Going back to our roots

(Lauren, that post title is for you! :)

We’re back from a very short trip to Grand Rapids, and man was it a great one!  I took no pictures on my camera-NONE!!-so these are all borrowed (thanks cousins!) or taken with my phone. 

Our quick visit was centered around Brett and Emily’s wedding, he’s the 7th out of 20 cousins to marry, and it was such a blessed day.  You can tell they are so in love!  Here’s the entire Jim Wiersma family with the bridal couple-and Max and Wes!  Jack snoozed before the ceremony started (and through most of it!) and Sam played during the reception. Jack and I each got a cupcake.  He really enjoyed the icing off of his then looked at mine and said, “mommy, you hafa share!” We also scored some ‘Laura cookies’!  My aunt makes the most delicious cookies, and she made 175 of them for the reception!!  Yes, they are that big!  Brett, if you read this and you have any leftovers, we’d love for you to send them down south!!  Only kidding-kind of. Jack loved spending time with Kenzie again.  She was even the lucky one to take him to the bathroom on a few occasions.  Thanks again, Kenze!! And we thought he’d fall asleep on the way home, so we changed him into his jammies.  Notice the undies hanging out of his pull ups?  He would not take the ‘super heroes’ off and I didn’t have any spare wedding attire incase of an accident.  We compromised.  And he didn’t have any accidents! (see the note about sweet Kenzie above!)But let’s back up.  The plane ride, both ways, went better than we imagined.  Sam was his usual sweet self, Jack was excited about it and loved the iPad, with grandma, and Kendall did great, too.  She had a brief period where she was NOT HAPPY on the way there, but after that, she handled it like a pro!  On the way there, Jack told me he had to go to the bathroom, and I went into airplane-bathroom-germ-central-freak-out mode and almost told him to potty in his pull up.  I rose above (with AB waiting for me at our seat to cover us both head to toe!) and we headed back there.  As soon as we got in the tiny lavatory, I went to put him on the (wiped down and fully lined) potty, and he said, “Mommy, don’t put me on dat ting!”  So we left.  And he held it until we got to the airport.  Is that much better?  We had a number of public restroom potty experiences this trip, so I’m starting to figure out the best way to do this.  Oh, and he did potty on the plane on the way home.  Brave boy! We played with grandma-great a lot, but had very little time with grandpa-great.  We’re totally going back toward the end of the summer.  I miss G&G so much already!I rode in the back seat with my boys for the first time, and yes, it was sweater and blanket weather up there!  It was so nice! We went to Arnies for breakfast before the wedding, party of twenty, and even got to Face Time with Lisi!  She has a really great summer job in Colorado, so we missed having her with us but loved seeing her and visiting this way.  Gotta love the iPhone! So there you have it.  Three nights and two days with these great people and many more.  I am truly blessed with the most wonderful family!  Those of you who have your family close by, squeeze them tight and count your blessings!