Joe and Annie's Wedding

Two weeks ago we were in Virginia for my cousin Annie's wedding. We had such a great time! We headed out on Thursday and came back on Monday. We stayed at a great place called the Homewood Inn Suites. They were so great there and the rooms were awesome. They had breakfast every morning and the first night we were there they even had free dinner!
My whole family traveled together Thursday morning. It was awesome because the flight was only half full so we were able to spread out. Stella did pretty good on the plane and even took a little cat nap. She had fun playing with the buckles, if you can imagine that. Nora did great too. She did some awesome writing on the plane as well. She made a little book and I am so impressed with her writing. Thursday after we got settled we all headed to a local Mexican Restaurant for dinner. There was around 20 of us, which was a lot of fun. They had very yummy margaritas. I ended up going to the ER that night with Stella, but that is in my previous post ;)
Friday I stayed back with Stella while Peter and Nora went on a whirlwind tour of DC with Uncle John, Uncle Scott, Aunt Boo, Allison, Jalen, Uncle Mike and Danny. They had a fun time and my previous post was about their tour. While they were gone, Stella and I went to the Mernah's house and then went and saw Annie and Joe's apartment and had lunch. Friday evening was the rehearsal dinner. It was fun and at a cool location. They had it at a train museum and Joe's parents did all of the cooking, which was amazing! We had fun hanging out and playing.
Saturday was the big day. We went swimming for a bit in the morning and then all started to get ready. The wedding was just beautiful and Annie was absolutely gorgeous. We then headed to the reception which was at a firehouse. Everything was so cute and rustic. It reminded me of my friend Valerie. We had so much fun dancing. We danced most of the night until Stella couldn't go any more. She was done. She made it until 9:30 and that was the 3rd night in a row of staying up late so she had had it. We went back and put the girls to bed and waited for the rest to return. We all partied some more in the awesome lobby/bar area of the hotel. We laughed a lot at how silly everyone was and that one guy called me Devie and said he loved my braces. Pretty hilarious!
Sunday we hung out and went swimming and laid low. We just visited with everyone and had a nice time doing just that. On Monday our flight was delayed and we headed to the Mernah's house to wait. We were able to watch Frozen and by the time that ended we headed to the airport. We had such a great time with family and I was sad to see it end. It makes me miss them all so, so much! We were all ready to be back in our own beds though. The girls shared a pull out couch and had to fall asleep in our bed first, but overall staying in a hotel wasn't that awful, harder than I thought, but not bad.
These are just a few from our weekend!

Washington DC

Two weeks ago we went to Virginia for my cousin Annie's wedding. While we were there my Uncle John took a group out sight seeing and Nora and Peter went with them. They did a whirlwind DC trip in a day. They had so much fun! Nora was very excited to go see the White House and she thought she was going to get to see the president. That makes me laugh. They went to the Lincoln Memorial, Capitol, White House, Air and Space Museum, and Natural History Museum. Jalen and my cousin, Danny, got to try freeze dried ice cream sandwich while at the Air and Space Museum.
While at the Capitol the police officer let them go up to the top even though groups are not normally allowed to go up. Nora kept saying their group was special and the police officer called her 'Daisy' because she had flower pants on. She said it was neat and he gave them all stickers and had pictures with them.
At the Natural History Museum she got to see a T-rex and triceratops as well as a saber tooth tiger, giant squid and mammoth. I swear she is going to have something to do with animals when she grows up because she loves them. Here are some pics from the tour.

Allergic Reaction

So on Wed. February 25th, Stella woke up with a really bad rash/hives. I freaked out a little bit because Peter was out of town, we were leaving the next day for D.C. and I had my teacher of the year interview at 8:00. Panic mode set in. Luckily I have an awesome mom who helped me out and went into work late, so I could go to my interview. I then got an appt for Stella with our pediatrician. I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I had done differently or if she had been exposed to anything different. When we got to the dr. she knew right away that it was an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin she had been on the week prior for strep. Funny little thing with amoxicillin though is that it takes 7-10 days to react. It is an inside out rash and takes a while to surface. The poor baby was so itchy and red. The only thing we could do for her was to give her benedryl. So we started dosing her the benedryl every 4 hours. We got to D.C. and it wasn't getting any better. Thursday evening it got so bad and she had a 102 fever to go with the rash. I made the decision to take her to the ER because there was something they had to do. Boy was I wrong!!! They didn't do anything for her. They said it had to work its way out and it could take another 5 days! My poor baby! They did say to give her ibuprofen with the benedryl and that would also help with the discomfort. By Friday morning her skin was bruising because the rash was so bad. It is just miserable when you cannot help your little one feel better. It took until Saturday evening for her to start acting like her Stella self. She was still red, but acting better. Today she is good, has a few spots appear every once in a while, but she is totally acting normal. Here are some pics to see how red she got and how swollen her eyes were.