starting with Tuesday:
Tuesday night - ladies class meeting - we ate some really good finger foods and decorated cookies
Thursday night - Women's banquet at church - some more good food and fun fellowship and great singing
Friday - A playdate in the morning, decorating cookies again (sorry no pictures, I brought my camera but it didn't have a card in it) Nathan's work party was at 3:00 where we ate lots of good finger foods and played the dirty santa game. We didn't bring a gift this year b/c we didn't know if we would be there the whole time.


Then, Friday night was our SS christmas party. We ate (again!) and had an ornament exchange. Nathan continued his yearly tradition of putting a picture of himself in an ornament. Someone else brought back one from several years ago which was really funny.





Saturday - helped host a baby shower for our friend Veronica. It was a lot of fun.

Sunday - went to church in the morning (the whole family) and that afternoon and evening we went to Garvan Gardens to see the Christmas lights with a group of friends. We did this last year and it was a lot of fun so we will try to make it a tradition. Amazingly, the weather was great. It rained before & after we were there, but not while we were there. And it was warm, which was nice b/c there were 4 little babies in our group. It was also practically a miracle that we got this group of friends together. I don't think we've all been together this whole year! We laughed a lot and took some fun pictures. It was fun to see the kids really enjoying the lights. Kaleigh loved the gingerbread cottage. Afterwards we all went to On the Border to eat. Surprisingly, this also went well, even with all the kids and babies. Avery and Alexis slept pretty much the whole time and we fed them a couple of times.

This week we don't have so much, but we have to start packing for New Orleans. My brother is getting married there on Sunday. We are leaving Friday and staying with a friend in Baton Rouge Friday night then spending the night in New Orleans Saturday night. I can't believe my brother will be married in less than a week!

Twins FAQ's

We get a lot of the same questions about the twins, so I thought I would do a little update for those of you who we don't see much who might be curious about them.

Q: How are the babies & how much do they weigh now? A: Avery & Alexis are doing great! They have not had any sicknesses and very few problems to speak of. They are gaining weight quickly and as of Friday Alexis was 8lbs,0oz and Avery was 7lbs,15oz.
Q: Can you tell them apart? How? A: Yes, I can tell a little difference in their faces, but our fallback is a birthmark on Alexis' head.
Q: Are you getting any sleep? Actually, we are. They take a bottle around 10:30 and go to sleep after and wake up anywhere from 3:00 to 5:30. They take another bottle and go back to sleep. They actually slept all night until 7:15 the other day! I look forward to that being regular thing.
Q: How is Kaleigh doing with them? A: She's doing great so far. She likes to say "my little baby sisters are soooo sweet". She likes to hold them and help with them. She has actually helped me feed them during the day when I'm by myself with all the kids, but she gets tired of holding the bottle after about 3 minutes.

An Original Bedtime Prayer - by Kaleigh

Dear God,
Thank you for my food. Thank you for my house, and my pink wall. Amen.