"Over here is my brother Ted, his wife Melissa, and their children Anita, Diane and Nick. Over here my brother Tommy, his wife Anzie, and their children Anita, Diane and Nick. And here, my brother George, his wife Freda, and their children Anita, Diane and Nick."

For those of you who do not know, I have a very large family.  And we are very close.  Many people may see their "extended" family once a year.  I do not understand this behavior.  My "extended" family is not the same as everyone else's.  Reason:  My mother is the last of THIRTEEN kids.  Big families always seem to stay closer longer.  By that I mean (instead of just siblings and maybe first cousins being close to each other) I have first, second, and third cousins that I am very close to.  Another reason for that is:  My mother is the LAST of 13 kids.  Because my mom is the baby of the family, some of her older siblings ended up being more like parents to her since some of them were married and having kids of their own (or about to) by the time she came along.  Which means for me that I have first cousins that are the same age or older than my parents and second cousins that are closer to my age.  I could talk about my family forever!  Ever seen "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"?  That's us, except not Greek.  :)  It's horrible because everyone is wrapped up in everyone else's business, and it's wonderful because everyone is wrapped up in everyone else's business.  I love it.

This was my first family reunion as a married woman!  And because of this I get gifts now!  My aunt brought all the married ladies these cute key-chain teacup tape measures!  I knew I got married for a good reason.  :)

This is the view from my aunt's lake house where the reunion was held:

And there I am in the lake.  I have decided I am a pool kinda girl.  The lake was fun, but I like clean water without animals in it better.

This was a REALLY good restaurant we ate at.  It has a museum right by it.

The Dinner Rules

My lovely husband was pretty full at this point.  You can see it in his eyes.  This is (from right to back) my mom, my cousin Ben, my aunt who I call Maw Maw Liz, and my other cousin Alyssa.

This was in the gift shop across the way.  I seem to have a lot of pictures of me in phone booths and cages.

My cousins Morgan and Bree went out on the lake and picked some really pretty water lilies.  Bree was too busy to have her picture taken.  ;)  FYI, water lilies are slimy.

My proud cousin Ben and his bass he caught.  I don't think anyone else caught a bass while we were there.  I tried using his lure after this, but alas, I still caught nothing. :(

These are some of my cousins (except my mom in the back).  Poor Bree was worn out and pretty sunburned.

The Beautiful Courtney  :)

My beautiful cousins with my handsome husband

Fighting over a kiss.  I can't blame 'em.

The Beginning After the Initial Beginning of the Second Beginning--Our House!

Our First House!  *squeals*  It is the cutest little house you'll ever see!  The following pictures show the progression of what it started as and what it has become... I actually do not have current pictures so lamps and my pretty bathroom stuff won't be in these but I might add pictures from the site I bought them from for now.  :)

This is our bedroom.  This is a weird angle so it looks teeny tiny but it's not.  They stripped all the wallpaper.

This is part of the living room.  Notice the floors for later.

This is a view from the living room to the kitchen AND of my "laundry closet" that was added on just for me because I have too many clothes. :)

Notice floor again.

This is the kitchen with the beautiful new floor!

This is the finished closet and cabinets that are over the washer and dryer.

I was too late to get a good "before" picture of the bathroom but this is partially done so it counts I guess.

Our bedroom again and......

Wow!  Look at those floors!!  They're shiny!  They're gorgeous!  Drew used a lot of words I didn't understand to explain to me what all had to be done to these floors, but basically it meant it was alot of work.

Living Room

The pretty-much-finished kitchen... and my daddy.

The "finished" bathroom.  Minus my decor...

These accessories aren't NEARLY as "ugly green" as they appear here.

Yay!  Back from the honeymoon!  Drew is carrying "us" over the threshold of our house.  The one of us going in the door is blurry.

To get a little sidetracked for a minute, these are the pictures from the snow.

Back to the house.  This is the first piece of furniture that went in our living room.  We had no where to sit for the first month or two but my desk was beautiful!  ;)

And finally our beautiful couch, sofa, chair... came in!

My parents wouldn't visit us for a while because they had no where to sit.  Sooo, we decided we better get some furniture.  That's my chair.  I love my chair.

The Beginning after the Initial Beginning--The Honeymoon

Don't worry, all of my blogs are not going to start with "The Beginning..."  But with all these new experiences expect at least the first three to start that way. :)

Originally we were planning on taking a cruise to the Caribbean for our honeymoon, and although that would be fun and new, we decided against it.  The decision was two-fold.
1. We found out we had inadvertently scheduled the exact same cruise (even the same boat) as that of our church's annual Ministers and Wives Cruise.  While seeing many of our friends would have been great, we concluded that maybe a honeymoon was not the time to take that opportunity. ;)
2. Drew has never been out on the ocean before and, while it is unlikely that he would, we did not want to find out whether he gets sea sick or not.


SO, I told Drew I wanted a cute historic type place with downtown stores and coffee shops and brick/cobblestone roads with a river walk.  Then he showed me Savannah, Georgia.  It was perfect!  Everything I asked for!

The hotel we stayed at was wonderful.  They had chocolates and Sparkling juice in our room when we arrived.

 

  

 

 

Failed attempt at couple shot.  I forgot I had the camera zoomed in.

 

This was a wonderful cafe right down from our hotel. It was a cafe/art gallery. I had the best mushroom sandwich there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The stairs that tried to kill me.

This is the "Waving Girl."  Wonderful story about her which you can read about here if you're interested.

 

 

 

These are balancing dragonflies made out of bamboo I believe.

This is coming over the bridge to Tybee Island

This was at Fort Pulaski. My husband is an excellent cannon operator.

 

 

 

The Tybee Island lighthouse

Aww look!  First time I ever signed my (our) name officially!  :)  This was the guest book in the lighthouse.

This is the view from the top of the lighthouse.

My husband is obsessed with taking pictures of birds.  Although I think I actually took this one, it was his idea. :)  And yes it really was that close and I squealed nervously the whole time I was trying to get the picture.

Poor horseshoe crab.  I'd never seen one outside of an aquarium!  Drew turned it over and it looked like a spider.

The other end is in California and I will be sure to upload the picture of that once we go there. :)

This is Forsythe Park back in Savannah

I absolutely love these trees.

As you can read, this is The Pirate's House.  It is believed to be the oldest pirate hang-out in the U.S.

 

This is where Forrest Gump sat in the opening "sitting on the bench" scene.  He would have been on the other side of that bush facing the capitol.

This was the free ferry across the river to Hutchinson Island.  There was some kind of music convention so the line was very long to get back.  Little did we know that all the island consisted of was and convention center and a hotel.

This was the inside of the Savannah River Queen.  I forgot to get a shot of the outside.

This was the Chart House.  We ate here our last night in Savannah.  It was very nice but confusing because there were 3 levels so we came in from the top, went to the bottom for the hostess' desk, and back up one level to be seated.  I didn't know whether to go up or down by the time we finished.