Eating and the Events Surrounding It

It was a wild and wooly weekend!!!!  

On Thursday night, my Mom, Dad, 2 sisters, 2 nieces and a nephew showed up.  We fed them and then found places for them to sleep around the house.  My girls gave up their room and slept on Grandma's bed, who is gone for a week.  And every available couch and spare bed got taken.  That night was a mad scramble for me to make sure that all the clothes were packed that Leon and I needed and to make sure the rest had clothes cleaned for what they wanted to wear to the wedding and the next day.  AND to remember their swimming suits.  I didn't realize that Leon had pulled out his Batman swimming trunks just before bedtime and found them in the living room yesterday...  The girls improvised at the hotel with a pair of regular shorts for him.

So Friday morning, AFTER the dogs got dropped off at the kennel, we started the caravan trek across Iowa and Southern Wisconsin.  I ate a whole bag of Cheese Ruffles...  I have a supposedly slimming scuba suit to wear under my dress... WHY NOT?!!!  And it gave me something to do on the trip besides keep Leon happy with toy sharks.  Got to the town with an hour to spare before the wedding.  

 Checked into the hotel fast, changed and made it to the church with roughly 20 minutes to visit with family before the main event started.

Oh!  Sonya was NOT able to be my son for the afternoon as she was getting HER son registered for college and wasn't around.  DARN!!!  The NEXT wedding for sure!  I need to meet this woman who could easily pass as a sister of mine.  

 Leon messing around filling out all the cards with the handy pencils provided...

The LAST nephew & his bride who got married 6 months ago.

The wedding was beautiful! 

 

 

 Best man, a nephew and the maid of honor, the brides twin sister.  The maid of honor goes to college with Maddy in Minnesota... SMALL WORLD!!!

 

 The bride and her father.

 

May I present Mr & Mrs!

Another nephew playing the piano for the service.  Talking to him later, he said he felt like Billy Joel up there in the balcony.  I THOUGHT I heard strains of The Piano Man played real slow now and then...  For OUR wedding, Robb had really wanted Paradise by the Dashboard Lights playing REALLY slow for our processional so no one would know except him and I and any other Meatloaf fans in the crowd. 

 Just the part of "And now I'm praying for the end of time"  Yeah, he's a card.

We sat with my 5 year old niece and she kept asking Maddy and Meri VERY interesting things about the church decor.  Brooke:"Did they cut off Jesus's head?"  or Brooke: "Maddy, I'm going to marry YOU someday!" Maddy:"You can't!  I'm going to marry Jesus!"  Brooke:"Umm...  yeah, he's already married!"

Those girls crack me up!

 

 

Sister of the groom!!  One of my nieces.  She sat with us at the reception and we got the scoop on loads of stuff you don't hear when you live a couple states away!

Us while we waited for an opportunity to hug the new couple during the receiving line.  We could have posed and placed a small child in front of me... Oh well.  That's what Photoshop is for I guess.  I'll revisit this photo later...

 

Between the wedding and reception, another sister organized and threw an 80th surprise birthday for my mom in my hotel room.  

Wow, was Mom surprised?!!  

 My parents.  On a bed.in a hotel room...

Teresa made a banner, brought a cooler full of pop, a bowlful of Twin Bing candy bars, and several dozen cupcakes with inch high frosting on each.   I'm wearing a scuba suit, remember?  I ate more and sneaked two of the remaining Twin Bings into my purse for the drive home. 

 

What a fun chaotic time!  Just like old times!  Then Meri walked past Braedon and got a bunch of his bright blue frosting around her dress hem.

This is Brae during the frosting debacle.  

 

Leon grabbed a pink one and did the same thing to his suit...  

 

I took Meri into the bathroom and managed to remove all trace of the frosting using hotel shampoo and a sopping wet washcloth, then while she used the blow dryer to dry it all, I stripped Leon and did the same thing to his shirt and vest.  Dried it just in time for the reception with the iron.  All trace of frosting GONE!  Except the delicious memory... and of course the awesome pictures everyone took of it all.

At the reception, Leon and Brae cut loose on the dance floor before there was any music besides classical stuff.  Oh they weren't dancing, mostly running circles around little girls and knocking either them over by accident or themselves or tried to escape out the door to the hotel hallway right next to the dance floor.  We had to round them up against their will so the waiting staff could distribute the food without tripping over them.  

The best man, the grooms brother, gave his speech.  THAT'S what made me cry!  The line about how the night before the wedding, was the last night he'd be sharing a room with his brother whom he'd shared a room with the last 16+ years and the fact was finally hitting home to him.  Then he broke down and couldn't talk for a while, but finally managed to spit out that even though the wedding couple would now be 2 hours away, they've always got a huge fan club back here.  WHAA!!!!  That was me...

Everything was beautiful and we had such a fun time!

 My sister(the mother of the groom) and mom and two more of my nephews.
,
 

ANOTHER nephew and Leon, as Leon found a second piece of cake to tackle.

As the dance started and eventually things died down a little,  AND after scouring the hotel rooms a few times looking for a missing camera for a sister, and FINALLY finding it in a spot I'm sure the kids had looked earlier twice, the girls and a cousin took Leon swimming before bed.  

Taken about 2 minutes before crisis.

He had a great time escaping the pool, running around it and then jumping in on top of the girls again.  They had left the party before me.  By the time I managed to get a chance to sit down with another sister and relax for a minute pool side, crisis struck. 

 

Leon had run around the pool and instead of jumping in at Meri, picked up a loose tile with rough cement on the back of it and threw it at her.  It hit her above one eye and across her nose, instantly swelling up and bled.  Melanie, another sister,  ran to find bandages while the other girls rounded up Leon and our things, meeting Meri and me back at the room.  Got some ice on her face and tried to calm her down.

It turned out there was just some nasty scratches from the cement, so no stitches necessary.  She got two black eyes which she masked with makeup the next day and sported some funkily cut bandaids to fit around her eyebrows.  Unfortunately I did NOT get a picture of her at this stage as things were too emotionally charged to even think of it.  After some Ibuprofen and dry clothes, she was able to get some sleep.

The next morning, after breakfast with my car load, two aunts and two uncles, a niece and my sister, who is the mother of the groom, we hit the road and made it back home in time to hit a birthday party which I'll tell you about tomorrow.

Oh, I ate another whole bag of chips on the way home...