Married in Memphis

On Friday we flew to Memphis for my brother's wedding. We got up super early (4:15 AM anyone?) and made it there by 8:30ish. We went to Andy's house and hung out for awhile and then I was on to the bridesmaids luncheon at Paulette's. It is a great place that serves crepes and French-style food. Very good and I had not been there in years. Brent hung out with the kids. Poor Andy went to get gas for his car and his car stalled in the middle of the carwash. So after getting a rental car...that was our excitement for the morning and everything else was pretty much on schedule. The rehearsal went smoothly.

The rehearsal dinner was at EP's Delta Kitchen on Beale Street. This is one of my favorite pictures from that evening. Griffin was happy to just sit in the window and look at all the lights of the restaurants and bars on Beale Street. The food at the rehearsal dinner was kind of gourmet Southern. So they had lobster pronto pups, ribs, fish, greens, etc. It was very good and the atmosphere was fun.

Saturday was the big day! It started off kind of rough with Griffin waking us up at 6 AM and refusing to go back to bed. Uggh. That morning I went with my mom and some of the girls to an Aveda salon to get pampered a bit. I only got a manicure but it took longer than we expected to get done. So we ended up running in the rain and trying to down some sandwiches all while dressing for the wedding and heading to the church. It was a little stressful but we made it in plenty of time.

Finally at Second Pres chapel for the ceremony. We had tons of pictures taken before the wedding. The boys held up very well considering they were at the church for 2 hours before the actual wedding. They spent a lot of time crawling around in their cute little seersucker outfits which meant dirty knees, but hey, they were happy.

Uncle Andy posing with the boys. Griffin is so 'over" pictures at this point.

Here is Grandma Wagner and my Mom and Inge before the ceremony.

The wedding went off without a hitch and was beautiful. It was a very rainy day but rain is supposed to be good luck for a wedding day, right?

The wedding reception was held at a place called the Center for Southern Folklore. It was a great location for a reception. It had all kinds of quilts and pictures of famous Southern musicians and artists (think BB King) hanging on the walls and there were cool lights all over the place. Andy's friend brewed some beer for the big party. Check out my hubby trying the Extra Sexy Bride beer.

The kids had a great time at the reception. Here is Gray with Aunt Allie.

The groom's cake was a chocolate guitar cake.

Here is Allison, Griffin, and I posing with Elvis.

During the reception, Griffin became "obsessed" with Aunt Sydney. He rarely left her side and she had him tugging on the back of her dress almost the whole time. It was pretty cute how excited he was about spending time with her.

Here is Uncle Ray with the boys.

On Sunday I celebrated my birthday with some Thai food (yum) and a special trip to the Children's Museum in Memphis. We had a few hours to kill before our flight left so this seemed like the best option for another super rainy day. The CMOM was really cool. They had a real firetruck and police car with working sirens. That kept Griffin busy for quite awhile. Papa took a rest on the motorcycle.

We finally got home around midnight last night. I am so tired that I will be lucky to stay awake until 9 tonight.

Dragging

We are officially sick. Well, the boys and I are sick and Brent is just trying to avoid our germs. I thought we just had colds. But yesterday Griffin looked up at me and said, "Mom, I need to go to the doctor because I have an ear infection". And he was right! While I was there, I had them look in Gray's ears (rather than making another trip) and he has an ear infection too. Last night I was feeling so bad that I finally made a trip out to Patient First and got a Z pack. I hope it works. I am feeling a bit better today but still dragging. My brother is getting married this weekend, so I am trying my best to get everyone well before we fly to Memphis on Friday. I have heard that flying with ear infections is not fun. And our flight leaves at 6:30 AM so a super early wakeup time and sick kids is not a good combo for being on an airplane.

Despite all of this, we are getting excited about the wedding. I am trying to get some laundry done so we can pack up. It is going to be a short 3-day weekend trip but we are looking forward to it. I turn the big "34" on Sunday and I am not necessarily looking forward to that. According to my friend, Carrie, I will still "round down" to 30 so I guess that is good:)

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone! The Easter Bunny visited our house and both boys were pretty excited. The bunny left lots of goodies and a note so each boy could hunt some eggs that were hidden around the house. Griffin got some monster truck pjs, Where the Wild Things Are book, a Mr Mischief tshirt, candy, and a chocolate-covered Rice Krispie treat that the Easter bunny brought all the way from Dylan's Candy Bar in NYC. Griffin loved hunting the eggs and thought it was pretty funny to find one in Daddy's Crocs.

Gray seemed to love his chocolate bunny.

Griffin took it upon himself to help Gray try chocolate candy for the first time.

Later in the morning we went to church and the boys got dressed up in their new seersucker outfits. Super cute, although Griffin did not want to keep his shirt tucked in and wanted to wear his Colts hat. After church we went to Cafe Mosaic for a quick lunch.

Trying to get a shot of the four of us is never easy.

Gray with his Daddy.

This afternoon we FINALLY got some landscaping done around our deck. We have been planning on doing this for 3 years now and took advantage of the warm weather yesterday to get started. We found some great 5 gallon holly plants at Costco so that got us started. Then we found some beautiful pink mediterranean heather plants and moved around a rose bush and some coneflower plants. Nothing too fancy, but I hope this stuff lives!

