The Festivities Begin

First of all, let me say how grateful I am for my wonderful in-laws for making this trip with us!  Michael's dad drove and his mom entertained Paul for us.  They let us really enjoy ourselves for the weekend AND we got to spend time with them!  We are lucky to have them!

And Paul is a lucky kid, too -- his Mimi knows just what he likes and you can tell he adores her!  She also brought him fun little presents to open in the car, as well as a DVD player and movies and plenty of graham crackers, which are Paul's favorite.  We left at 4:45 a.m., and Paul was wide awake until around an hour later, when he and I both were able to take a two hour nap.  I don't know how everyone else functioned without one.  Paul did great and I realized how good of a toy the cars were when we stopped and he was able to run around chasing them.  Paul started to get a little fussy near the end, but luckily, Mimi knew just what to do -- she started tossing up his little Spot stuffed dog (he said "ruff ruff" a lot this weekend!) pretending she couldn't catch it and dropping it.  He thought it was the funniest thing!  He was cracking up.

Action shot -- I love Paul's great belly laughs!

We got to our hotel with enough time to take a nice shower (it had been almost a thousand miles) and get ready for the rehearsal! It was wonderful to see our friends again!  We have missed them so much!  Abbye and I spent a decent amount of time helping decorate.  (Ok, so everything was already set up and we just followed instructions and talked a lot, but we did that well, at least!)  Everything was so detailed and so special for the bride and groom!  They did just about everything themselves, and there were lots of personal artistic details.  I especially loved how each table for the reception was decorated with vintage cameras, books, and vintage Florida stuff -- we had a cool alligator cookie jar at our table, while other tables had oranges or horse shoes and horse figurines.

Abbye and Paul reunited!

The lovely bride-to-be and her groom.  :)

Bill and Abbye with Paul.

After the rehearsal and set-up, we picked up Michael's tux and headed back to the hotel to relax a little and get Paul settled before heading out to the rehearsal dinner.  When it came time to say bye to Paul, he lunged for Mimi and didn't look back!  I was happy he was ok, but I was still a little anxious about how he would do the rest of the night.  (Although Paul reportedly did well!)

The dinner was held at a neat restaurant called The Hangar, which was attached to an airport in downtown St. Pete.  It was really intimate with only the families and bridal parties invited.  Quinn even made a sweet slideshow with pictures of him and Erika starting as babies.  They were pretty adorable babies! 

Abbye, Erika and I.

I love how Mallory photobombed this series of pictures.  :)

I love the fans!  So cute!

We enjoyed ourselves so much at dinner, we were reluctant for the night to end.  So we talked Abbye into taking us to her old workplace, the fabled Dairy Inn.  We got some delicious ice cream and sat outside talking for a while.  I always knew I missed them, but being around them made me realize how much!  We had such a great time, and we still had the wedding day to look forward to!