The BIG Event-- Baltimore, Part 3

The day of the wedding was, of course, super busy. Daddy watched Carver while all of us girls went to hair appointments. (It will bother me until the day I die that I had crazy prom hair for Courtney's wedding. I've been a bridesmaid at least a dozen times. Usually I do my own hair and I always regret it. So, this time I had my hair done by a professional. Big regret. Sigh. Nothing to do now but cringe every time I see one of Court's wedding pictures.)

Prom hair...and it looked less flattering from the front. This was also at about 10:00 a.m. By 6:00 p.m. for the wedding it was an utter disaster. Boo.

Courtney's hair!



Holly's looong hair.

Julia's hair

After the hair appointment (fiasco) we raced back to the hotel to get dressed for the bridesmaid's luncheon. The luncheon was at Victoria Gastro Pub and it was fabulous.

The private room.

The fabulous appetizer.

Sara, Courtney, Cathy, and Ginger

Carver girls (minus Mama who is way too picky about pics of her)

I still have vivid daydreams about the goat cheese/mustard/crackers appetizer. And, bridesmaid's luncheons mean presents for the bridal party! Only my sister would give her bridesmaids a Coach wristlet as a gift. Love it, love her.


We left the Gastro Pub to rush back to the hotel to get dressed in our wedding finery for the BIG EVENT. Which will be covered in the next post :)

The BIG Event-- Baltimore, Part 2

There were so many wedding things just leading up to the BIG DAY that a separate post is needed just to cover it all. Courtney (and Michael) did a super job of really thinking through and planning out every event (big and small) of their wedding week. Which made all parts of it so much fun.

Welcome bags for each of the out-of-town guests. They included a variety of local Maryland offerings and were delivered to each guest's hotel room.

On Friday we all moved from Court's place out to a hotel close to the wedding venue. We stayed at the Turf Valley Resort and it was super nice (and the girls got to come too!). ** by "girls" I mean Delia and Lea, but if you are reading this blog then you are probably familiar with how I refer to my other babies** It was nice to all be in a huge hotel, all together, and so close to all of the various venues.

Friday was a crazy-ish day. We had some errands to run, confrontations to have (more on that in a later post), and a million small things on our "to do" list. The main event of that day, of course, was the rehearsal and dinner.

Heading out to the Rehearsal dinner

The rehearsal went smoothly at the Waverly Mansion. (Side note: I love it that they chose a historic site for the wedding- love, love, love it). The actual rehearsal was pretty quick and poor Daddy had the job of wrangling all the grandkids since all of us were in the wedding party, and Mama was on picture duty. After the rehearsal it was off to the rehearsal dinner.

Daddy on baby duty.

Lyle and Will-- Lyle did a scripture reading in the ceremony

Courtney, Angela, and Andrea


Lyle and Me

The dinner was held at The Trolley Stop in historic Ellicott City. The dinner was fun because it was pretty casual and it gave us all a lot of time to catch up with the wedding guests. A lot of our family came for the BIG EVENT. Uncle Ray and Aunt Cathy, Drew, and Sara from Seattle and Aunt Ginger and Uncle Dwight (from Bartow, of course). Jenny was there (hooray!-- More about Jenny in a later post also), as well as some of Court's friends from UF and Dean Allen (Crestridge friend) and his wife, Julie. It was also really nice to (finally) meet all of Michael's family!


Carver was his typical crazy self. Jenny was an enormous help with him. Thank God she was there. Carver was good just a little wild from refusing to take a nap that day, over excited about cousins to play with, etc.

Carver entertained himself by completely destroying the paper tablecloth during the rehearsal dinner. Yes, I was embarrassed, but I've learned to pick my battles. Luckily, Daniel was not there yet-- he would have been horrified.

I would have preferred for Carver to take after his cousin Tommy and take a little nap.


Aunt Jenny feeding him cheesecake...a lot of cheesecake.

How cute is this?

Bailey and Anna Kate

Julie, Dean, and Lyle
Julie, Dean, and Courtney
Uncle Dwight and Aunt Ginger



Tommy, Bailey, and Will

Cora (Angela's daughter) and Bailey-- 2 of the flowergirls

After the rehearsal, Jenny, Carver and I jumped in the car and raced to the bridal store to pick up Court's dress, then back to Courtney's apartment to pick up the girls and take them to the hotel. This was probably the craziest night we had. But, as always, somehow everything gets taken care of.

(Note: Not sure how Michael isn't in any of these pictures. That seems terribly wrong but...what to do?)

The BIG Event-- Baltimore, Part 1

I have been seriously avoiding blogging about Courtney's wedding week. I am just way too overwhelmed. There are SO MANY details, events, and moments that are important and noteworthy and I feel incredibly stressed about the prospect of capturing all of them here on my little blog.

It has taken me a few weeks but I now have a game plan. I am going to break every moment, event, and detail, (OK, maybe not every detail), into a separate blog post. This should make it more manageable for me, help me to stay sane, and give all of you, my multitude of faithful readers, many postings to eagerly anticipate.... right?

So this first one is not actually wedding related. Sorry to let you down. The following is all of the miscellaneous "stuff" from my week+ in Baltimore. It was a crazy, stressful, busy, fun, emotional week. And we did a lot of stuff in just those few days.

Miscellaneous Moments and Other Noteworthy Things

We watched Julia's dance recital-- she is super talented :)


Carver played and played with this random little door/hidey hole in Court's apartment.


Loved on the cats...

and the guinea pigs.

We ate at (most of) my favorite restaurants. This was Au Pointin Still (no idea how to spell that and too lazy to look it up--sorry Sis). This is my favorite Irish Pub in Baltimore (or MD, not actually in Baltimore). We were there for brunch on Sunday and it was fabulous--absolutely fabulous.

Courtney's house provided no end to entertainment for Carver-- he loved it and ran around like he owned the place. (Yes, baby jail did travel to Maryland with us)

Carver spent some time with Granddaddy (and Grandmama and the others also)


We played at the park.





We took a day trip to Gettysburg, PA that was sadly interrupted by the "nursemaid's elbow" incident. I'm still traumatized so let's not talk about it.
However, I do really hope to go back next time I am up that way. There is a ton of historical stuff that I need to do. I need to buff up on my American History knowledge, which is minimal...

We had a great lunch at the Farnsworth House, in Gettysburg, just after leaving the ER.

(love Carver's face here-- hilarious)

I learned a valuable lesson in nap-time safety. His crib was empty when I put him down, when I checked on him next this is what I found. Apparently not everything was safely out of reach...

We celebrated Julia's Middle School graduation at Outback...

and had presents back at the house!

We attended Julia's awards ceremony. Carver and I were there for the first three minutes. Then Carver started trying to crawl underneath rows of seats. Time to leave. Sidenote: Julia won the math award!!!

We also celebrated Mom's retirement with a little family shindig at Court's house. Homemade pizzas and appetizers, mixed in the 6 crazy grandkids, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 guinea pigs= a lot of chaos but a whole lot of fun. (Congratulations mom, on 39 years of teaching-- Happy Retirement! I, for one, am thrilled that you are retired!!!! Hooray!)

I hope I didn't forget anything here. There was, seriously, something happening every minute of that week. But, it was incredible family time that I am SO thankful for.

Stay tuned. I promise the next post will be wedding related :)