Love these products

I recently got a catalog from this DHC Skincare company, and I decided to try some of their products. I love what I ordered! My two favorites so far are the Velvet Skin Coat and the Deep Cleansing Oil. The oil is a face wash that feels like you are putting oil on your skin but it washes off completely. It leaves your skin super soft and not greasy. The skin coat is something that you can put on under makeup or just wear by itself. It just makes any wrinkles or pores look smaller or less noticeable. Just wanted to pass these things along because they are great! I can't wait to try some more stuff from the catalog.

Egg hunt #2

On Monday morning we went to another Easter Egg hunt at my friend, Heather's house. We all brought our lunch and had all the kids eat together. I got myself 5 Guys Burger and Fries (yum) on the way. The egg hunt was a lot of fun- Griffin is really getting into it this year. I didn't feel like chasing Gray around again, so he just played with some eggs and watched everyone.We tried to get a picture of all the kids on the back steps after the hunt and you can see how well that went:)

Egg Hunt #1

So we had our 3rd Annual Playgroup Easter Egg hunt this weekend. It was a little cold and somewhat muddy (check out Mason), but the Edwards family put on a great show as usual. They had the bunny outside, big paper Easter eggs (Which Gray loved), and the Easter Bunny herself showed up to make a personal appearance and pass out bunnies to each kid. Griffin loved the Easter bunny, but it scared the crap out of Gray. He was TERRIFIED which surprised me.

But the bunny costume was a little creepy looking:)

The little kids had their own area for the egg hunt, and the big kids got to run around the whole yard. Griffin was really into the hunt this year- he was very focused and had more eggs than would fit in his Easter bucket. Later the kids dyed eggs in the back yard, and Griffin had a great time with this. He only got one entire hand blue this year which is a vast improvement over the years before.

Aunt Allie would be proud

This morning Griffin started a new season of soccer with the YMCA. I was skeptical about signing him up again since he did not care for it much in the Fall. But when I mentioned him not playing, he was insistent saying, "I PLAY soccer on Saturdays". So a new season has started. Today went very well. His new coach, Coach Craig, seemed to be a lot of fun. He taught the kids fun warm-up drills like dribbling their balls while wearing their "party hats". The kids learned a soccer cheer (Go Fusion Go) and just ran around a lot. Griffin participated all the way up until snack time which was definitely different from last Fall. In the Fall he just sat on a blanket and asked for a snack the entire game. Gray had a great time too. We had to pull him off the playing field quite a bit. He just crawled after anyone's ball that he could get to quickly. He wore his UT longall outfit since we actually are good in basketball this year. We met a fellow UT alum at the game. But I did see another sibling with a Georgia baseball hat so we may have an SEC rivalry in our midst.

Mother May I

Griffin is learning some good things in school. The latest is that his teacher is having them ask for things by saying, "May I....?". We can't take any credit for that. He has learned how to use it to his advantage and milk it for all it is worth. So he does use May I pretty often. He also says, "May you get me some milk, mama?" when he wants us to do something for him. The hard part comes when he uses "May I" and the answer is no. He can't understand why he doesn't automatically get things if he is polite.

On the other hand, we had his parent teacher conferences at school on Thursday. He is doing well overall. Over the past two weeks his teacher has noticed that he has started hitting kids more and says that he is "spanking" them. I have noticed it at home too. When he gets frustrated, his first response is to just swat at whatever is making him mad. Not sure what to do about it. He rarely gets spanked at home so that is not a regular occurence. I hope he grows out of this phase soon.

Yes, we kept the curls

Gray got his first haircut yesterday when I took Griffin to Pigtails and Crewcuts. Brent has been dying to have Gray's hair cut since it is a little unruly at times. But the opposing team (Mimi and great-Grandma and Mommy) want to keep the curls. While we were getting Griff's hair cut, I asked the stylist to look at Gray's hair and give me her opinion on whether it would curl up more or not. She was kind of ambivalent but said she could always trim it up around his ears to make it look neater. And a bonus might be that the curls may start to come out more. This is a shot of what is left of the curls in the back. Most of them are still intact.Here he is after the hair cut playing at the train table. He didn't cry a bit and he didn't want a lollipop. Not a dramatic difference but hopefully it will please Daddy.

Cat Rescue

Success! After efforts to locate Emme this weekend, I finally captured her this morning about an hour before her vet appointment. It rained pretty hard on Friday and part of Saturday, so she was MIA. I was pretty worried about her. Then we found her under our porch on Saturday afternoon but she never came out. Brent tried to corral her in the crate one time and she took off. So I wasn't too sure that this cat rescue effort was going to work out. But I put some soft cat food in her crate and watched at the front door. When she finally crawled in to eat, I snuck over and shoved her tail in and locked the crate. YES! We made it to the vet okay and got some more info on this supposedly feral kitty. She had been spayed in the past so she was most likely a pet that someone left behind. She tested negative for feline leukemia and AIDS and got a rabies shot. She is now on antibiotics. The vet said she had a good disposition and she didn't give them any trouble. So now she is at home resting in the grass and recuperating from her injuries.