before baby makes 4.

Jeremiah, Brayden and I went on one last trip before baby makes us a foursome this winter. We were invited to an AmeriCorps wedding and it was close enough that we could go, and far enough to call it a vacation. Yahoo! Hooray for...Iowa.

There were some pretty interesting points to the weekend (some still have me flummoxed!).

Before the wedding, we wandered around Des Moines a little bit.

There was a sculpture garden of modern art (I totally do not get modern art).

And a really cool bridge and Asian heritage space.

The Asian Heritage space was sponsored by...John Deere.

I am still thinking about that.

Luckily, we got to spend the morning traipsing around with Emily.

I miss her already.

Then, we got all dressed up and headed over to the church for a gorgeous wedding.

For some reason, this is the only picture I took during the wedding.

I have no pictures of the bride and groom.

I have no pictures with my freinds and the bride.

She was stunning, so you are really missing out.

You will just have to take my word for it.

Part of the reason why I don't have any ceremony pictures is that I was raised Catholic. And when the ceremony was over 25 minutes after it started, I was very surprised.

And super relieved. Orson and Brayden had been testing the echo capacity of the church and it turned into a little bit of a contest during the vows. Yikes!

But the above picture is Kim, Orson's mom. I miss her already, too. :(

Emily took this family picture of us, just before we left.

I made her take just a face shot of us too, because I was feeling very...pregnant.





And then I made her take another one at the reception, just in case I wasn't feeling so...pregnant then. I will say I switched to my cowboy boots before the reception, and I think I will do that at all wedding receptions from here on out. It makes chasing toddlers who are in love with pretty girls all that much easier. And he was in love...he flirted with every pretty girl he could find, and was especially hard to keep from the head table full of bridesmaids and the bride (told you she was gorgeous!). And he couldn't have cared less about the boys. But he danced his socks off, even in the center of the circle. He was so tired by 9 o'clock when we left that he was asleep before his belt was buckled. Literally.

(there's my boots!)

Before we left, I snapped a cute picture of Brayden. He was fully engrossed and engaged in a dinosour cartoon. That may have been his Daddy's favorite part of our vacation (cable TV!).