An Amazing Month!

A month ago yesterday Anna was born and started us off on a month long period of joy for our family!
On the Wednesday after she was born my west coast children all arrived in Virginia.  We picked them up in Richmond with Christy coming through New Jersey and Hope, Seth and Tara (favorite niece!) coming through Charlotte.  We headed for DC to see some sites and to prepare for the wedding.  We had found an amazing deal at the beautiful Wardman Park Marriott in downtown DC right across from the zoo.  We checked in and then took the metro into town. Christy has some good pictures of our adventures in DC on her blog Keeping up with the Jones's.

When we arrived back at the hotel Emilie, Logan and the kids had arrived as well as JJ.  I can't express what it meant to me to be able to have all of my children in the same place at the same time!  It had been a long while....  We got together at 10 at night in a restaurant in the hotel to eat and share stories and reconnect, all the things that warm a mother's heart!
Papa and I finally wandered off to bed and the kids reconvened in one of their rooms to talk and give JJ advice.  I don't even want to know what the advice was!
The next morning Dad drove our car and I rode with JJ to the Temple.  He was so calm and happy.  It was  a wonderful thing to see such a worthy young man, well prepared and excited to be moving in to the next phase of his life with a well prepared and pure young lady... All the things a mother prays for as she rears her children.
The sealing was short and simple. The wait was way longer than the ceremony! Yes, I did cry but not when expected.  Shortly before Brittany and JJ walked into the room I felt the presence of Richard and I broke down.  I miss him so and it is always such a wonderful feeling when he gets to be with us and a great reminder of the eternal nature of family and how much those on the other side are still very close to us and involved in our lives.
When the bride and groom entered the room a wonderful feeling of happiness and peace came with them!  What an honor it was to be there.
Here they are coming out of the Temple!

 I'll post some of the Temple pictures once we get them from the photographer (she's in Alaska right now).  We are looking forward to some good pictures of the family.  Here are the girls at the Temple:

 And me with my beautiful Daughters:

After the pictures were taken at the Temple we went to dinner at a small Italian Restaurant that I found called DaMancos.  We enjoyed the company of about 30 people including the bride and groom and some good Italian Food at a non chain restaurant!

After dinner we lumbered back to BV while the Bride and Groom enjoyed the night at the Crown Plaza in Silver Spring, courtesy of their friends.  The hotel even upgraded them to a King Suite!

On Saturday we all got to work to get ready for the reception.  Since we were in the middle of a heat wave we decided to have the food and most of the tables in the house.  We took most of the furniture out  of the living room, family room and dining room and proceeded to decorate.  Brittany's mom figured out how to produce Brittany's dream reception and so we just helped her to put it into place.
Here Seth is helping hang lanterns:

The yard takes shape:

Tara does Brittany's hair:

 Living Room, dinning room and cake:

The cake had Marzipan pears imported from Belgium!

This was the first wedding of one of my children that all of my sisters attended the reception and it was so wonderful to have so much family there! 

So many wonderful people stepped forward to help with the reception and so many were in attendance despite the fact there was a play on campus, education conference and another wedding. We had Brazilian Stroganoff, passion fruit mouse,  heart shaped watermelon, eclairs and other assorted yummy foods all made with love by our Brazilian friend Maria!

I've struggled to get this post up so I am going to just do it.  It really should have consisted more of my feelings of awe and happiness that I felt as I was able to be with all of my children once again and to share in this sacred ordinance of our last child.  Man is that he might have joy and we certainly felt that joy this month!