Wedding Weekend

Matthew's cousin, John Warren, got married in Greenville, South Caroline on March 28th. After a lot of thought, we decided to leave the kids at home and go on our own. Christian's soccer team was in a soccer tournament, so it worked out well for him to stay. He was able to stay with some friends of ours on the soccer team and not have to miss the tournament. The girls stayed with our friends, the Locke's and were able to "go along with the flow" of a very busy weekend for them, but they had fun.

We enjoyed the 6 hour trip in the car without interruptions - that's very unusual. We were able to attend the rehearsal dinner and got to sit at the table with the bridesmaids and their dates. What a nice bunch of young people (and I do mean young.....which meant we were the old farts for sure!)

We had some free time on Saturday and then enjoyed the beautiful wedding at First Presbyterian in Greenville followed by a great reception at the Upcountry History Museum. We had a lot of fun with the Warren's and enjoyed the short break from life at home. Here are some pictures we took.

Matthew & Katie at the reception

Matthew's brother and his family: Mitchell, Crissy, Blakesly and Mitch

Beautiful Blakesly loved the chocolate!!!

The happy couple - John & Courtney Warren

My awesome in-laws - Chris & Glynda Warren (more popularly known as Grumps & Gigi)

Goofy Girl

This video was taken back in January. You'll hear me discuss this with Julianna but she was cheering and I think she meant to say "cheerleader". There's nothing special about this except in the words of both my sisters, "She's just so stinkin' cute!"

Webkinz Rock Band

Recently, on a Sunday afternoon, the kids were on the Webkinz Website playing and found a suggestion to make a Rock Band for your Webkinz. Surprisingly, the big kids spent hours drawing, coloring, cutting and gluing all sorts of instruments for their Webkinz. It's been quite a while since they've done something like that, so of course I had to take some pictures. Here are the bands!!!

Christian at lead guitar of course!

There's even a difference between the bass guitar and the electric guitar!

Rebecca and her band (the duck needed a bit of help with her harmonica)

Rebecca's band

And of course, Julianna.....and her friends (she was napping during the creation of the band instruments)

Spring Break - Tuesday

We had beautiful weather on Tuesday so our day consisted of many boat rides and some outdoor playing and swinging. It was awesome. On one of our boat rides, we went to some water falls. We've never seen them this high before. There had been so much rain that they were very full. They were beautiful. We decided to hike to the base if we could. I got some pretty pictures.

Coming up to the falls

Climbing around the rocks before we began the hike

Looking up at the huge rocks and see the water coming down was beautiful


About half way through our hike, I turned around and took this picture. It was so pretty

This is as close to the base of the falls that we got - we were getting some mist on us here

The silly girls on the boat ride

Matthew let Christian drive the boat all by himself

The girls thought it was so funny how their hair would fly straight up in the air!

One day this'll embarrass them but they thought it was funny.

I won't blog on Wednesday - we basically took one final boat ride, cleaned up the house and went home. But all in all, it was a great get-away for us!

Spring Break - Monday

Below, you might be able to see the culprit of our power outage.....

Those things next to the thing on top of the box.... a couple of squirrel legs.... :-)

They decided to leave to it up there maybe as a deterrent to the other squirrels!!!

We woke up to clouds and rain which made it easy to be an inside day. I picked up a book and read it most of the day and the kids enjoyed the Wii we'd brought along. Later in the afternoon, the rain broke enough for us to head out for a boatride. It was a bit chilly, but they were so excited about going so off we went. It was fun.

Christian

Rebecca

Katie & Julianna

Julianna's photo - as you can see, we stayed in our jammies most of the day. That was definitely fun and what we needed.

Spring Break - Sunday

We got on the road immediately from our last soccer game in the Mud Bowl (see previous posting). We had a good trip. Julianna slept a little and the kids read. We made it to Fort Payne, AL and stopped for a yummy dinner at Zaxby's.

Julianna generously shared her 2nd pair of sunglasses with Christian - but insisted that he wear the pink Dora ones!

