November trip to Joe Town

I am, yet again, several posts behind on my blog. But I'm not skipping around this time. I'm gonna get us there. In the beginning of November we made a trip to Missouri for Nathan's brother getting married. It was a short and sweet family vacation/reunion. Now, let's just go ahead and acknowledge something right now; I don't do speedy overviews. Cutting my pictures down to 46 is my version of skimming. That being said....this is a long one.

Our flight out was very easy and even pleasant. It was not full so we got to take up two rows of seats. Most of the time the boys were in one and the girls were in the other. Thanks to excessive modern technology, everyone was well entertained.

Waiting in the airport while Papa gets our car rental settled. I was so glad to have a partner for this trip. In my mind, I'm done with one parent traveling. Shhhh.....don't rain on my parade.
yeah....he's cute.

This was not just a vacation, it was practically a reunion. Nathan hadn't seen any of his family or his hometown for 5 years. Thus this was his own trip down memory lane. At his folks' house he dug out his old bow and arrows and gave Levi a little lesson.
That's my manly man there.
The kids got to sit in Grandpa Neil's big ol' semi! They even got to pull the crazy loud horn.

We spent most of our time hanging out at Nathan's childhood house. One day we walked around all the land and heard old stories about Papa and all the uncles playing as kids in the woods.

Grandma Connie has herself a patch of pine trees in her front yard so the kids had allot of fun tunneling through them and playing hide and seek.
Here is the reason we made our trip home. Believe me when I say I took many many many pictures of Mike and Heather's vows. But I'm only sharing a few.

Heather got Mike a flower but she was too scared to put it on him. What better moment could two brothers share than this....?

I had the fun job of teaming up with my sister in law to try and capture every angle of this cute ceremony. For those who don't easily know, these are Nathan's parents looking on as his big brother Michael and his now wife Heather say their vows.

The 4 Shalz Brothers.

After the ceremony we took a little stroll in Krug Park to take some bride/groom shots. I've known Michael just as long as I've known Nathan and it was fun to do this for them.

This was Nathan's first time meeting his 3 and 1 year old nephews. After the ceremony we had a reception and Nathan and Landon got to know each other. Landon was very interested in Nathan's uniform and asked what every medal was for. It was quite cute to watch and held the whole room's attention as Nathan explained.
After a couple days of waiting for them, finally the horses who live next door to Grandma and Grandpa Shalz came to the fence to say hello.

Gracie and Papa spent lots of time feeding the horsies. But what Gracie really wanted was to be up close and personal. Luckily her country Papa was able to oblige.

So much love

Levi, who has fed these horses on previous trips, came out to chat for a bit.

Though this was a Shalz centered trip, we did skip over to my parent's house for one evening. Naturally it was a full house. 11 of the 12 cousins were together and ready to play. (Nikolas stayed home sick with his papa.)

As the hungry kids waited for their corn dogs to bake they sat at this table and perfected a huddle chant.

I'm not positive but we think it was something about "good food!"

I think it's been well established that Gracie loves her some babies. And baby Dalia is top on her list. She met her in July, fell in love, and has tried to find her own ever since. She was very happy to be with the real deal once again, and I don't think she left her side the whole evening.

I believe she is making sure we know...this is her baby.

Much to my (and Gracie's) delight we also got to meet the brand new Baby Jo while in town. This is my brother and sister-in-law's newest son and I was impressed and grateful that brave Angie made the drive to see us.

The kids decided at one point to put on a show. I really can't tell you what it was about. It was a tad chaotic and random. But, it was entertaining.

This was Gracie's contribution to the stage.

As Grammy has opened up her Tivo collection of dancing with the stars episodes to the interested grand kids, there was a dancing segmant of the play.
These three had a bit of confusion and perhaps arguing over who got to dance with Arianna. This was one of the compromises.
This was another....
I think in the end Levi may have wanted it more. He really gives a flare and commitment to his character that I'm not sure Nehemiah was willing to compete with. As you can see, Levi and Arianna took their dance number quite seriously. There were spins, dips and lifts. At one point she had a flower in her teeth. It was a magical cousin dance piece.

After so much cousin time, we hoped maybe the kids were ready for a quiet visit with Nathan's Grandma. Thank the Lord for smart phones...that's what really got us through this trip.

I was very impressed with Levi on this trip. He was mature and well behaved. He has very different roles between the two sides of cousins. In my family he's in the middle of the pack and he has to figure out how to play with that many kids who all kind of want to do the same thing. And on Nathan's side he is the oldest cousin and is instructed to be in charge and make sure the little ones don't get hurt or into trouble. It was a really successful trip and everyone had a great time.
On our last day, before our afternoon flight, we had one last Shalz gathering at one of Nathan's brother's house. Somehow I didn't get a lot of pictures of the Shalz cousins playing. Sometimes all I can do is just sit and my camera is simply too far away.

Here are the babies not really playing together. Just like babies do.


And then we flew home and zombied out for a day or two. It was a good trip. And congratulations to Mike and Heather Shalz.

the picture below is a staring contest. Just wanted to point that out cause Nathan looks pretty scary.