Tumbling into Weddings

On Friday, I drove to my sister's house in Wisconsin and had a great evening and morning with them all!  We laughed into the evening and then in the early morning too as we had our coffees.  Her husband said, we "cackled".  I'm not sure it was to that extent but I'm not denying it. :)

I even attended a birthday party for about 30 minutes on Saturday for a grand-nephew before hitting the road again for South Chicago.  And when I say South Chicago, you could spit into Hammond, Indiana, it was that close!

That's where the church was.  There were NO gas stations anywhere near the church so nowhere to change my clothes.  One park's restrooms had all the doors locked. uggh.  I drove by the church again and saw one of my cousins outside.  She said I could sneak in the front door and into the restroom to change as that's what she had done. woohoo!

My favorite cousin's son was getting married.  Robb and I had been to the eldest son's wedding smack in the middle of covid.  There was no way I was going to miss this one's!

This is her and her husband during the intros at the reception.

The wedding was beautiful and half in English and half in Croatian.  It was so long that the bridal party got to all sit down for 90% of the service!  There were a lot of attendants.

The reception was in Indiana, about 45 minutes away.

I had a great time visiting with my aunt and all her kids, grandkids and extended family and friends. 

 I decided that I was going to indulge in the desserts and had half a piece of something that was super scrumptious!  I took my glucose later and it was in a range I could live with.  I'm back on target this week though.  Pre-diabetes starts again on Monday! :)

I danced the night away as much as I could, determined to stay as late as I could.  The groom even got his grandma, my aunt, out on the dance floor!

Oh and the very first song of the dance was "Do you remember? The 21st night of September!"  So clever!  but alas, it as September 20th but clever none the less!  It got EVERYONE out on the dance floor!  So fun!  My shoes were digging into the backs of my ankles so I ended up taking my shoes off and tucking them under the table.

They alternated between a DJ and a singer that sang in Croatian with a keyboard!  So talented and eventually I even danced with everyone as they made a super long train weaving around all the tables.

The calves of one leg had some serious cramps in the middle of the night, but it was SO worth it!  and I probably need to drink more dairy.

The bride and groom during the first dance.

Julie and the groom during the mother/son dance.  Yes, I cried!

And boogeying down into the night!

Julie and me

And us when we hit the photo booth!  I have another from when I posed with my aunt and her kids, but the pic I took of it turned out kind of blurry.

My aunt took this pic of me and texted it to me last night.  :)  I don't know what the smirk was on my face but oh well. That's me!  I was probably sucking food out of my teeth.

And I found out that my aunt had used the same wedding dress as my own mother for her wedding!  I loved the history!

I got back to the hotel around midnight and had my alarm set for 6am so I could get on the road in time to make it home for lunch with the kids.  I woke up at 4am...

sigh.  I doom scrolled on my phone until a gas station was open, then hit the road.  It's a 6 hour drive, which turned into 7+ because I got paged.  I worked from a Cracker Barrel for an hour. Nothing like 2nd breakfast and 2 glasses of diet coke to get you going for the day!

Oh and the girls weren't able to make it for lunch after all, so I rested a bit and then took Aggie to her tumbling class because Jen was feeling rundown with a cold.

I'm glad I got some Aggie time in!

So that was my weekend.  A whirlwind trip and a lot of fun.