B'ham wedding

We drove to Birmingham on Saturday for the wedding of Daniel's first cousin Shep. It was a great family reunion. We met some cousins for the first time and saw others that we haven't seen in a long time. We got dressed up (yep, that is Daniel in a suit and I was wearing a dress and heals!), had tons of good food, drinks, danced and socialized with family. The girls were AMAZING. They were great in the car (12 hours total), the behaved so nicely at the wedding and looked beautiful in their fancy outfits. This was their first wedding and they loved seeing the beautiful bride and wedding party, elaborate cakes, great live music and fresh flowers everywhere. We were able to spend the night with some longtime friends of mine. They are actually my friend Lesley's parents--amazing hosts and treated us like family while we stayed in their house. THANKS PENFIELDS! We drove back today after a big brunch with the family that were in town for the wedding.

I'm ready for Thanksgiving. We are going to take a break from homeschooling this week. I'm sure we'll continue the reading and do a few projects but I need a break to regroup and reorganize. I also want to spend some time just hanging out with the girls. In all that we are doing this semester it has been easy to fall into a rut of being a drill sergeant like my friend Anna calls it. I will often tell them what to do or after they get their work done I'll stay out of their way while they play so I can do all my little things around the house, all the while I'm not actually spending quality time with them. Anyway, I'm looking forward to a nice vacation and time to really be thankful for what we have!

Here are the photos from our trip to B'ham

All dressed up.
Daniel on the dance floor?? Ellen loved dancing and was out there until she just got too tired to dance anymore. We all loved dancing to this band Liquid Pleasure. You can see them in the background with the matching pink suits. Probably the best party band we've ever seen (besides De Javu of course:).

Arianna literally fell asleep on grandmother Gail's shoulder while they were dancing!

As always, so nice to see Anna and Mike (Daniel's sister)