Andrew and Alexis sitting in a tree…

We took a quick trip home this weekend for Henry’s sister Alexis’ wedding. I know this shouldn’t make me feel old, but it does… Henry and I met the year she was born and were dating before she was a year old.

If you know anything about us, you know that arriving at the destination is only half the goal… we also love taking the journey itself. We were almost “home” when Henry said, “We could take Old 40…” I immediately answered, “Okay,” since we had about 5 seconds to decide if we were going to take the exit. We smiled at each other knowingly as he turned onto the exit.

Old Route 40 is old, very old. There are still stone mile markers from the days when it was used by horses and carriages. It’s an official scenic byway that stretches from New Jersey through the middle of the United States and used to go all the way to California. The internet tells me it ends in Utah these days. At any rate, it’s elderly when it comes to roads and it traverses through some quaint towns.

We hopped on it about 10 miles from our normal exit so we didn’t get through many quaint towns except for the town of Clear Spring, MD which I haven’t driven through for about 20 years. So long in fact that I forgot about Wilson’s Country Store.

I actually asked my husband to turn around so we could take our kids inside. When my family moved to Hagerstown I was entering middle school… and this is one of the places my dad would take us every so often. Wilson’s sold penny candy. Seeing it brought back so many memories.

Although the candy isn’t a penny anymore, it’s still sold in bulk. Our kids were excited to pick out their very own bag of sugar… eh-em…. I mean candy.

I meant to get a family picture in front of the store, but in what seems to be a new trend, I was too busy holding a baby to get very many pictures. This trend continued throughout the weekend.

We dropped our luggage at my mom’s house then headed out to the farm setting for the dress rehearsal. It rained. Light at first and then it started coming down quite heavily. We decided we’d all been to enough weddings to know what comes next so we packed it in and headed to dinner.

The maid of honor, flower girls, and ring bearers.

Henry ran to the car and brought the only umbrella he could find to place over me and Piper. I love that this man cared enough to bring me a little Hello Kitty umbrella in the pouring rain. I think he’s getting sweeter with age.

Dinner with aunts and uncles is always fun because the kids want to be with THEM! Ha!  I actually got to eat my dinner without little hands all over it….

Sunday dawned bright and beautiful without a speck of cloud in the sky. The rain moved on during the night and left us with the most perfect day to celebrate.

The wedding was at a private farm owned by family friends just up the road from my in-laws’ house. The setting was serene… the audience was flanked by a pond (complete with ducks and duckings) and a babbling brook.

The kiddos…

The bride and groom during the ceremony – officiated by my father-in-law (Henry III) – the father of the bride.

And in new mommy fashion, I failed to get a picture of the front of the bride and groom.

Or a picture of my family all done up in color coordinated dressy outfits. But I did manage to take a picture of the reception hall – aka my in-law’s garage. The wedding was a small, family affair and quite honestly, being Mother’s Day, it was hard to find available spaces. Since it was only kin, we set up shop at the house…

I think this is the best looking garage seating I’ve ever seen!

Alexis and Ainsley at the reception.

And who can complain when the kids can play outside while attending the reception…. the cutest moment of the day had to be when Ryan and Jocelyn came flying by on the electric Jeep.

Congratulations Alexis and Andrew! We love you!!