Oh the Fun We've Had!

Last weekend Brandon's brother Seth got married.  Despite being from two large families, Brandon (one of nine) and I (one of five) haven't attended any family weddings (or any, for that matter.  I guess we have even fewer friends than I thought) since we were married over nine years ago.  Brandon had one sister get married two years ago, but she chose to get married on 11-11-11.  Which is a pretty awesome wedding date, but it was just after Joseph was born.  I did point out, however, that I was pregnant before she got engaged and chose a date.  I'm very diplomatic like that.

So when Seth started circulating the possibility that he might be getting married, I started looking up plane tickets to Seattle.  Once, long ago, this would have been a Big Trip.  Seattle, after all, is all of the way on the other side of the continent of North America, three whole time zones away.  My definition of reasonable travel, however, has been warped all out of any reasonability and will continue to go downhill after we spend four days traveling to Dushanbe in a few months.  

But since travel is no thing to me, we very happily planned an extended weekend jaunt to Seattle.  My brother lives in Seattle, so we decided to have a two-for-one and visit him too.  Even before I started pricing out tickets I planned on leaving the four oldest children, and after I started calculating totals into mid-four figures, I definitely wasn't going to bring anyone who required their own seat.  Thankfully my wonderful aunt and her husband (the same aunt who came to my rescue at three am) actually consented to take all four of my crazy little monsters beautiful, well-behaved children for four days and nights.  I won't lie that maybe that was the best part of the whole trip.  I'm even more excited for my little brother to get married in March because I'll get have to be gone even longer.

And as if abandoning my four oldest wasn't enough freedom, I actually joined SitterCity (yup.  Paid the money.  Brandon made me) just so that I could hire a complete stranger (who had a background check) to come and watch Eleanor at our hotel room while we partied at the wedding.  Isn't money a beautiful, wonderful thing?

This was my first six-hour, sit-down dinner, speeches and dances and cake-cutting wedding and I have to say that it was awesome.  Mormons tend to have toned down affairs, more of an in-and-out style reception (Brandon's sister joked that she wanted a drive-through wedding where the guest would hand in the present and someone would hand them back a hotdog) for a variety of reasons, one of them being that we're cheap.  When you have to finance three or four of the things you tend to err on the side of simplicity.  

For this wedding, however, we showed up at 3:00 and didn't leave until after 9:30.  There were speeches (which were all amazingly wonderful.  I really wish that someone had said those things to me at my wedding).  There were toasts.  There were pictures.  There were more speeches.  There was a very tall cake.  And there was dancing.  I had warned Brandon that he wasn't going to get away this time and he didn't believe me.  But he should have.  And now he has no excuse for the next Marine Ball.  We had a great time.

Seth and Emily, of course, were handsome and stunningly beautiful (respectively) and Seth smiled more than all of his brothers combined.  The first time I met Emily was at the Sherwood family reunion in July and I was incredibly impressed when she jumped right into the craziness without batting an eye.  One afternoon I wandered to the upstairs great room to find her deep into a game of Risk with assorted nieces and nephews and nary an adult in sight.  Teagan and I have held the sister-in-law club with just the two of us for the last nine years.  You'd think with six boys we'd have members right and left, but we've stayed small for far too long.  But the wait was worth it.  I can't think of a better fit for Seth and a more wonderful sister-in-law to join the insanity.  Congratulations, Seth and Emily!!