A BUSY AND BEAUTIFUL WEEKEND!

This weekend was a very exciting one for my extended family as my cousin, Joel, got married to his lovely bride, Fiona. From the first moment that we met her, we all felt that she was the one for him. It is so beautiful to see two people who compliment each other so well choose to dedicate their lives to one another. Congratulations Joel and Fiona! Thank you for letting us share the day with you. (And I have to just state it, though it is obvious in the photos, but Fiona looked absolutely stunning! Good job, Joel!)

Lauren joined us at the ceremony but, since the expectation was for her to sit quietly and not run around, that lasted for all of 12 seconds before Matt had to go outside with her. Oh, child. You are crazy. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if I'm actually her mom because I was quiet and I listened to my mom really well. Lauren... not so much. It's time for baby boot camp. Get ready for some behaviour training, child.   

Running crazy. Hey, have you got chocolate I can steal?!

I don't know you, but let's visit.

Loving the music (however, all of her favourite songs lately are from the Tangled soundtrack and they didn't play any of those).

Don't mind me, I'm just strolling here. 

Taking a break wrapped around mom's legs.

 And we're off again.

Lauren's cousin, Joy, is back in town after living away for the last many months. Lauren is smitten. She follows Joy around and loves watching her play with her toys. Joy is very good about sharing with Lauren and understanding that she doesn't really understand the concept of personal space just yet.

I swear someone was watching our baby while we took a picture together.

My Dad is so in love. Lauren loves wrapping us up in big hugs lately and it gets us every time. She totally knows what she's doing.

No sweatpants? Check. Makeup? Check. Outside of the house? Check. We've been doing well lately!

What, child? You're bored? Here, play with Auntie Chanel's skirt. I'm sure she'll appreciate that.

  The happy family.

And this is why I don't let my brother get his hands on my camera. That mustache. Ugh

This is our first sister picture. It is just a matter of time until Chanel is officially a Pel sister.

In other news, Lauren didn't come to the reception (since the ceremony went so well). My bestie, Nicole babysat her. I was nervous about that since Nicole is the biggest sucker in the world and Lauren is the craziest baby in the world. Best combo ever? Not so much. Nicole used to puppysit Austin and he would come home with the worst gas because Nicole, the vegetarian, had fed him Chicken McNuggets because he liked them. As far as I know, she didn't feed Lauren anything crazy and she rocked babysitting my insane child. For the first time ever, Lauren was put to bed for the night by someone other than me and she stayed asleep. Yay! I asked Nicole if I could book her for next Saturday as well but apparently that isn't how she wants to spend every weekend. Weird.

It was neat too to have quite a few people come up to me and tell me that they read the blog. These people weren't even related to me by blood (though I have to get on a few of them because I don't think they're reading and how can they possibly have other things to do?!). If you secretly want me to thinking of you as my new best friend (sorry, Nicole), just tell me that you're blog-stalking me. It totally makes me feel famous and I love that. Though now I feel like a bit of a jerk since this blog is all because my kid was sick. Oh, well, she's much better now so that makes me less of a jerk. That's how I'll justify this. In the local Dutch, Christian reformed community, Lauren is kind of a little celebrity. No big deal.

What a wonderful and exhausting weekend. Elysha and I had a good reason to get out of our "pancake pants" and put on makeup. We should do it more often!