LuLu's and "Afessionals"

Well We had a great time at the beach yesterday and today, I'm sad to go home!

Leah, Melissa, and Avery has us take 4million pictures until we finally caught them at the exact moment in the air...I was pretty annoyed having to watch them jump in the air so many times, but I'll have to admit this picture turned out pretty cool. I would've joined them but my Love Handles wouldn't let me jump up that far.


We ate dinner at LuLu's last night. If you are ever in Gulf Shores, AL and want a place to go that is great for parents and kids, go to LuLu's! It's Jimmy Buffett's Sister's Restaurant. They have live music every night, three different bars, and a sand/recreation area/beach for the kids to play at. Our wait was two hours...yeah, I said two hours, but flew by so fast. We listened to a band, had drinks, played bean bag toss (Baggo) and shopped at LuLu's souvenir shop. It was really fun!
Here's me and Leah at LuLu's..

It came a monsoon last night and today was pretty cloudy until about lunch. Caroline, the little one, is Six going on 21. She informed me this morning that the waves were so bad that the only people that could surf would be the "afessionals" and she actually did the air quotes. It took me a second before I realized she meant "professionals." Then she informed me that she preferred going to her GiGi's to play rather than her MiMi's because MiMi had ugly Barbies. She also asked me if I was pregnant...I'm pretty sure that means it's time for me to loose weight. Here's Me and Caroline at LuLu's. I had to wipe off my lap after she sat in it because she had made a slide out of a sand pile in the beach area before we ate and still had a little sand on her bottom.

We took family pictures tonight on the beach...I'm pretty sickened by how fat I look next to all the skinny mini's in the bunch. Look! Gretchen made the Picture!!
We played putt putt tonight, I'll show pictures of it later. This has been a great extended weekend at Gulf Shores with the girls. I hope we can make this a yearly trip. One day when we're all grown up with kids of our own, maybe we'll still be making the yearly trip to Gulf Shores without the husbands... Now all that's left to do is drive home! Hope we make it in under 12 hours this time!!

Beach Day two

This is what I did today.


Then I played in the waves..

Until I saw this...
Now we're inside!! Hopefully we'll have sun tomorrow!!

Wedding Flowers/Party

Today's "Show us your life" that Kelly is hosting, is Wedding Party/Flowers/rest of your wedding! I'm excited to see every one's pictures! My photographer was great, but we opted for a coffee table book that had a collage of all my wedding pictures. It was beautiful but unfortunately I don't have many pictures to put online, they are all hard copies, not digital.

Here's a pic of me and my bridesmaids.
Music:
I had the candle lighters light the candles to "the feather theme" if you've ever watched Forrest Gump it's the piano song they play at the end of the movie when the feather is floating in the air. I watched Forrest Gump a few months before the wedding and thought it was so pretty!! I had two songs sung by my uncle and cousins who live in Nashville TN and are extremely talented musicians. They sang "Oh Love" by Brad Paisley & Carrie Underwood, and another song that I'm not quite sure of the title but it was something along the lines of "When God made you he must have been thinking of me." That song was sung as the parents were being seated. We walked down the Isle to the traditional wedding march. After Dad gave me away, as Sean and I were were walking up the steps my uncle sang the first verse of "Look at You Girl" by Chris Ledoux and my cousin played the guitar. It was sweet, I cried. We left to the traditional wedding song that everyone uses to exit to, I'm not sure of the name of it...


Wedding Attire:
This is my wedding party pictured below. I have so many friends that it was either four brides maids, which consisted of my two sisters, my cousin, and my best friend in the world, or about 15 bridesmaids, and I just couldn't afford that!

I don't know if you can tell in the photo but the Bridesmaids' dresses were tea length and had a white ribbon around the waist. The flower Girls were exactly the opposite, white with black ribbons. I don't have any photo's of my candle lighters on this computer, but there were three, the two girls wore orange and pink dresses that matched my flowers, and the boy wore a tux with a yellow vest.

