One Week 2 Weddings 1800 Mile Round Trip (and other amzing feats)

I saw this title from Aunt Donna on Facebook and thought it was cool so I stole it (and because I can't think of anything original either) but it captures our Holidays pretty well.

Last year we got the wonderful news that Kristan Bond our niece was getting married on the 22 of December and made plans to attend.  After that Chantel decided to change her name to Nowlen (that's pronounced KnowLan for anyone who doesn't know Brian yet, which means that pretty much all of my daughters have changed their last names to names that prove that spelling in English makes no sense at all).  We told her that she needed to plan her wedding in a way that wouldn't mess up Kristan's wedding.

So here was our schedule.  Karen, Linda, Brian and Chantel all left for Lake Jackson to arrive on Monday January 19th  to help with Kristan's wedding.  I stayed home because I didn't have enough time off to take off the whole week so I flew to Houston on Wednesday morning.  The ironic thing was that I was planning to drive to work on Tuesday so that I could get home early enough to visit with my mother Tuesday night before someone drove me to the airport Wednesday morning.  Monday that week work was canceled because of snow but usually the roads after a snow are terrible in Santa Fe and I didn't want to deal with the stress of driving up and I was feeling pretty cocky about silver water keeping me healthy so I took two days off sick leave which meant that I didn't go to work that week at all, but spent the first two day's at home.  (What does it say in Bible about pride?  Oh yeah pride goeth before the fall, but that's a story for later.  I'd planned to take a day of sick leave anyway but decided to take another because of the roads.)  Kiora was supposed to drive up for the wedding as well, but she and her kids were sick so she didn't come.  Karen and Chantel and it seemed like everyone wasa sick.

Karen, Chantel and Brian picked me up at the Houston Airport.  It was the smaller airport.  I was late getting off the plane because we were parked on the tarmac for half an hour while our slot was cleared out.  I was standing on the curb waiting for them to pick me up and Chantel called me to ask where I was and I said I was standing on the curb right as the van they were in drove up and Chantel and I were looking at each other about ten feet away.  The wonders of technology.  So I jumped in the van with Karen, Chantel and Brian and we drove about 100 miles to pick up Teda and Mark who had come and visited Mark's brother then we drove back to Lake Jackson.  The next day was Kristan and Zach's sealing and it was wonderful to see a new eternal family created.  Then we all went to lunch at a barbecue place and then we went back to Lake Jackson for the reception.

The next day we took off for Dallas, all 7 of us, Karen, me, Chantel, Brian, Teandra, Mark and Linda.  We were supposed to have two vans at this point but since Kiora didn't come we had only one van.  I was thinking that we needed to ask Donna and Greg to bring some of our stuff with them but Karen said that she could load everything.  Have I ever mentioned that Karen is the greatest packer in the world?  Now I think she she's a wizard like in Harry Potter with a tent that has an extra dimension.  She was able to pack everything and we were able to drive 6 hours to Sherman without killing each other.  This in itself is a testimony of the Gospel and that family's are forever.

We spent Christmas with Kiora's family over Christmas and it was a lot of fun.  It's always nice to have Christmas fall on a Sunday.  This year I thought was especially special that Pres. Monson said that we only needed to go to Sacrament Meeting.  It was very nice to take the Sacrament and remember the Savior in a special way on the day we celebrate His birth.

The next day, Monday, we drove back to Rio Rancho in two vans.  This time we had Kiora, Alex, Chio, Ryan, Karen, me, Brian, Chantel, Mark and Teda and the Gospel's still true.  Tuesday we had the Sealing of Brian and Chantel as an Eternal Family.  By this time Greg and Donna had made the trip from Lake Jackson to witness the sealing and help with the wedding (thus the stealing of the title for this blog), Shawn and Barry had come from Utah to witness the Sealing, Lisa, my sister had come from Arizona to witness the sealing.

It was a wonderful ceremony and Chantel and Brian were ecstatic.  However, I came down with a cold.  Remember the pride thing.

Then we had to prepare for the Friday reception.  Teandra did an amazingly miraculous job decorating the cookies and the cake for the wedding.  She was wonderful.  And she did an amazing hulu during the wedding for Chantel and Brian.  All the family gathered Friday for the decoration of the cultural hall at 9:30 AM.  We were extremely grateful for all the help from our friends and family in getting everything arranged.  (I'll get some pictures up.  I sorta promise.  This web stuff is not that hard but it can be confusing to figure it out.)

The Ring Ceremony and Reception was pretty awesome.  All of Chantel's sisters were there, and their friends.  Brian's brother was there and Brian's mother, friends and family.  There are always a lot of family and friends at these things but at this one there were more than usual because it was Christmas.  Also, Kristan and Zach showed up for the reception which was cool.  I told them that they had to hurry and tell Chantel and Brian all their marriage experience because they were married twice as long as Brian and Chantel were but they would never be in that position again.  It just seemed like everything aligned just right and it was a wonderful party.  Brian actually had to tell everyone to go home at 8:00.  It was kind of funny because I was talking to someone, who I was pretty sure was non-LDS, and I said it looked like the party wasn't dying and he said I would find out at 1:00 when I  was trying to get people to go home, and I was thinking that he obviously didn't know about LDS receptions.  Iwalani even said that it was her favorite reception, even better than hers.  That's a pretty high recommendation. 

That Sunday, Jan 1, 2012 everyone got to bless little Corry.  That Sunday night we'd invited the missionaries over for dinner and it was the first Sunday of the month so it was the night that we have our family over for dinner.  Brian still had his brother visiting and his mother came by and we invited her as well and we ended up having 15 people over for dinner that Sunday night.  Then we played "Catch Phrase" and that was a ton of fun. 

The only problem was that the cold that I'd caught on Tuesday hung on and I almost totally lost my voice on Friday, the day of the reception, then the cough started.  I'd hoped that I'd dodged getting sick this year but I got sick after hanging out with sick people for a whole week.  You know, sick people like my grand kids that I hold on my lap and play with (at least that's my excuse).  Saturday I tried to stop talking to everyone to handle the coughing then I didn't go to anything but Sacrament Meeting on Sunday so that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone, and that didn't work really well Sunday night during all the family game fun.

The long and short of the story is that we had a Holiday filled with family, friend and lots of traveling and everyone came through it sane and happy.  We went from a home filled with 15 people Sunday night to just me tonight.  Sadly one of Karen Aunts died over the holidays so Karen and Linda left to Utah for the funeral.  I'm home alone tonight with that crappy cold that I get every year, but I went to the doctor today and he said it hasn't gotten into my lungs yet, so it's not bronchitis but sinusitis or something like that.  That's good.  If I can get over the cold this week and only be sick for a couple of weeks I'm going to count this as a win for the silver water even though I did get sick.