Jake and Ansley's wedding weekend

 Jake and Ansley had originally planned to be married in December, 2020 but COVID changed that. Ansley had her heart set on a December wedding so they waited until this year. What a beautiful wedding it was!  The bride, wedding party, venue...everything was perfect and the fact I got to see my family was the icing on the cake!  We had an awesome weekend at Big Canoe, Georgia and are looking forward to getting together again in a couple of weeks for Daniel and Sophia's wedding here!

Picked Mum up at 7am and hit the road

Our driver

Karen rented a 5 bedroom house for us to stay in all together - it was beautiful!

Jenny brought presents!

Got a late night visit from the bride, groom, Karen and John and some of the wedding party...so much fun!

The groomsmen had fun with Ansley's car

Stephen and GMa

Mike, Jenny, Jane, Elaine and Kenneth

The decorations were beautiful and Mike looks quite nice with the fancy pen

Apparently John was hot in his tux so Jenny helped out with her fan

Mum's handsome escort

Look how pretty my mom is...😍

The view was beautiful!

Jake waiting for his bride...

Emily and Stephen

Love these two!

The sibling pic...love them, too!!

Father, daughter pic...

First dance

Mother, son dance - Karen looked beautiful!

The happy couple - both are such nice kids!

My brother has such awesome kids!!!

Sparkler send off!

Mum with all of her kids - Jenny, Mike, Jane, Elaine, Kenneth, John and Karen

Me with my big brother

And, of course, no wedding is complete without a photo booth!!  

What a fun weekend!  Thanks for having us, Ansley and Jake!  Wishing you a lifetime of blessings, laughter and love!

When is the last time you went Christmas caroling?

Well, I can say I just did!!  Now I am NOT a singer and I did NOT want to go caroling. I showed up at the church to help in the kitchen preparing the hot apple cider and chili with fixings for everyone when they came back from caroling, but they didn't need help in the kitchen so I ended up on the tram. As it turns out, I made a new favorite Christmas memory! It was such a blessing to be right where I was. I met some new people, saw some old friends and witnessed such joy that I will carry with me for a long time. Santa and Mrs. Claus were on the tram pulled by a pickup complete with a DJ and a sound system and PA and we rolled through all the neighborhoods by the church escorted by Caddo deputies for three hours singing carols and stopping as families came out to get pictures with Santa and get a Christmas ornament from him. The looks of wonder and excitement as those kids saw Santa was priceless. When we rode through the retirement/assisted living complex, there were elderly people standing by their open doors with their walkers or sitting on their porches waving and singing - it was wonderful to be a part of something like that. We rolled into the Dollar General and even the adults were lighting up, smiling and singing while watching kids run over to see Santa. It really was a wonderful night and I'm glad I went. Granted I never reached for a microphone, but I did sing because I love Christmas carols and everyone on the tram all said they couldn't sing either, but did any of the people we were singing for care? I don't think so...they were all so happy to see us, it didn't really matter after all.

Pam and Jolee...if Pam hadn't said, "C'mon, Elaine. Come go with us.", I probably never would have gone so thanks, Pam!! I had a blast! 

The DJs screen that displayed the words for us.

That's Gene, our preacher

This little guy's mom was getting his picture with Santa...look at that face!

We stopped for that group and they're waving at the deputy now. We had a deputy in front of us and behind. They stopped traffic for us and stayed with us the entire time.

O what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh!!!!!!!

Starting off the last month of 2021

It's hard to believe how quickly time passes! I don't know where this year went, but it's almost over already and there is still a lot to do!

Got all the bags put together for our hotel wedding guests in January! I'm trying to get things done here and there when I have time so hopefully when January 15th rolls around, it will all be done.

Arvis had knee surgery and Pattie has been wearing herself out doing all of her chores as well as his so Kenneth fried fish and we carried them dinner one night.  I love sitting on their back porch so I had my dinner out here with Pattie while the guys stayed inside. She ended up bringing out peanut butter whiskey for me to tried, but we tried a little too much! Let's just say I'm in no hurry to try any more of it! Yikes...

We adopted a family from the Gingerbread House again this year for Christmas so instead of buying each other gifts, we buy gifts for them! This is what my gameroom has looked like for the last two months. I've had five different events going on over that time; now I'm down to just wedding and Christmas stuff in here right now! Most of this on the floor is Christmas for our family.

Katie came over for Sophia's bachelorette weekend, but showed up two days early to help me shop and put together all the things to take to Gingerbread House.

All sorted and boxed up! One box for each of the three kids and one box for Mom and the household items they needed. We were able to get everything on their lists so we were really happy! Katie, Daniel, Mum, Kenneth and I all chip in because none of us really needs anything and it makes sense to do this.

We met Daniel and Sophia at Flying Heart for dinner, then went by Gingerbread House to drop everything off since it's only 10 minutes from there.

Daniel got the drumsticks at our table to play the drum rift in "In the Air Tonight"!

Then he got one of the props to sing "YMCA" next!! What a night...

These two make me happy...

Love this time of year when we're reminded of Jesus everywhere we look. How I wish everyone saw Jesus everywhere they looked every day of the year!

Grabbed this pic from the bachelorette party Facebook post. They got lost looking for the AirBNB and happened upon a field with donkeys in it so they got out to pet them!! Here's Katie with her new friend.

I pulled out some of our purchases from Wyoming and made breakfast one Sunday morning before church! Huckleberries are very blueberry-ish but just a tad more tart.

We'll be out of town for the Christmas Festival at church, but I did go help with painting the set.

Kelly, Wanda, Angel and I painted while the others went the Admin Council meeting

The backdrop behind Santa's sleigh is so pretty!!

The Shreveport Riverfront is so festive!!  I'm going to have to take another ride down there to look at it.

Beautiful sunset before our annual neighborhood Christmas party

Christmas tree got a new place since we reconfigured our room

Kenneth getting his gift

Small group this year due to illness and neighbors out of town, but this was the only weekend we could do it. I really enjoyed the smaller group because we really got to visit and enjoy the company! Ann and Carl came back the next day for some fried fish and football, too! I really like our little island neighborhood - we've been very blessed, for sure.