The guys specifically asked to be "blacked out" so they wore black vests, black shirts, and black ties. They thought they looked so "Johnny Cash" They threatened to wear Sunglasses. I told them I would kill them all if that happened. Except I just edited a few of the words I used because my mother reads this blog. :)

I had two flower girls and two ring bearers. Two of them had parents in the wedding party and the other two were like family to me so I wanted them to be apart of the wedding. I was glad I asked two flower girls, because one of the flower girls saw her grandmother as she was halfway down the isle and decided to just stop there and sit with her.
Flowers/Decorations
Ok so in the picture below, ignore the bride and look at the back ground. If you'll look in the picture above you can see the four wooden posts that are holding up the flowers, in the picture below you can only see two of them. I wanted some type of arch and my dad and one of his friends made this out of our old wooden swing set that they had taken down about a year earlier.

The florist draped lots of greet from the top and put a huge arrangement in the center. (See below) It was beautiful, there were two arrangements on the ground on either side and ferns across the half wall behind us. (you can see that in the picture above)




My colors were yellow, orange, fuchsia, and black. I used Day Lily's, Gerbera Daisy's and roses as my flowers. Below are the bouquets. The bridesmaids' bouquets were wrapped at the bottom with black satin ribbon and mine was wrapped in green grass like stuff, (I'm sure there is a specific name for the green grass like stuff, I just don't know it.)The pic above and the pic below are just more of my bouquets, my two sisters are the girls below.
Check out my Wedding Dress from the past "Show us your life Friday!"

Well that's all the pictures I have on this computer. Hope you enjoyed looking at my stuff!! :) Thanks for stopping by! Enjoy your weekend!



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WWII Part I

As you'll remember from a few posts ago I'm going to start blogging about my progress with Granddad's WWII Scrapbook.

Below is a Picture of Grandad Blowing out his Birthday Candles last week! His name is Hobart W. Treadway, the W. Stands for Wayne, which is the name he goes by. He turned 86 last week. He was a Second Lieutenant in the US Air Force and Piloted a B-17 bomber plane. They flew around 18 missions before he was shot down over Germany. I recently read an article online while doing some research and found out that his plane may still be where it landed!! I'll post on that later.


Here's a picture of Granddad on his German POW papers. You can't tell from this photo but it's all in German. I was a little disappointed because we couldn't find the original copy, this is a photocopy of the German Papers. His mug shot makes him look like a gangster. I'm sure he was pretty scared, and probably a little pissed at the time the photo was taken.


I went to Micheal's (for those of you that don't know, it's an arts and crafts store) and found the PERFECT scrap book! You can see it below in the picture, I couldn't believe I found it, and on sale! $17 and it's leather!! I found some cute scrap papers I thought I'd put throughout the scrap book to keep it interesting.


Here are some of the original pictures I found. The top photo are of him and three of his crew members. My grandmother, Norma, and my Uncle are pictured in the photo on the top right. The bottom left is a photo of Granddad mapping out a spot on the US Map and doesn't he look so handsome in his earphones!!


Here are a few of the manuals and books I found. The top note pad is his flight log from training school. It shows all the hours he flew that was required of him to graduate from flight school. The others are a Navigation manual, a Airplane Engine and Parts Manual, and a Weather book that teaches to read the Weather maps.

Sorry this is a little out of focus but it's just a few of the letters I have back and forth from Him and my Grandmother and Him and His mother. It's so interesting to read them, I'll have to share a few of them for you sometime. I bought some Archival Mist and have preserved almost every single paper and every single photo to make sure they don't deteriorate any more.


My Grandfather was Shot down from his B17 bomber on Feb 3 1945 and taken to a German POW Camp. I'll tell you the whole story some other time. I could sit and listen to him tell war stories for hours! This is the Telegram send to my Grandmother when Granddad was MIA.

Translation:THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR HUSBAND SECOND LIEUTENANT HOBART W TREADWAY HAS BEEN REPORTED MISSING ACTION SINCE THREE FEBRUARY OVER GERMAN IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION ARE RECEIVED YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED.Below is the Telegram that the army sent to my Grandmother when Granddad had been liberated from the POW camp and returned to the US Army. It gave me Chills the first time I read it. I also have the Telegram that my Grandmother sent Granddad's mother saying "WAYNE OK - EXPLAIN IN LETTER. NORMA"
Let me translate for you: THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU HUSBAND S/LT HOBART W TREADWAY RETURNED TO MILITARY CONTROL.

Well I hope you enjoyed the first insert of my little project. I'm super excited to tell you all the stories that he's told me!! It's probably the coolest thing I've ever experienced!! I love history!
Keep tuning back in for more stories and pictures!!