Wedding Weekend!

We haven't yet posted about the big event that took place right after Christmas--my sister's wedding! We got into Pensacola about a week before the big day, so we got to be there for the whole week of preparations. I loved getting to be a part of it all! We took lots of pictures, of course. Here are some of my favorites:

The girls and I, all dressed up for the bridesmaids' luncheon

Sarah Claire with her Uncle Andy

It was right around this moment in the rehearsal that we decided to let Sarah Claire walk in with me, rather than with the other two kiddos. She was much happier with that arrangement.

We put a little song together to welcome Zach into the family.
It's too bad you can't hear it. It was a classic.

The beautiful bride and groom.

Playing around for just a minute before time to get dressed! 

The girls looked so sweet, and they loved that their dresses matched Aunt Claire's.  

"Whose idea was this 2:00 wedding, anyway? Don't they know that's nap time?"

"Are we done yet?"

My two little princesses

"Do you know 'The Wheels on the Bus'?"
Sarah Claire loved watching her Uncle Gary sing. 

Dancing with my baby girl

The new Mr. and Mrs. Helton

He may have hated having to wear that tux, but he sure looked adorable!

Somebody had fun at the chocolate fountain!

And this was the best shot we got of the five of us together. It was a special day, and I am so grateful we got to be there. Congratulations, Claire and Zach! We love you!

Celebration #2

As mentioned in a previous post, we left our home on December 19 headed for the States. The first stop was Jacksonville, where we spent about 10 days and shared Christmas with my side of the family. Stacy and Paul drove in from Texas with their three--although they were actually at Disney World the day we got there. Here's the whole tribe together in our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes (with beautiful handmade dresses for all the granddaughters from G.G.).

One day, some more relatives came to visit from Georgia. Here's a shot of Lee Anna and Autumn up in the magnolia tree with Camden, who is my cousin's daughter. That means she's Lee Anna's second cousin, right?

And you can't really tell it, but I'm pretty sure this picture was taken right outside Chuck E. Cheese's! You see, G.G. needed us all to be somewhere else for a few hours while she got Christmas dinner cooked, so we went and played games.

Our two were pretty excited about the water fountains in America! You just push a button and cool water comes out of the spout! And it's already clean enough to drink!

We went to church with Grandpa on Christmas eve, and the girls got to sing Silent Night with their mamas. I wish you could hear the piano accompaniment. It was awesome.

Okay, you know how in pictures of your family from the 1940s or 50s, nobody smiles at the camera? Well, I thought maybe there was something really fun or cool or exciting about taking a picture that way and that's why they all did it. So I got my family to try it. Turns out, nothing special happens. It just makes you look kinda weird.

So we did it again, with smiles! :) And yes, I have teddy bear PJs, just like everyone else. Aren't they cute? Thanks Mimi!

The first two nights in Jacksonville, we left all six kids at the Grandparents' house and the four parents went and stayed in a hotel. Well, poor GG wasn't getting much sleep like that! So, we took the kids with us for a few nights. Since we didn't have a fire place, we placed the stockings in a dresser drawer. They got filled up just the same.

And here's the moment the kids were waiting for! Presents! With 12 people all exchanging gifts, we didn't try to be real orderly and calm. We just let the kids run the show and give them out as quick as they wanted to. It was a flurry of wrapping paper and bows and new toys for about 30 minutes. Thanks G.G. and Grandpa! We had a blast!

Christmas Part One

Our Christmas morning started just like yours did, I'm sure. I got online and ordered breakfast from McDonald's delivery, just like any other normal American dad. That gave us a 30-40 minute window to tell the Christmas story and get started on the presents before the pancakes and egg McMuffins showed up.

Let's back up a bit. Though we really did do that on Christmas Day, these pics are from a good bit earlier. We started the day after Thanksgiving, decorating the house and trimming the tree. We even had some festive holiday pancakes that morning (see above), and Sarah Claire wore her favorite Christmas sweater (see below).

Here's a shot of the living room on "Decorate for Christmas Day". The TV stayed on all day in the background so that we could keep up with news of the protests downtown again. Just like old times at Grandma's house.

Y'all smile for the camera!

The 25 days leading up to Christmas we have a countdown calendar. Traditionally, that would be the first 25 days of December, but we had a flight out on the night of December 19, so we pushed everything ahead 6 days and counted down to 19 December this year. Every day in the calendar, the kids find either candy or a paper that says "Christmas Activity." Some of the activities this year were gingerbread playdough... 

marshmallow snowmen...

and real-live gingerbread men!

And, in another old-school tradition, Daddy got to stay up late on Christmas Eve (aka December 18), working on the "Some Assembly Required" toys. Really, it was just this one little pink kitchen, but man did it have some parts. I think there were 37 parts, not including screws and other fasteners. The instruction manual was 20 pages. It took the better part of three hours to get it all together! Right behind me in this picture, you can see the iPad with the ESPN GameTracker keeping up with Tebow and the Broncos' game for me.

