Brandaddy & Co.: Wedding Weekend!

This weekend our friends Bob and Jessica got married. Brandon and Bob went to high school together in Spokane, but now he and his family all live in St. Louis. So Brandon was a groomsman in the wedding, and they also asked Bennett to be the flower girl. The wedding was in Sharon, PA and the reception was in Warren, OH. So began trying to figure out how to make this all work. Grandma Joje so very very kindly offered to come along with us to be the "babysitter." She basically sat in the hotel room all weekend trying to entertain Miles and help with Bennett. We truly could not have done this trip without her!! We all left early Friday morning, and flew to Chicago and then to Cleveland. We then picked up our rental car...a MINIVAN (boy did that make me feel old!), and drove about an hour and 15 minutes to the hotel. We had a short amount of time to kill before Brandon and Bennett headed to the rehearsal and then I joined them for the rehearsal dinner.

Sleeping arrangements were interesting too. Miles wouldn't sleep in the crib because he is so used to sleeping on his Nap Nanny at home, and it was too big to fit in any of our luggage. So he ended up in bed with Brandon and me, and Bennett slept with Grandma. Thank goodness we had 2 adjoining rooms!

Saturday morning we went to a local diner for breakfast. It was some great people watching! Most of the people were super friendly and many stopped to comment on how cute the kids were, or how chubby Miles is. Others in the diner included a biker gang and red hat ladies dressed to the nines! It was a fun breakfast! Brandon headed out with the wedding party in the limo at 12:30, and I had to have Bennett at the church by 1:30. Trouble was, that 10 minutes before Bennett and I needed to leave, the fire alarm went off in the hotel! It was a mad dash to throw on the rest of my clothes, and grab everything we needed, but somehow we succeeded. Bennett even walked out in her camisole and fancy pants and we put her dress on her in the parking lot. It was an adventure!

The ceremony was beautiful, and Bennett did a great job as the flower girl. I was very proud of her, especially since she had to sit through the entire hour long ceremony afterwards, which was right at her quiet time. She was a trooper, but didn't really want to walk back down the aisle at the end (she was spent!), so the wedding coordinator asked her if she could show her Polly Pocket how to walk down the aisle, and that worked! So Polly got to be a flower girl too (but only at the end!) haha. Bennett then cooperated nicely for some pictures, and then she was asleep the second we got in the van to go back to the hotel.

The reception was a lot of fun! Bennett couldn't wait to eat cake and get out on the dance floor! She especially loved dancing with her daddy, and she even got to dance with Bob and Jess!

We left the hotel at 8 this morning, and we got all the way back home a little after 4PM with another flight through Chicago. The kids were really good on the plane rides for the most part. Luckily it was two very short flights, so they weren't bad.

We are all totally exhausted now! As Bennett counted, we had 6 modes of transportation to get home today...van, shuttle bus, plane, plane, shuttle bus, our car.

We were happy to be there for Bob and Jess, and we wish them all the best!

Here are some pictures of the weekend...

Plane ride #1

Ready for the rehearsal

Grandma and Miles had a lot of bonding time at the hotel!

Bennett the flower girl (the lighting in the church was really dark, so my pictures did not turn out very well at all. I'm hoping to get some better ones from the photographer!)