Vacation 2013- part 1

Carl, Kaitlin and I headed out for our family vacation early one Friday morning.  Our goal was to eat breakfast in West Memphis at our maybe my favorite vacation restaurant- Cracker Barrel!  It was a beautiful morning as we crossed the Arkansas river.

Kaitlin loves road trips especially when she has the entire back of the van to herself!  Cracker Barrel was wonderful!

Ever since Andrew was a small fellow he has loved driving by this refinery in Memphis.  Andrew always looked for the little flame.  We have used that flame as a point in time as we travel anywhere east.  Andrew and UJ always let us know when they pass, Andrew's flame.  We were stunned this time because the flame was not burning!  I guess we will still send a text from the flame that used to be.

 

Aunt Elaine loves all things Disney.  We got some Minnie Toms for her.

Carl and I sleep in the bed that was mine when I was a little girl.  It is in the AUBURN room at Uncle John and Aunt Elaine's house.  It is near Uncle John's desk.  Sometimes his desk spills over onto the bed.  He said that I was cutting it close by only giving him a month to clean off the desk bed. We all laughed about that! Here is the cleaned off bed.

 We ate supper at a favorite restaurant of UJ and AE.  Wonderful BBQ.  Uncle Charles and Aunt Frances were also able to join us.  We laughed and shared stories.

I have no pictures of UJ and AE's cats because they are fraidy cats.  We just saw fur streaks running through the house a few times.

I wish I could have a smell-a-gram so you could enjoy this gardenia bush.  It was wonderful!

We shared breakfast together at Gabriel's in Marietta.  Jonny Gabriel is Paula Dean's cousin.  The food was very good and we got a dozen cookies for the road and they were outstanding.  Mrs. Gabriel was walking around and asked us how our food was.  I got my picture made with her.  If you are in Marietta, I highly recommend a stop here.

My brothers and me

Jennifer got married!

 Here is the ceremony site.  It is a wonderful venue.  Here we are at the rehearsal.

Eli, who played at John and Marisa's wedding, played for Jennifer and Kyle.

Here are the wonderful aisle that John took a picture of for yesterdays blog.

After we ate supper we had dessert back at the Loft.  Kyle and Jennifer thanked us for coming.  We still had time for some Jennifer/ Kaitlin silliness!

Early on Saturday morning we arrived at Marisa's for her to do Kaitlin's makeup.

Carl and I enjoyed the time with Mr Wonderful.  He squealed when he saw us at his front door.

We were Jenn's taxi for the day.  First stop was to get her makeup done.

Then back to the house for hair.  Our friend, Brittany was the hairdresser.  She did an amazing job.

Sweet, sweet Carl brought work to do as he waited for his next taxi assignment.

Her beautiful dress!

Kaitlin's sweet hair dresser, Brittany.

Here are the wonderful bridesmaids, Kaitlin, Lindsey, Brittany and Rachel, getting the dress ready to put it on Jennifer.  I am sorry that I don't have a video of that process.  It was very funny.  Jennifer didn't want to mess up her hair or makeup and these ladies got that dress on her without messing up either.  There was lots of laughter, talk about swimming up into the dress and still more laughter.  It was  a pleasure to be involved in a wedding when all the bridesmaids had the same main goal and that was to help Jennifer.  They did it all day long.  Well done ladies, well done!!!

Here is the happy and beautiful bride.

We took lots of photos!

As sweet Carl drove us around, here is what the back seat held.  The lovely bride, Kaitlin and Rachel.

Here was a sneak peak of their first moment.

here are the bridesmaids looking on

Carl snapped some photos as the photographer staged them.

After some outdoor pictures, we headed to the state capitol

Here is a photo I snapped during the ceremony.  It was beautiful! Happy Happy Married Life to Kyle and Jennifer.  Here's to you!!!!

Getting ready for Jennifer's wedding!!

I am pausing from my vacations blogs to tell you of the fun that we have had these last few days.  Our friend Jennifer got married.  We enjoyed being involved in all the details!

We started our day at Mimi's for breakfast.  The beautiful bride is in the middle with Lindsey on her right and Kaitlin on her left.  Our friend, Super Sandy finished out our quartet.

We drove downtown to Loft 1023.  We started bringing up the decor.

The place has beautiful bones but it needed Jennifer's touch to make it hers.

Here are Kaitlin and Sandy making the spot you see first into a work of art.

Didn't they do an amazing job?  Marisa made bunting and we got the window at a garage sale from Katie.

It was beginning to come together.

This picture was taken at the wedding.  I asked John to take my phone and get a photo of the beautiful jars that Jennifer had us put out with tea lights and soft flowers that lined the aisle that the bridal party walked down.  John really got into literally taking the picture for me.  We, especially Kimt, really got a kick out of this.  Tomorrow- the wedding!

Our trip, 6 years, and Happy Fourth!

our beach group

 We just got back from a wonderful vacation.  It was full of lots of family, lots of sand and lots of laughing.  Today is also my blog anniversary!  Six years.  In honor of that I will start my blogs about our trip with six pictures that describe some of our fun.

 We had lots of laughs every day.  This happened as we were waiting to eat supper one night.

 Three bathing beauties.

 We had a birthday party for Grandmother.  She will be 85 this fall but we celebrated early.  As soon as I got this picture of Sherrell and Meredith, the 5 got away and flew down the beach.

 Just before this picture Uncle Ted was telling Alex, Alicia and Kaitlin how much he loves them.  He compared them to poison ivy, boils and ingrown toenails.

This is picture was taken at John and Elaine's house.  We had a wonderful supper together.  Charles and Frances joined us too.

Happy Fourth!!  More on our fun trip tomorrow!