And here it is in its more finished form.

Lee Anna has been wanting a microscope for a long time! She'll have fun slicing things up to inspect them.

And Sawyer got his own guitar. And 10 years of lessons, to help him get started.

Sarah Claire loves the kitchen! (Boy am I glad!) She calls this her "iPhone," and she's having fun playing with it all. We've had lots of soup and sandwiches from her kitchen this month.

We had two more family Christmas celebrations in the States. But we'll save those for another night. 

Turkey Day!

Just a week after we returned, it was time for Thanksgiving. The cool thing about traveling to America right before Thanksgiving was that it meant we could bring back some typical Thanksgiving items (like canned pumpkin, pecans and mini marshmallows) that are pretty hard--or very expensive--for us to get around here. We had several families join us for the day, and we had a great time eating, relaxing, and watching the news. Yes, the news. Since we're half a day ahead of American time, it was too early for football. And besides, there was more excitement in the streets that week, so we needed to keep tabs on what was going on in other parts of the city. 

Here's some of our delicious feast. Funny story about the turkey: Our friend called about a week before Thanksgiving to say that he had seen a butcher near his house selling turkeys. Since they can be really hard to find, he offered to buy it for us, and then Jason arranged to meet him and pick it up the day before Thanksgiving so that I could cook it before lunch on Thursday. I've never cooked a turkey, but I read up on it all that week and was ready to try it.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Jason got another call from our friend. As scheduled, he had gone by to pick up the turkey that afternoon, but when he got there, there was a little surprise. The turkey was already cooked! Apparently there was a bit of Arabic miscommunication (it happens from time to time!), and the butcher thought we wanted it cooked, so they had taken it to a nearby restaurant and borrowed their oven for a few hours! Thankfully, it was delicious, and it made Thanksgiving Day even easier for me!  

Lee Anna had fun overseeing the creation of our "Thanksgiving tree". The kids cut out the leaves, and then on each one we listed something we were thankful for. When our friends arrived, they also helped us add to the tree. I took the pic below the next morning before we took it down. Next year (assuming we're not traveling all month), we'll do this all month long.

The kids also did a cute little Build-a-Turkey craft after we ate. Another mom had printed and cut out all the Mr.-Potato-Head style pieces, and the kids got to choose which ones they wanted for their turkeys. They loved it!

We sat around and visited, laughed a lot, sang together, and thoroughly enjoyed having a day to reflect on all that we have to be thankful for.

Whirlwind Tour of the South

Well, after Sarah Claire had sufficiently amused our section of the plane (see yesterday's post), we finally made it to America. It had been over two years since Jason or I had been back, and it was good to be "home." The kids were also thrilled to be back in the land of grandparents, and Sawyer was excited to be back in the land of many iPads. Now we have an iPad, mind you, and Sawyer spends plenty of time with it, but there's just something about exploring someone else's iPad and playing the games that you don't have on yours that makes this five-year-old boy very, very happy. So he did.

The kids were also really excited to see this guy again:

This is Jesse, my parents' dog. He is a fairly recent addition to the family, so Jason and I hadn't met him in person before (though we've had some meaningful Skype chats). Sawyer and Lee Anna met him when they came back for a visit last summer, though, and they have been wanting to see him again ever since. I think Jesse was happy to see them again, too, if  repeatedly jumping high up into the air is his way of saying he's happy.

Our main reason for coming back to the states in November was to attend a meeting in Mississippi, so after we had drained our bank accounts visiting all those stores we hadn't been able to go to in two years, we headed north. It would have been worth the long trip back just for the chance to make that drive. The fall foliage was absolutely beautiful. Apparently everything came together weather-wise just perfectly this fall in Mississippi, and it made for a stunning display of God's beauty. We soaked it all in (sorry for the terrible picture--you'll have to just imagine how beautiful it was!).

Visiting Mississippi meant we got a chance to visit both of the kids' living great-grandmothers. They were excited to see their Great Gran and climb the trees in the yard across from her house.

And they were even more excited when they discovered that she had real live pine cones! You may remember that there was a time not so long ago when my kids had no idea what a pine cone was. Mimi knew this, and she was so excited to the pretty basket of pine cones that Gran had collected and set out as a decoration, that she took the basket and scattered the pine cones all over the backyard so that the kids could gather them up. 

We got to stay with some sweet, longtime friends of ours while we were in Mississippi, and it was neat to be able to introduce all these kiddos to each other. Sawyer and Grayson really hit it off and had fun playing (and getting into trouble!) together. The girls were precious, too. Here they are eagerly waiting for Mae Mae's pancakes one morning.

Our November trip was quick, and jam-packed full of activity and travel, but we loved getting to see so many special people. And when it was time to head back, the goodbyes were unusually easy knowing we'd be right back just a month later.