One last leg of the trip, over the mountain to the cabin, we came across the water falls at the Little River Canyon. We've seen it this full and we had to stop and take pictures. It was beautiful and we all enjoyed our short little side trip. The kids even took a couple of pictures to use in thier 4-H photo contest at school next month.

A view of the falls and the bridge we drove over to get to it.

The kids loved this little side trip.

Even we got our picture taken.

The beautiful falls from above

After our side trip to the falls, we drove about 20 more minutes to the cabin. We had a plan of who would unpack what and who would carry what where and how we'd get it all done so we could hang out a bit before bed. We arrived right as it was getting dark and the first thig we noticed was that the garage door would not open. We went on inside and our fears were confirmed when we found out there was no electricity. We looked around and over at the marina, there was power, so it was just where we were.

We finally found a flashlight and the kids and I went on a manhunt for candles and candle holders. Good thing Gigi likes candles!!! We found a phone book for Rome, GA from 1997-98 but that wasn't very helpful. We tried information on my cell phone (Matthew's blackberry was dead and of course we couldn't charge it) and the only information for the local power company was their billing line and no emergency number.

After a while, we gave up and got the kids to bed. We had them all bundled up together in one bed with lot of blankets (it was about 56 degrees in the house) and told them if we got the power on, we'd get the heat on first thing.

About this time, Matthew found a more recent phone book with an 800 emergency phone number for the power company. They said they'd get a crew out in an hour or so. Finally a truck came out there, knew right away what it was and with a flip of a switch, we had power. We were very thankful.

We had to come in got the heat going and then clean out the entire fridge and freezer, but we were very fortunate that it wasn't very full since it was during the winter. We loaded it back up with the food we'd brought, blew out all the candles and headed to bed. It certainly was the start to our get-away we thought it would be, but we still were very grateful to be "away" and at the lake, which is a piece of heaven for us!

It's a bit blurry, but I took a picture of Matthew with the electric guys and their really long stick that fixed our power problem!!

I thought this was such a cute picture - Even baby Leah had to squoosh in to stay warm, too. I think they ended up waking up very hot, but oh well!

2nd Annual Mud Bowl - I mean soccer tournament

A couple of weeks ago, Christian's soccer club in White House hosted our annual Spring Tournament. Unfortunately, we have a pretty early March date, so you never really know what kind of weather you're going to get. Last year, it was a mud bowl - seriously. Well, this year, it was exactly the same.

We had an 8am game on Saturday morning and it was raining and freezing. The boys played in the rain and it was miserable. The first few pictures below are of that game. Our whole family went and the girls stayed in the car and watched a movie and colored and stayed dry and warm. Sadly enough, we lost.

We went home for a few hours and washed and re-washed his uniform and cleats trying to get the mud out. We had an afternoon game, which I couldn't find my camera for so I didn't get any pictures, but by this time, the ran had stopped but the fields had become mud. Sadly, we lost.

Then on Sunday, we had one final game - a consolation game. It was played at another field in White House and it was COMPLETELY MUD. A funny game to watch since it was anything but a typical soccer game.... you can tell from the video below. Oh, sadly, we lost.....

So the best thing about this weekend was that when we left that third game, we drove to the lake for a few days of Spring Break!!!!!

Do you see the rain puddles?? And it was freezing!!

If you look closely at the trees, you can see the sheets of rain coming down

Christian trying to keep up - this guy was fast!!

Kick off at the 2nd game - this is Mark & Anthony beginning the game - do you see the mud they're standing in?

Daniel took a big dive in the mud - he's got a cast on his left hand. I'm sure he had to replace it this week.

Christian playing and had already taken a tumble, too

Our head coach was out of town so Matthew had to be the head coach all weekend. He later told me he doesn't like the pressure as much of the head coach job so that makes me glad that he's happy being the assistant!

Christian & Sawyer after the game

This video doesn't have Christian in it, but it shows you how difficult this game one was in the mud. The boys could not get the ball to do what they are used to it doing and you can see how funny it was.