I owe ya one

So... let's see. Last we spoke I mentioned that Ryan and I were heading to St. Simons Island, GA for a wedding that I was going to photograph. Well, that was almost 3 weekends ago so I guess I have some catching up to do.
The Thursday before we left there was some serious packing to do, and rather than it be all scattered everywhere I sent the boys off the the Elton's pool to go swimming and I stayed home and got most of our stuff ready. Friday I took a half day and after I got off work ran some errands and as soon as Ben was up from his nap at daycare I went and picked him up. I got the car mostly packed up before I went to get him, so we only had to go home for Ally basically. Me, Ben and Ally headed over to Nana & Poppy's and no one was there yet, so I started to unload the car of Ben and Ally's things, they got to have a 2 night sleep over! The longest we'd been away from Ben! Anyway... in the process... I got locked out of the house. AGAIN. Only this time Ben, Ally and my keys were in the house! Ben shut the door, that wasn't unlocked when I walked out, and yes- locked it somehow. I wasn't super concerned because luckily I had my phone with me, and Ryan was on the way in like 2-3 mins. So we laughed and I joked with Ben. It was pretty funny to hear him screaming "Mommy! Open the door!" to me from inside the house. I tried to talk him through unlocking the door but he didn't understand. Oh well, Ryan came and had a key and opened the door up. We just laughed!
So we left Ben and Ally that night and drove to Brunswick, GA which is just outside of St Simons and is about 4-5 hours south, near Savannah. We were very safe but saw about 2 or 3 accidents on the way down- one on the opposite side of the highway I'm so glad we weren't on because it was backed up for MILES. We're not sure if it was a fatality, but there was a helicopter there to pick up patients and people on stretchers! Yikes! We said a prayer that they would be okay!
Saturday morning we got up and headed to the Lighthouse where the wedding was going to take place and scoped out possible picture spots. We then met up with the Kranendonk family (a very large one at that!) and went to the beach! We didn't go for too long, but it was long enough! Some is better than none! We found a lot of sea creatures under the sand... not scary ones though. We played with Sand Dollars that were still alive and other fun shell-life-like things!
We went back to our (kind of dumpy... okay REALLY dumpy) hotel and showered up for the wedding. Holy crap it was hot that day. SOOOOO hot. And humid, and stormy looking. Luckily it all panned out even though all of us almost passed out from heat exhaustion it was a very nice wedding and we got some nice shots. That night, after the wedding we went swimming with Jared and Kaela and Noelle (Jared, Noelle and the bride are all siblings. Ryan pretty much grew up with them and I know them from church) at the hotel pools, in the rain! All of us happen to have 2 year olds but all of them were being babysat by grandparents at the time (Ben obviously back home with Nana & Poppy), and we felt so liberated! So much so that we went out to eat at IHOP and closed it down! We closed down an IHOP! We stayed out so late! All of like 12am... but for three sets of parents with 2 year olds- that's late! It was super fun!
We headed home Sunday to go get Bubba (Ben) and Ally. We missed him a lot. It was GOOD for us to be away though to be just us with us and not be mommy and daddy. We kept looking back in the car to see if he was okay... and remembering he was just fine with Nana and Poppy. We laughed a lot, listened to our music as loud as we wanted... slept as much as we wanted. It was good. And we didn't want to subject him to that pressure of a wedding, although because we know the Kranendonk's they really wouldn't have cared if we brought him. Plus, it was SO hot so I'm glad we didn't have to have him out in that. But on the way home, we decided to take a pit stop in Savannah for lunch and to check it out. Ryan's never been there and I've only ever driven through it... which is basically all we did except for stopping for lunch. We ate at a BBQ my sister recommended, we were the only ones there until we left. And it was nice. BUT we're glad and feel blessed that we did stop because probably right around the time we would've been on I16 there was a fatal accident and we just missed it by probably the hour we stopped to eat!!! We were grateful that were safe and even though the detour and delay getting home was an annoyance, we were safe.
Anyway, it was fun! I'm starting to get more photo business! This is a good thing!