Tour de Texas: Marble Falls

I'm getting behind - WAY behind.  It's time to buckle down and wrap up these Texas posts.  Which brings me to the second-to-last post, the reason-behind-the-whole-trip - Eric's wedding!

We left our friends in San Antonio reasonably early Saturday morning and drove up to a small, yet quintessential Texas town outside of Austin called Marble Falls.  We met up with my sisters Kira and Katie, plus my extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephew), at their hotel.  It was a hot (HOT!) day, so we spent most of our time staying cool inside the hotel rooms trying (desperately and unsuccessfully) to get the babies and little boys to nap.  Aubree spent the afternoon playing with her "cousin-friends", Bailey and Morgan, and couldn't have been happier.

When we got kicked out of the hotel rooms, we headed out to the wedding location.  Granted, I haven't been to too many weddings outside of LDS temples, but this was definitely one to remember!  The wedding and reception were held on the grounds of a huge adventure ranch.  There was a shooting range and ATV riding areas, a paintball course and cows grazing freely.  We had to pretend our tiny rental car had four-wheel drive to make it up the dirt path to the wedding site.  After carefully picking our way through the stickers and trying to avoid the cow pies, we ultimately made it to our seats immediately before the ceremony began.

Did I mention it was hot?  So, SO hot.  Too hot to bother caring about doing hair or make-up, or making sure my kids were wearing the right shoes.  Regardless, the location was perfectly Texas and perfect for Eric and his beautiful bride, Taylor (who I only met briefly and didn't manage to get a picture of - but believe me - she's gorgeous and everyone spoke of her in glowing terms).

My Uncle Rick performed the ceremony and it was short and sweet.  Within 10 minutes of sitting down, we were trekking back to our cars to drive the short distance to the reception hall (aka shooting club headquarters).

By the time the reception began around 7 pm, I was certain that Thane (who hadn't slept all day) would surely eat and pass out.  I thought perhaps Bryce wouldn't be far behind him.  You'd think by now I'd know better, wouldn't you?

Thane wouldn't have anything to do with sitting still, lying down, or being wrapped up.  He spent hours playing under the table with a plastic cup or two.  All the kids had a great time eating and dancing and enjoying their cousins and aunts and uncles.

We left the reception early (around 9 pm) to drive to Stephenville (our last stop on our great tour-de-Texas).  By this point, the kids were so keyed up that it STILL took an hour into the drive before they fell asleep.  Despite getting lost (apparently GPS is not infallible), we eventually made it to Rick and Nancy's house where we ALL passed out.