Long Weekend

We left Saturday morning at 12 am on the dot.  We've done the middle-of-the-night thing before and in the past it has worked out much better than trying to leave right after work.  However, this time, Joey decided to give us a hard time.  I think she slept less in the car than I did.  It was a rough 8 hours.

But, when we got to Hattiesburg and she saw Papaw everything was good again.  Shelby and Joey had such a fun time running around playing with cousins, making 1,000 paper airplanes (Thanks, Brock!), and eating (duh, it's Bill Gore's house!).

Shelby was in cousin Heaven Saturday when Peyton got to spend the night with us and we had a little sleepover. Peyton is 11 days older than Shelby. If we lived closer I think those two would get in lots of trouble together! ;)

I don't think Shelby wanted me to take her pic.   

The following pictures crack me up.  This is what happens when you try to get a bunch of kids to smile at the same time.

Sunday morning I was drying my hair and heard a strange noise.  I thought maybe it was the tv, so I turned the hair dryer off, but no, it wasn't the tv.  I suddenly realized that it sounded an awful lot like a tornado siren, so I quickly turned it to the news in time to hear, "tornado...Hattiesburg...you can probably hear the sirens".  I ran up the stairs and grabbed the kids and yelled to Jeremy and Papaw that that was the tornado siren and we got in the hallway.  Thankfully it was over pretty quickly and we never saw a tornado.  I guess we thought that the worst of Tropical Storm Lee had passed after that, and didn't even check the weather when we left last night at 7 pm to make our way to Bastrop, LA to visit Jeremy's other grandparents.  As soon as we left the driveway it started to POUR down rain and it was SUPER windy.  Jeremy and I drove through the beginning of Katrina, when it was the outer bands and was probably only tropical storm strength.  It was something we said we would never do again...especially with kids in the car!  Again, suddenly, I started to hear a strange sound.  It was hard to hear over the hum of the car, but as we slowed down and came to a stop light it was so loud- the tornado sirens again.  Let me tell you how scary it is to be in a car, in the dark, no visibility, with two kids in the car, and you hear tornado sirens.  Let's just say I'm surprised my seat was dry after that.  We quickly looked around and there really wasn't anywhere to stop.  We quickly said a prayer and just kept driving.  I looked on my phone as fast as I could to see where the tornado was and where it was going.  Just as I saw on the phone that it said, "tornado will be in Mt. Olive at 8:25" I looked up and saw the "Mt. Olive City Limits" sign and looked at the clock.  8:10.  So I am guessing we were 15 minutes ahead of the storm.  We just kept going and didn't stop or slow down until we got to Vicksburg and stopped to get milk for Joey.

After such a scary night we woke up to one of the most BEAUTIFUL days I have ever seen in LA.  It was a cool 64 degrees and breezy, not a cloud in the sky.  Gorgeous.  We had a wonderful visit with Jeremy's dad, great uncle, and grandparents.  It was nice to be able to all sit outside the nursing home and visit while the girls ran around in the grass. 

It was a great long weekend visiting family!