After a few relatively mellow days in Houston, things really picked up on Thursday.  This was the day before Rose and Temi's wedding.  The night before, Naomi's husband, Mike,  and son, Michael-Aidan, arrived in Houston, as did my brother, David, his wife, Kim, and their daughter and her girlfriend, Lindsey and Sidney.  Also, our oldest, Jo, and her husband Sam were also in town at this point.

While David and his family connected with us later in the day, the rest of the clan got together at Rose's soon to be mother-in-law's house earlier.  Here we worked together on a variety of last minute tasks for the upcoming nuptuals.  We filled lots and lots of envelopes with one dollar bills (which I will explain in my blog about the wedding day itself), and loaded a bunch of coolers into Sam's truck.  The coolers would be gifts to the guests at the wedding, complete with leftovers of the food.  Brilliant.

As Sue and I sat on the tailgate of Sam's truck watching our three daughters, three sons-in-law and grandson bustling around with a variety of chores, I was taken by how much joy they were all having workingh together.  I realized then I was witnessing one of the greatest moments of my life.  I am so proud and humbled by how blessed our family is.

Shortly after this, we converged on the venue where the wedding would be held for the rehearsal and it was gorgeous. It was the stuff of fairy tales and princesses, and it was here that my brother and his family joined us. Tammy, a long time family friend and Rose's first grade teacher also joined up with us here. After getting the usual run down of what the first part of the wedding would be like - walking in the bride, where people stand, etc. we had time to check out the second venue- where the African service and reception would be.  If the first room was beautiful, this one was beyond words.

Once we were all as prepared for the big day as possible, we went back to the hotel where David and family was staying.  There we spent a perfect Houston evening sitting outside on a patio laughing and eating lots of pizza and hot wings, and enjoying some wine. We knew we shouldn't stay up too late as the next day would be very full, but we didn't want it to end.  Eventually we headed out, and this time we stayed at Jona-Lynn's in laws' house, as Rose had already packed up for her honeymoon and was staying at the same hotel as everyone else.  

Then came the curve ball.  On our way cross the city, we got a call from Rose.  Temi's best man had just been contacted by the Air Force and had to report immediately back to Arizona that night!  Needless to say, the bride and groom were suddenly faced with some unexpected stress, and we really had no way to help except to pray that it would work out and noone would be too disappointed.  Although I'm sure he was missed, thenext day turned out to be nearly perfect in spite of this glitch.