Our family has never shied away from long road trips. So this month, we packed the van practically as full of people as it is capable of holding and traipsed on down to Texas. Marce, the girls, my dad and I all drove 11 hours or so from here to Houston. That's not including stops, mind you. I don't mind the usual 6-hour jaunts, but 11 hours is kind of rough. I try to avoid those types of long hauls on a regular basis, but sometimes they're important.
Such as this time around, when my niece got married. We couldn't miss this important event, especially since it was -- technically -- within driving distance. The girls have had several opportunities to meet Kim and play with her (she has a huge box of crayons and coloring books, to boot), so I knew they would appreciate seeing her in her beautiful wedding dress.
It was actually not so bad a trip, considering everything. Including the fact that Marissa got sick the day or two before we left, and I feared all of us catching it and being a car full of sick folks. Luckily, she wasn't vomiting sick, except for one occasion before the trip, and none of the rest of us got that way. I caught it, which seemed to have been a fairly minor version of the flu. So Marissa was somewhat short of her usual energy level, and I was far below mine. Lethargic certainly described us well. Luckily, Marce could drive and Dad could drive. I was almost useless. But the girls all did fairly well. Charlotte got to being not too happy to be put back in her car seat, but she survived.
The wedding was beautiful, and it was such a pleasure to be with family for such a happy occasion. It was also a wonderful opportunity to reinforce the value of the temple for our daughters, who a mere 3 weeks before were able to be in the Birmingham temple with us as Charlotte was sealed to our family for eternity. This time, they got to stand outside the Houston temple of our church to witness the bride and groom emerging from the ceremony we were able to witness inside. It was beautiful.
Since then, I've been busy uploading photos and posting them on the SmugMug site and getting prints made of a variety of pictures from the past 6 months so I can update Charlotte's baby book. Nice to be getting a handle on that again. She's changed so much. I can't believe she was so tiny 9 months ago, and here she is in the 75th percentile for height and weight and crawling all over, pulling books off the bottom shelves, yanking CDs out of their little tower. I walk around and find all kinds of detritus strewn about the floor. Ah. Fun having a crawler around. She also has discovered saying "uh-oh." It's absolutely ADORABLE.
I've been so busy with all the odds and ends around the house as well as starting and updating my books website, Rated Reads. If you haven't seen it, check it out and pass along the word to friends. I think it is a great resource and I plan on it just getting better and better and having more tools for discussion and so on. I'm really pleased with it.
So far, the year is going very well. So many neat things to enjoy.
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