Our Big Fat Family Vacation, part IV

And now, the final chapter in our saga...

For the few days that we were in California, we mostly hung out with the grandparents, caught up with a couple friends, visited John Paul the Great Catholic University (now accepting applications! tell your friends!), and soaked up some California sunshine.

And then, of course, there was the next wedding, starring Miriam as the flower girl once again.

She lurrrrrved this dress. I should have hemmed it an inch or two, but when she had her heels on it was far enough off the ground that I didn't feel it was necessary to go through the trouble of hemming the dress and the slip and trimming the net. Laziness is the mother of efficiency. :)

Joseph had recently discovered his fingers, which was a great help in keeping him entertained during the rehearsal dinner! :)

My two oldest friends, Christine and Anne Marie. I've known them for half my life -- they're the closest thing to sisters I've ever had.

Miriam and Aunt Tine have always gotten along swimmingly. :)

This gorgeous headband makes her look like a Hungarian princess. :)

H.R.H. Christine and her royal court. The dresses were all lovely, even if they were a nightmare getting altered! (all the bridesmaids received the wrong size -- caveat internet emptor!)

Miriam got to ride to the church in the limo with Aunt Tine!

Miriam takes her flower girl role VERY seriously. She couldn't help letting a tiny smile escape when she caught Aunt Katie's eye, though. :) (Dave and Katie were so good -- they took time off of their honeymoon to attend this wedding! It was fun seeing them as newlyweds!)

The father of the bride, who is also Jose Miguel! We all thought that was so cool when we found out -- AND his birthday is two days from our Joseph Michael's!

Hooray for Aunt Tine and our new Uncle Jimmie!

Miriam made out like a bandit with all her flower girl loot this summer. Aunt Tine has excellent taste in little girl-pleasing backpacks! Inside the backpack was a Barbie Princess coloring book, which I don't think Miriam lets Katie even BREATHE on, so sacred is it to her.

Katie got a pretty cool consolation prize too -- Littlest Pet Shop! She loves these things! I remember being a girl and loving itty-bitty things.

The grand entrance! Miriam with the ring bearer, who was the youngest of 6 (?) brothers. I should have gotten a picture of their table. It was a riot.

All little girls flock to the bride on the dance floor. Katie wanted to hold Miriam's hand, but Miriam maintained she had to hold her dress up (that's the whole point of wearing a long dress, right?). Christine made them hold hands, though, to make Katie happy. Tine's going to be a great mom. :)

After Miriam twirled around and held her skirt daintily and batted her eyelashes, one of the brothers couldn't resist any more and asked Miriam to dance.

Miriam confessed to Grandma later that that was her design -- she said she knew that if she looked cute enough, one of the boys would come over and dance with her. Joey was definitely willing! They looked very cute together. I just couldn't believe how conniving she was! I think Miriam is now in love. She's drawn at least half a dozen pictures of her and Joey dancing together with hearts over her head because "I just like Joey SO much and I wish we lived closer so I could see him again!" Next time we see Joey's parents we're going to have to discuss the bride price and betrothal ceremony.

A sure sign of a great party!

We're so happy for Tine and Jimmie -- they had to wait a very long time for this day.

The day before we left, we made another farewell trip to the beach.

My babies tend to sleep well on the beach. The warm sun, the fresh air, the sound of the waves.... mmm... getting sleeeepyyyyy.....

our little beachcomber. She STILL has sand permanently ingrained in this suit.

Ahhhh, how I miss this.... I finally took a dip along with Mr. Pickles and it was heavenly. I realized however how out of shape I am -- after just a few minutes battling the waves I was completely winded and had to come back in.

Of course, we were all properly toasted for the flight back. The girls weren't so bad, but Mr. Pickles and I had all our sunblock sand-blasted off by the waves -- WHY didn't we think to reapply? WHY? Toting tons of luggage around on a very sunburned shoulder is something I would definitely not recommend as a happy end to one's vacation.

Our flight back to Chicago went fairly smoothly. I'm not sure how this happened exactly, but I was stuck in a row with all three children while Mr. Pickles got to talk with grownups. It wasn't so bad, though -- I had absolutely no qualms about plugging the girls into their electronic babysitters for the whole flight, and only had to referee a couple fights about who accidentally pulled out whose earplugs. The only moment of excitement was the landing -- as we were about to touch down, the engines suddenly roared and we pulled back up sharply. That did it for Katie, who wasn't feeling so well anyway -- I had to scramble to find one of those airsick bags while Miriam went into hysterics begging to sit with Daddy. While we were circling around the pilot said we had to pull up b/c we were too close to another plane or something, so we had to wait for another opening. Finally we were able to land, but that landing was really rough. There were a lot of relieved passengers when we finally pulled into our gate.

Of course, this later landing pushed the rest of our schedule back too -- we had to wait longer to catch our shuttle to the hotel where our car was waiting for us. Meanwhile, Joseph chose this moment to grow out of the current size diapers we had for him, and went through two outfits and the moby wrap in quite a spectacular way. Fortunately he's my third baby so I had no self-respect to lose carrying around an orange-stained baby. FINALLY we got to our car, grabbed a quick dinner (the girls now recognize McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's on sight), and drove on to South Bend, where cousin Paul graciously offered their basement to us. We had a nice little visit with them, since everything had been so harried before the wedding. After a fabulous waffle-and strawberry breakfast we headed back to Steubenville for a couple extra days to break up our trip, and give Miriam and Edy a little more time together. We were pretty tired out from all our traveling of the previous days, so it was nice to have a little break before the final leg of the journey. When we finally left, Miriam and Edy were so depressed about their impending separation that they were well-nigh unbearable. :)

The last leg of the journey is a bit of a blur -- all I remember is that we took a slightly different route home to avoid the into-DC traffic. That was a nice diversion -- we passed north of the very tippy end of the Blue Ridge mountains, which was quite a spectacular view. And then we got home, unpacked, and slept for days! Seriously, it took about a week for us to feel close to normal again. We had a great time, though, and wouldn't have had things any other way! The trip was so busy, and full, and fun -- it was just so great seeing so much family in so short a time! What a blessing to belong to such a nice family. :)