A weekend in Nashvegas. MiPhone pics.

If you live in Tennessee, you most assuredly call Nashville at some point in time "Nashvegas", and I have no idea why. And if you have never heard that phrase, you are obviously not from our state. :) Actually, Gatlinburg would be the better comparison to Vegas because it is a wedding Mecca of sorts in the Smokey Mountains. Anyway, after my uncle passed away last Sunday, we did some traveling for the funeral this weekend. I took Friday off of work (the rest of my family took off Thursday), and Mr. C took off Saturday. Confused yet?

Since my uncle lived in Georgia, the visitation was held in Georgia for those friends and family who lived nearby. The funeral and burial were held in Tennessee because a lot of the family is from Tennessee, he grew up in Tennessee, and he was buried with my grandparents (well right beside them) also in Tennessee. Most of my family took off Thursday and Friday to drive to Georgia for the funeral. It was a seven to eight hour drive, and I honestly don't have days off anymore. =/ I took them all to have my baby last year. So...Mr. C & I took off Friday to drive up to the Nashville area for the funeral. My sister took five hundred pics, and I am hoping to get a lot of those from her, and burn a CD. Until then, I thought I'd at least post (so I didn't get behind) something with a few phone pics I took.

After the funeral, we headed to my cousin Shelly's house for what turned out to be a celebration of my Uncle Johnny's life. It was kind of odd that we were so happy, and I'm not sure happy was the word. I know several people weren't happy. However, I do think that we enjoyed seeing family members we hadn't seen in ages and rejoicing in the fact that my uncle is in Heaven with Jesus. For my husband, it was the first time he met a whole, whole lot of people in my family. He was funny afterwards saying, "Now which one was..." about whoever I was talking about. It meant a lot to me to take him to the my mother's childhood town, and it meant a lot to see him meet my family.

My cousin Shelly posted some pictures from our Celebration of Uncle Johnny's life afterwards on facebook tonight. So I graciously stole a couple. I plan to steal some more pictures when I have time. I'm actually taking a small paper grading break to do these. I'll add some more later on.

Here's all the "original" cousins from my mom, my Uncle Barry, and my Uncle Johnny:

Bottom (LtoR): Keren, Rebecca Ann

Middle: Dale (my brother), me

Next to top: Jessica, Shelly

Top: Jennifer, Eddie

Here's my cousin Shelly, me, and Micah

This pic is from before when we left (out of order--sorry!) as Mommy was trying to watch her Bible study the night before. I'm doing a Jean Stockdale study through Bellevue's MOMS group. I attended MOMS while I was a stay at home mom during my nine months off. I loved it so much, I am doing it with her in spirit and watching podcasts from home. Micah wanted to learn about Jesus, too.

Ok, onto Saturday. Let me preface this picture by saying I'm not a "sleep in the bed with my child" kind of person. I am not going to comment on that on the internets, so do what you want. For us, it has just worked a whole lot better to not worry with the co-sleeping thing. This was our first time in a hotel room with the baby, and I forgot his socks. Yes, yes I did. Therefore, we had no socks. And I am a huge nut about germs and hotels. So when he got sick of his pack-n-play after he woke up, I dumped him in bed with his daddy while he drank his sippy cup. Then we just let him play in the bed for a while as we got ready for our outing with friends in Franklin, Tennessee.

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I took this picture, and Micah moved. I was so mad that Micah moved, but I can't get over the preciousness of it. So I'm posting it anyway. Micah was trying to wake up his Daddy, but then he kind of just went over there, sat by him, and curled up with his two fingers. Mr. C was just out of it, and I thought it was a really cute picture! :)

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We spent Saturday with Mr. C's college best friend (and roommate) who lives in the Nashville area. I'm not sure why I didn't take a picture of him holding Micah for the first time. So silly of me. In fact, the last time we saw Heath, Micah was two days away from being born. I was as big as a house. So he had fun playing with Micah. We basically ate lunch, walked around downtown Franklin for several hours, and I just let the boys play catch up. Mama was on baby duty, but it wasn't too bad walking through antique stores. I stayed with the "big boys" the whole time, and they were gracious to keep walking around Franklin so that Micah wouldn't get too restless. (If the stroller stopped, he was trying to climb out of it.)

On the way home, we stopped at a rest area mainly so Micah could get OUT. He'd been in a stroller or held for most of the weekend. The kid was ready to climb, crawl, and walk around. We had an enjoyable half hour or hour just watching precious play. And I snapped this picture. Oh, the cuteness is just too much!

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We were home by 7:30ish, when I fell out in the floor from exhaustion and started massive amounts of laundry. Sunday morning we went to my parents' church for the commissioning of friends from Union who are going to become missionaries in Asia starting in November or December. They got married after college, she was a sorority sister, and it was a sweet service to watch some longterm friends go off with their four kiddos to serve Christ abroad. They were on staff at my parents' church for many years, so my parents even got to know them.

My MOPS group meets on Sundays at our church, and I am in love with that. I basically don't miss all my mom stuff. That makes me so happy! I get to have fellowship with other moms, there is a month "moms night out", but I do miss the kids' day out stuff. Oh, well. At least I am not totally disconnected from other stay at home and working moms.

Of course, we showed up to church as a TORNADO SIREN was going off. Why, oh why, didn't I check the weather? Probably would have stayed home. So I had to get my little man out in the monsoon. It worked out ok, but the nursery workers were camped out in the middle hallway with lots and lots of small babies while we met in a random spot not too far from that to try to still have our MOPS meeting. Fun times! Then I headed home after MOPS in the monsoon b/c I was too tired to stay at church.

Hope you had a great weekend! Here's to TRYING to keep this site updated. It's a start.