A Vegas Wedding

I cannot say enough how thankful I am that I was able to spend the week before Vanessa's wedding in Las Vegas with her and my mom.  Being far away during this special time has been hard, and I am just thankful we had these precious days together before she became Mrs. Hartsell!

Everyone knows that it is extremely important for the bride and the flower girl to look their best on the wedding day, so our first priority was getting pedicures! :) Clare was super into it, and it was very cute.

Next on our agenda was a bachelorette party!!  These were all the ladies that came and lavished some special love on Vanessa, celebrating her last few nights as a bachelorette!

We had dinner at a restaurant, ate yummy treats and Vanessa opened some fun gifts!

And then Vanessa told us about our "job" while we were in Vegas.  We had 53 white tablecloths to iron for the wedding.  53 is A LOT!!!!!

So a lot of time was spent ironing....

And ironing....(her future mom in law was even put to work!)

And then of course we had the fun rehearsal to get ready for their big day!!

All of the ladies in Evan's family has worn this cute little hat during rehearsal time.

Me and my little bug at the rehearsal!

They had a beautiful bridal party that flew in from all over!

And Clare and Ainsley (Evan's neice) became quick friends and were adorable!!

Then it was time for the REAL deal! 

I LOVE hwo they did Clare's hair and she sat so still thanks to many people sharing their iphones and ipods with her.

And Vanessa's brooch boquet came out beaituful!!!  I loved it!

Vanessa came up with a cute idea to do a flash mob as a surprise to Evan.  so she had emailed about 50 women a link to this little dance to "The Right Stuff" and we had all learned it.  So the bridal party practiced after we got our hair done.

Vanessa looked stunning in her dress!!!

And Clare and I both love having a reason to dress up and act like a princess!

So thankful we got to spend this day together!

And it was a beautiful wedding!!

Our family cleans up nice huh? ;)

I love Clare's dress!  I'm going to have to make it into a Halloween costume in the future to use it again.

Clare loved making special memories with her Auntie V!

Then it was time to send off the beautiful new couple!!

Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Hartsell!! We are so glad to welcome you to the family Evan!

Trip of the year!

We finally got to go on our long awaited trip to Las Vegas for my sister Vanessa and Evan's wedding!!  Though we have been incredibly excited about the trip, I was flying out with both girls by myself...and I was a little worried...just a little!  I'll blog a different post about the wedding because there was just so much going on, but here is a little more about our week in Vegas!

I had done some super poor planning in trying to be budget conscious.  We had a two hour flight to Chicago, a THREE hour layover and a four hour flight to Vegas.  AND, our flight from Charlotte left at 7:30am. 

So of course, these pictures were taken during our layover when everyone was still happy.  I'm pretty sure during the second half of our Vegas flight people were wanting us off the plane as fast as possible.  But...we made it and thats all that mattered!

This is how we looked upon landing.  All sleeping peacefully!

We got settled into our beautiful 4 bedroom rented home that we shared with my parents, Vanessa, my Aunt Tina and cousin Emily.

It worked out perfectly to have a place to set up wedding central and also have a backyard for the girls to play!

And they did a ton of playing.  The edge of the yard was all dirt.  It was gross dirt, and that is where the girls spent all of their time.

Wednesday was Vanessa's 26th birthday.  Evan's sister in law, Angelique (whom I adore!) asked if we wanted to get matching shirts with her kids.  So the big girls wore shirts that said I love my aunt and the babies wore shirts that said, I love my uncle.  They looked so cute!

And it was fun to be able to celebrate Vanessa's birthday and meet all of Evan's family!

The night of the bachelorette party my aunt, cousin and mom took the girls out for the evening.

And of course they enjoyed the night in style. Clare went on and on about riding in Cinderella's carriage.  I kept reminding her this is stuff that only Grammie's do :)

Then the day after the wedding we took the girls on the strip (risky I know!).  But it was fun to see some of the sights.

Of course Clare LOVED the Bellagio fountains!

Elle tried, but she just couldn't handle all the stiumlation!  Heck, I can barely handle it myself!!

It was so fun having some much needed family time!

We enjoyed dinner at Cheesecake Factory on our last night there with all of our friends and family that flew in from Michigan.

And then we packed up and headed home.

We weren't even out of the airport parking lot and the girls were gone!  Traveling is a lot of work with little peanuts, but we had a great adventure!  They are turning into quite the little travelers!!

Yay for cousins!

We had such a fun surprise last week when our niece Kristyl called and asked if her, her husband Jaap and Tyce could come visit us during her spring break from school.  Of course we said YES!!!  We love having visitors, especially when it means the girls get to play with their cousins!!

Tyce and Elle are only a few months apart and loved playing together!

And it warmed up for a few days so we could play outside.  Look at my sweet great nephew!!!

And they played hard!

This is the pose we normally found them in.  Can you see Elle's "what, I didn't do anything!" face.  I see that face often!

Oh my, we are missing this sweet little boy now that he is home with his parents!

Everyone joined in the sand castle fun.

The whole time they were here, everyone called the "the babies."  They were usually together somewhere causing trouble.

With two babies attempting to grab toys, Clare set up shop on the stairs to play.

They were so cute together, making big messes!

And of course there were lots of time for snuggles!!

Thank you Jaap, Kristyl and Tyce for making the long trip to come and spend some time with us!  We miss you already!!