Memorial Day weekend adventures

I now have a married sibling. The good news about this fact is that I now have a new sister which is great as the girl/boy balance in my family continues to shift with a granddaughter and now a sister-in-law. The bad news is having a married sibling makes me feel old. The wedding was up in northwest Indiana over Memorial Day weekend so we headed up north to make a long weekend out of it. We flew up there and Olivia did great on the flights. I was a little worried just because she's much more mobile now than the last time we flew and I didn't know how she would react to being cooped up on a plane for several hours. No problem-o. Flying up, she slept the entire flight. Flying back, she managed to destroyed an airline magazine, but it and a few other toys kept her occupied the whole time.

Now that my parents no longer live in northwest Indiana, we have few opportunities to visit Chicago anymore. So we flew up a few days early to spend a little time in the city. I love Chicago and always enjoy taking in the sites there. It was fairly cold for end of May weather. Before we left, I had to go out and buy Olivia jackets and sweaters so she would stay warm. Nowadays around Houston, she lives in tank tops, shorts and sundresses. We had a great time walking around the city and doing a little shopping.

Olivia loved exploring our hotel room and finding all the new and exciting things she could get into. Unfortunately for her parents, the new environment with it's different smells and sounds coupled with a different bed resulted in a baby that did not sleep very well for the duration of the trip. Hopefully the people in the rooms on either side of us were heavy sleepers. Otherwise, I'm sure they weren't sleeping well either.

Dining out also proved to be more wearing than I had anticipated. We have obviously dined out with Olivia before but those occasions are relatively infrequent so not that bad. However, traveling and eating all of your meals out at restaurants with a baby was not easy between feeding her, feeding ourselves, keeping her occupied and attempting to keep the table/floor around us relatively clean. All in all, she did really good.


Yum...ribs!

The wedding for my brother Brian and Jessica was beautiful. They had it at the same facility Geoff and I got married at eight years prior. The place has a large terrace outback which we used for the ceremony and then moved inside to the building for the reception. The day Geoff and I got married, the weather was perfect for an outside ceremony...bright blue sky, temperature in the low 70s...ideal. Unfortunately, it was not to be for Brian and Jessica. Shortly before the ceremony, a heavy band of storms moved through. There were even tornado sirens going off at one point beforehand. So, they had to move it inside. It was still beautiful though and the reception was a blast. I enjoyed getting to see all my family and much of my extended family as I don't see them very much living way down in Texas.