We're Back!

Last week was one of the the busiest and happiest times of our lives. Everything culminated last weekend when, amongst other things, the St. Louis Cardinals won the National League pennant!

(Cardinals fans young and old were head over heels to see the Cards win.)

Prior to the Cardinals making a trip to the World Series, we made a trip to Sparta, IL for our wedding.  We left D.C. on Wednesday and made the 14 hour drive to Sparta. It was an exciting drive knowing that in just a few short days, we would be married.   Also, there was some decent fall foliage.

(On the road again...)

The drive was uneventful.  We could not stop at Chick-Fil-A because Ben was concerned about the impact of waffle fries on his ability to button the pants of his suit for the wedding.  Mo decided to cuddle with the pinata.

When we arrived in Sparta,  it was awesome to see the house and yard ready for a wedding. The family had done so much work in preparation for the big day. We woke up Thursday and hit the road running. Everyone had assigned tasks, picking up the tables and wine, baking cakes, printing programs etc. Thursday evening we met Ben's mom and friend Francie for dinner at Ben's favorite establishment, Pizza Hut. We had a great dinner and headed back to the house to show Barbara the layout for the wedding.

Friday was a busy day. Dad and Steve headed to St. Louis to pick up the chairs, while Kelly and Ben headed to the church to start making spinach cornbread. We had decided to make our favorite cornbread recipe for the wedding. It  didn't seem like it would be that overwhelming of a task, however baking 10 pans of cornbread is harder than it sounds.

We continued to put up lights, hay bales, pumpkins and mums in the yard all day and by the rehearsal wedding, it was ready for a wedding! We quickly ran through the ceremony and then headed to the church for dinner. Most of Ben's family had arrived in time for dinner and it was great to see everyone so excited for our wedding. So many people made such an effort to attend our wedding and it meant so much to us to have the entire family there.

We headed back to the house to continue getting everything ready. Steve and Kelly spent 2 hours ironing/steaming table cloths while Ben printed all the programs. By the end of the night, we felt very prepared for the next day.

We woke up very excited to get married and celebrate with our family and friends. Before we could do that, there was still a lot of work to do. Fortunately it was a beautiful day and perfect for an outside wedding. As a gesture of our appreciation for my parents hard work and generosity, we bought them an "October Glory" maple tree. We decided to plant the tree on Saturday to commemorate our wedding day.

After lunch, it all started getting very real. Before we knew it, Ben was headed to the hotel to get ready and Kelly had to start getting her hair done. As it was getting closer to 5pm, Kelly would head into her parents room to look out the window at the the yard and see everyone arriving and taking their seats. It was great to see friends and family interacting and having a glass of wine before the ceremony. We had wanted the day to be very relaxed and fun and it looked like people were sharing that same vibe. Kelly finally put her dress on about 10 minutes before show time and ran into a stubborn button on the strap. With the help of all three bridesmaids, they fastened the button only minutes before 5pm. It was a fun few minutes in the front yard before we got started. Taking pictures in the same spot that Kelly had taken hundreds of pictures over her lifetime. Pictures on Kelly's first day of school, Easter, homecoming and prom dances, birthdays and now her wedding.

The ceremony was perfect. The sunlight and weather couldn't have been better and it a very happy moment for us and we were glad to share it with everyone.

The reception was just as we had planned. It was more like a bbq than a wedding reception and people seemed to embrace that. We had great food, a great band and most important, we had a pinata! It only took 3 swings to bust the pinata and all the kids went nuts over the candy.

We had lots of fun at the reception and enjoyed seeing everyone have such a good time. We danced and sang until around 11:15 when we played the final song, "Wagon Wheel".

After everyone had left, we spent about 30 minutes sitting in an empty backyard with just the fam. We went over the day's events and just smiled about how perfect everything was.

We spent Sunday morning with Ben's family at the hotel breakfast, chatting about the previous nights events. It was great to spend some quality time with everyone before they all went their separate ways. We headed back to the house for lunch and cleanup. It was a beautiful day and we spent most of it outside cleaning up the yard.

Sunday night was game 6 of the NLCS and the potential clincher for the Cardinals to go to the World Series. We were inspired by the Cardinal's celebratory beer bath and decided to have one of our own. We took advantage of still having some beer left in the keg and had our own beer bath in the yard.

Monday we took back the chairs to St. Louis and ran a few other errands. We visited Ben's grandpa and dropped off some leftover food from the wedding. We headed to Crown Candy Kitchen for lunch with Nick and Jen.  They had flown all the way from Oregon for the wedding and tour the St. Louis area a little. We wanted to show them what might be the best BLT in the world
.

(The secret is the obscene amount of bacon.)

We enjoyed the rest of the day in Sparta and prepared to head back to D.C. in the morning. It was hard packing up and leaving the family. We had had such a great experience this weekend and made so many good memories.  It really was a fabulous weekend.