The wedding day

Now for the most exciting part of the month which everyone else has already blogged about: Ashley's wedding.  Brandon got home from France the night before and after picking him up from the airport and driving all the way to our apartment, I realized that I had left my keys in Katy and we all had to drive back to get them.  Of course that would happen to me.  And the next morning we were back in Katy again, getting ready for the festivities.  The morning started out with getting our hair done (no that's not my hair, it's my 6-year-old neice who has the hair of an adult):

Having a nutritious breakfast:

Getting makeup done:

And basically just laying around, being good-looking.

 We later headed off to Vargo's for the wedding.  The flower girls all looked beautiful in their dresses.

 The venue was charming.  One of the best things about it was that there were peacocks wandering around everywhere. It of course was fascinating for the little kids and this one developed quite a following.

 Finally the most important moment of the day arrived and Ashley and Landon were married.  I'm not usually the emotional type but I almost bawled.  Luckily I was wearing a ton of makeup and I didn't want my face to melt off, so I held it back.  And being the great photographers we are, we got zero pictures of the bride and groom.  But I'm sure Ashley's photographer did a great job, so we probably won't be lacking.  After the ceremony we went to Pappasitos where Violet practically took a shower in queso.  Best wedding food ever.

Where do I begin?

So much excitement has happened since I last posted that everything in this post is going to be grossly oversimplified.  Oh well.  The Funks came and stayed at my parents' house last week and since I was already staying there, I got to be with them the whole time. Violet was in all her glory having so many cousins to play with.  The Easter bunny brought her some sidewalk chalk, which she applied liberally to her face.

Of course we had to go to 99 cent waffle cone Wednesday while they were here.  Caroline ate hers faster than I ate mine.  That girl can eat. Here she is with a little chocolate still on her face.

 Violet took her sweet time, as usual. At least this time she got strawberry instead of nasty Superman flavor.

 Charlie enjoyed his view from the car seat.  He actually started smiling and laughing when I asked if he wanted some ice cream.  Time to start solids?

 Violet and Graham were two of a kind.  Here they are all bundled up after having a blast at the splash pad.

 Graham was the most intense thing I had ever seen there.  He really got into hitting the water.

Here is Violet with her adopted siblings.

Those kids made me laugh a lot while they were around.  The first night that Violet stayed in the same room as they did (she had never had a sleepover before) she apparently was making too much noise and got kicked out of the room by Graham.  He dragged her in to his parents' room, pointed to her, and said, "Her not sleep. I go bed."  He got used to her, though, the next night when he was going to bed he kept asking for "my Violet" while she was downstairs getting water.

Caroline was hilarious, too.  One night I was in my pajamas and I grabbed my keys, so Caroline asked where I was going. When I told her I was going to the store, she asked, "In those clothes?"  I laughed out loud and soon my sister made her apologize and tell me how nice I looked. 

And Devin made me laugh because he is SO much like my sister was when she was little.  You can't help but love that kid.

I miss them already!

Mental instability

Brandon is gone again. I declined his invitation to go to France with him. Leaving my 2-year-old, travelling internationally with an infant, and being in a hotel all day while he worked in the lab didn't seem worth a $750 ticket, even if it was to France.

Unfortunately, this means that I'm stuck here without him for two weeks. Even with parents just 45 minutes away, things get pretty hairy when he's gone. I got sick the day he left. Aside from the physical discomfort and exhaustion, I'm pretty sure I operate on the mental capacity of a senile ape when I'm sick. As a result, when we went to my parents' house for the weekend, I forgot to bring shoes for Violet and at one point I had no diapers for Charlie. And when we went to pick up the perscription for my sinus infection, I realized that I had also lost my wallet.

Well, no big deal, I'm sure I just left it at the house. And when it didn't turn up there, I was sure that I had just left it at my apartment. But when I drove out to my apartment to look for it today and didn't find it there, either, I was stressed almost to the point of mental instability. I remembered the last place I had used it-- the Ghetto Kroger. I'm not applying that term liberally, either; it really is ghetto. There was a shooting there a few years ago. And on the day that I last had my wallet, I saw a giant cockroach crawl across the checkout belt and disappear under the cash register. The best part was that it wasn't even a Houston cockroach, it had a segmented body like one of those roaches from Madagascar. I kept thinking, "Okay, this store is so dirty that it spawned its own breed of cockroach. THAT is ghetto."

At least that disgusting image was burned so deeply in my mind that I remembered very clearly my last precious moments with my wallet--timidly putting my groceries, purse, and wallet in the bottom of the stroller, and walking home thinking that a giant roach was going to crawl out of one of those bags at any moment. So after searching my house, I drove along the path I had walked a few days earlier, and then went into Ghetto Kroger to see if it was in the lost and found.

Allow me to illustrate what I looked like at that moment. I was sick. I had unwashed hair and no makeup. I was wearing ripped sweat shorts and an old tee-shirt. Violet had snot running down her nose and refused to wear anything but her "Princess dress" which I'm fairly certain is made from an old tee-shirt and a pillowcase. She had no shoes. And I was pushing her and Charlie around in a shopping cart, asking for a wallet. I looked like a homeless woman.

When they told me it wasn't there, I just about lost it. I drove back to my parents' house thinking that I would never again allow Brandon to leave the house. That I would have to mooch off of people for the next two weeks because I had no cash, credit cards, or drivers license. That I wouldn't be able to call our bank and authorize Brandon's use of the credit card in France because I didn't even have our credit card number. That Brandon would be stuck in France without any money.

I called my sister and my mom to vent. I was freaking out. But something that my mom said made me think about checking the trunk of my car and voila... there was my wallet. A small miracle. But I still may never let Brandon leave the house again.