Happy Mother's Day

We drove 15 hours home today from Tenn. and went straight to my mom's to pick up Miss Vivi.

I couldn't let Mother's Day slip by without holding my girl. I'll post about the wedding tomorrow but for tonight I leave you with these pics of me with my answered prayers.

I honor all of you mother's out there- those holding your babies today and those yet to meet your forever children. May the Lord bless you and keep you and may his light shine upon you. Pray for the little ones entrusted to you~that God will give you the strength and patience to let the laundry pile up and the dust settle nicely on your furniture, because the days are long but the years are short. Our little ones will one day be too big to cuddle and too busy to care about every little thing we are doing. My motherhood moto is Make Everything A Memory! I can post later on about how I accomplish that, and trust me it is not about scrapbooking! I leave that for Grandma. :)

Saturday shopping before wedding prep begins!

This little village was ALL Christmas shops.
Who knew Santa spent his off-season in the Smokey Mountains?
After all our shopping we splurged on bottles of mountain soda pop and microwave popcorn on the cob! The little country store we bought these in were on the edge of the mountain. So fun!

Fun little stores!
Wouldn't this shop for lease make a great cupcake bakery? :)

Check out the Appalachian looking Starbucks!

Rehearsal Dinner

The bride getting her nails done.
A little R & R in the afternoon.
More of the view!!
The happy couple.
Well don't we look lovely!

The rehearsal dinner was in Gatlinburg a VERY touristy town. My sister would have wanted to stay about 2 hours and walk up and down the strip of shops. There was a Ben and Jerry's! I was so sad we couldn't go there. :) Wish I could have gotten pictures of this strip-Billy likened it to Panama City, FL. Anyway...we were zooming too fast to make it to the dinner place.

The dinner was fun and tasty! But the real fun came when after dessert it began to pour down rain and hail! Yikes. The room began to flood so we all frantically moved out, happy it happened at the end of our night! Well we braved the hour long drive back up to the treacherous mountain in torrential rain and debris covering the road to arrive to our cabins with the power out! IF this wasn't enough to throw us off, our back door had flown open during the storm and covered our living room in rainwater. There was water everywhere! On all the furniture, the rugs were soaked, our books were all wet. Thankfully our laptop was on the far side of the living room and did not get wet! wowza.

So we had a somewhat restful night and are up early thinking we might trek back down the mountain and go into town to shop and walk around a bit. Billy has had the best time sleeping and reading. This has actually been a relaxing vacation for us! Today is hair and make-up and the wedding and reception in an adorable little white chapel on the hill. I'll try to post those pics tonight!

We are here!

Across from our cabin
our back view~
living room


We are here in Tennessee on top of old smokey. :)
The cabin that Jen's parents have put us in is AMAZING! And we have it all to ourselves. It is a log cabin on top of the mountain. It has a loft with foosball and a pool table, a hot tub on the upstairs deck and a deck downstairs with rocking chairs. The view makes me woozy, so I can't get too close to the edge of the porch. There is real smoke on the mountains. Today it is sunny so I will try to get some better pictures. We hacked into someones internet feed so hopefully I will be able to post pics as we go along. I am giving a shout out to our sweet Vivianna back home at Grandma's house. We miss you baby girl!!

Road Trip

Well I leave you with these pictures of the kids to tide you over until we get back from Tennessee. We leave on Wed, headed to the Smokey Mountains for my friend Jen's wedding that I am the Matron of Honor in. I am excited to get away for awhile. Jen and I are doing a spa day on Friday and getting our hair and make-up done on Saturday. The fun thing too is that Billy and I will have our own two story cabin with a hot tub on the deck! Yipee! Isaac is coming with us and Vivi is staying with my parents because it is a 14 hour drive and she would not make it! So, unless we have internet at that altitude-I sign off until next Monday! Be prepared for some serious pictures when we get back!!

5 Years!!

Today is our 5th Anniversary. It is wild to look back on all God has brought us through in 5 years!! Instead of going through all that- ya'll know the stories! I thought I would list some of the great things about being married to Billy:

-We always want to tell each other everything that happens to us. We talk on the phone atleast 4 times a day-still!

-I love how much we both LOVE Friends reruns. Last night we noticed that Rachel wears some form of denim in almost every episode of season one.

-We can laugh and laugh until our stomachs hurt, usually at something ridiculous one of us did or said.

-I love how Billy still tries to make jokes and looks and waits to see if I think it is funny.

-I love that we have always both been on the same page with building our family.

-How much he loves our dogs and even let me get a little annoying snippy/barky/growly toy breed.

-I love that I converted him from hating the color red to loving it!

-How he does not share food! That was something I noticed when we were dating and he still won't do...although he is coming around!

-How hard he is willing to work for the sake of our family.

-I love how in to books and movies he is. He will talk about some obscure director or cinematographer forever and I have no idea who he is talking about.

-And I love that we both love icecream and pizza and probably could eat them both everyday.

-And I love that we are always on the same page with Biblical ideologies. We rarely fight about politics or religion!

-I love being married to Billy because he is the husband I need and the father for my kids that I always hoped for.

Happy Anniversary, Honey!!