Trip to South Texas (October)

On the weekend of October 5th my older sister Tracey married the man of her dreams and we came down to South Texas to attend the wedding.

Author's Note: It should be said that her name is actually spelled Tracy (no 'e') and she is not really my sister.  However, she was Kimberley's (my actual older sister) best friend when she moved to Sinton and was effectively another sister to me.  All of the daughters in my family have names spelled with 'ey' (Kimberley, Shelley and Kelley) therefore Tracey's name had to be conformed to the Bryan family norm.  She doesn't mind. It isn't her fault her parents misspelled her name.

The wedding was late Saturday afternoon at the beach in Corpus Christi with the reception following in Portland. It was hot. I had no intention of dragging my two munchkins out there, so they stayed with Lolo in Sinton while Jimmy and I actually got to pay attention to the vows and enjoy the reception.  The drive down was pretty good, considering Olivia isn't overly fond of her carset at this point in her young life. I don't think the crying ever lasted longer than 15 minutes at a time. Somehow I didn't take any pictures of the wedding or reception, but trust me - the bride was beautiful, the groom was happy and a good time was had by all.

The calm after the storm. Such beautiful silence.

Beautiful, beautiful silence.

Nathan and Popo hanging out on the floor at Lolo's house.

On Sunday we went to worship with my mom at the little church of Christ in Mathis where she has been attending. Somewhat coincidentally, my mom's best friend Virgina's son Justin (got that?) is the preacher there.  It was strange for me to listen to him preach since I remember him most as a crazy ball of energy and always into something when he was a little boy. His older brother, J Ross, is one week older than I am and Justin is only a year or so younger than Kelley (I think). Being that best friends had kids at the same time, there are all kinds of embarrasing pictures of J Ross and I, including the dreaded bath tub picture (sorry, folks, that one's going to stay off the internet, thank you very much). If we stay in Katy long enough I'm sure we'll eventually get something similar with Nathan and/or Olivia and their friends. Ah, memories.

Anyway, after worship we went to my Grandma/Mom's house for lunch.  We asked my Grandmother Sheila to come to worship and lunch too so we could see her without having to drive all over South Texas. Since she was so handy and both my sisters were there, we decided to get pictures of her with all of the great grand-kids. We would have taken similar ones with Memaw, but she insisted that she had a cold and shouldn't get near the babies. I did get one of her holding Olivia though. I also got a picture of "the Maries." I think I've mentioned before that all of the first-born daughters on my mom's side have the middle name Marie starting with my great-grandmother Artie Marie Mason. Olivia isn't technically my first born, but she's my first daughter, so I went ahead with the tradition.



Olivia and Gigi (Memaw, or Grandma Bryan)

(Left to Right) Breydon, Olivia, Great-Grandma Sheila, Nathan, Tyley, Allen and Chance. Not the best picture ever, but at least they are all looking in the direction of the camera.  Not an easy task with the kids ages ranging from 10 years to just under 3 months!

Four generations.

Sisters!

We enjoyed spending time with my sisters and Nathan really enjoyed playing with his cousins. Looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas when we will hopefully all be together again! Sorry about the quality of all of these pictures to follow.  The lighting in my grandmother's house is dim and we were trying to capture moving targets.  Somehow we didn't get any pictures of the big boys.  I think they were on the porch watching TV or playing games.

Tyley and Nathan playing

Tyley can hold her own!

But Nathan eventually wins the tickle battle

Nathan and Chance.  Could they be much cuter?!

Yes. Yes, they can.

Nathan throwing the ball.  There was no dog chasing the ball. Nathan said he was playing baseball.

It was an exhausting weekend.  We actually stayed Sunday night at Grandma's house instead of driving home since neither Jimmy nor I could guaranty we would stay awake while driving. Mom was horribly upset to have her grandbabies (and big babies) all to herself for a little longer.