Alabamia!

Greetings from Home Sweet Texas!  We are back from our trip, and it was just as fun as I hoped it would be!  We got back late on Thursday night, and I've been recovering for the past three days - because even though it was super fun, road trips with young kids are not for the weak, and I've been TIRED!

I'm gonna break our trip into three posts - one for each state.  My title is "Alabamia" because that's how Ila says it.  I corrected her a few times, but then I gave up - partly because she wasn't catching on and partly because it's really cute when she says it!  "Are we in Alabamia yet?"

So the whole reason for our trip was because my cousin, Caleb, got married in Auburn, Alabama.

We left on Friday, July 5th at 6 am.

PAJAMA ROAD TRIP!  Pajama road trips are super fun until you're eating at an Olive Garden at 6 pm and you look homeless.

The kids did really good on the drive!  Usually I limit the amount of time they spend watching movies when we take long drives, but since we are trying to work our way through as many Disney movies as we can before our trip to Disney World, they watched movie after movie from Texas to Alabamia!  After our homeless Olive Garden dinner, we arrived at our resort in Opelika at 7:30ish pm.

Everybody was EXHAUSTED (it's amazing how tired you can get from just sitting in a car!), and we all fell asleep easily on Friday night!

When we booked our hotel for the wedding, we chose the Auburn Marriott Opelika Resort & Spa at Grand National solely because of their pool situation.  We knew the kids would have tons of fun there, and my brother and sister-in-law followed suit and stayed there too!

As soon as we woke up on Saturday, we put on swimsuits, went downstairs for breakfast, and then met up with Marshall's family at the pool!

James, Ila, Harrison, Eden

 Eden

My mom, Mark, and some of our family from Illinois ended up coming and hanging out at our resort as well, and while the kids swam, we all caught up with each other.  Around 1, we headed back to our room so that James could take a nap and we could shower and get pretty for Caleb's wedding!

So Caleb is an amazing chef!  He competed on Iron Chef as a sous chef to his boss (and their team won!), and he competed on the Spring Baking Championship in 2018 and made it to the finale episode.  Eden LOVED watching him compete each week, and she is a GIANT fan of his!  Prior to this trip, she hadn't seen him in about three years, and she was so excited to get to see him again!  It was a really nice wedding, and not only did Caleb get married, he did all the cooking for it AND made the cake!

It was such a fun evening!  Caleb is the baby of the cousins on my mom's side and the last to get married.  I'm so happy that we made the trip to see it and got a chance to visit with so much family at the reception!

Eden wrote Caleb a note telling him that she hoped he had a nice wedding, and she was so happy to give it to him and talk to him since his "tv debut".

Ok, so the year that Caleb was on the Spring Baking Championship, a guy named Nacho won.  He and Caleb became really good friends.  I was a HUGE Nacho fan!  Obviously I wanted Caleb to win, but Nacho seemed so nice and fun and funny, that when he won, I was still really happy with the outcome!  He was at the wedding, and I was eyeing him all night.  Dustin kept asking if I wanted to go talk to him, but I didn't want to bother him.  Towards the end of the night, Dustin spotted him and his wife leaving.  He told me, "Now's your last chance!"  I ran out the door, yelled "Nacho!", went up to him and introduced myself.  He was SO NICE!  I was a total fangirl and even asked if I could take a picture with him and his wife.  (His wife won the Spring Baking Championship another year.)

end of the night, outdoor July wedding, I was a sweaty mess!

The day after the wedding, my cousin, Jonathan, and his wife, Kelli, hosted a brunch at their house for all of us out-of-towner family members.  Marshall and his family had to leave early that morning to get back to Texas, but the rest of us cousins were there and even a few of our second cousins.

It's our tradition when we are together to line up in age order:

and height order:

and then we took a picture with all of our spouses:

Got one of the next generation too:

That afternoon, Dustin went and played golf with my cousin, Jonathan, and I took the kids back to the resort to swim some more.  My mom, Mark, my Aunt Kristi, and Uncle James all came too.

And thus ends a great couple of days and Part 1 of this trip!