Beaches, Babies, and Bodas*

This past week was a busy one! I spent the beginning of the week in Florida visiting with the fam. As I mentioned here, my sister Pam and bro-in-law Jeremy are getting ready to move to Fargo, ND, so we wanted to spend some good family time together before they left. I wanted to get a new family photo while we were all together, but my efforts were thwarted. There are, however, several pics from my time at home posted here.

While I was in Florida, I was REALLY hoping that my best friend Caroline would have her baby girl that was due on May 10th. Sadly for me, little Miss Anna Ryan was content to stay inside of her mommy until Friday, May 15th, so I just missed her! Lucky for me, her mommy is a fabulous photographer, so I know that there will be lots of pics to come! That is, if she can find time to take them between taking care of a newborn and chasing around her oh-so-cute-but-SO-active 2 1/2-year-old little guy Chris. Here are a couple of pics of her kiddos that I stole from her blog. Aren't they adorable?? Congratulations, Care and Mark!

(copyright of Caroline Nicole Photography)

I got back home on Thursday afternoon. On Friday evening, I got back into the car to head up to SC for a college friend's wedding. Fortunately, I just had to drive up to Greenville. From there, my college roommate Emily drove us over to Charleston and back on Saturday for the wedding. It was a long day, but fun to get to be there to see Amanda get married. Well, sort of... As it turns out, we made a little bit of a mistake in our estimation of how long we had to stop for lunch... Combine that with a couple of traffic jams and a little difficulty figuring out where to go once we arrived at the location and we arrived just in time to watch the procession out of the ceremony. While I was a bit disappointed to have missed the main event, it was easy to jump in for the beachside mingling following the ceremony before heading over to the reception. Here are a couple of pictures from the day:

Amanda near the beachside ceremony site

A mini-Chiles 100 reunion - Audrey, Em, and I

Amanda and Angelo's first dance

Amanda and I

Kristy (friend from Furman) and I

I got back home again early this afternoon in time to rest for a couple of hours before heading to church tonight. Even though I have had a week off already, I am glad to be off again tomorrow to recover before heading back to work on Tuesday!

(*Boda = wedding for all my non-Spanish lovers)