A Sweet and Sour Weekend

We've had a weekend full of wedding plans, country ham, and one cool dog.

With my sister's wedding only a couple months away now, it was finally time to set up the first fitting for Rachel's wedding dress. Mom and Rachel both came into town Friday night and us girls set out early Saturday morning for few hours full of wedding dreams and plans. Rachel tried on her gown and spent the next hour being fitted by the alterations person at the bridal shop. I'd show pictures but, well, I'm afraid my little sister would disown me (or worse).

We then moved on to the mall to look for a flower girl/junior bridesmaid dress for Ann Catherine. We've been debating for a while on whether or not she should officially be the flower girl or the junior bridesmaid. It seems like she's too old to be a flower girl but too young to be a junior bridesmaid. But given a few...ummm...changes to Ann Catherine in the past couple months, we decided it was probably time to finally let go of the flower girl era and finally deem her old enough to be a junior bridesmaid. So we headed over to the mall to look at dresses that would be perfect for the occasion. We finally found the perfect, sweet little dress that, again, I'd show pictures if I wasn't so frightened of my little sister! Anyway, once our shopping excursions were complete, we headed to the Factory in Franklin to have lunch at one of my favorite little girly-cafes.

Once we returned home, we grabbed the boys and my in-laws, threw on our jackets and headed for our little town's annual fall celebration - the Country Ham Festival. Now, our little festival isn't much when you compare it to the large food festivals you see on TV. I've always dreamed of visiting a large BBQ festival or a Chili festival to watch the food making, tasting and judging. My little town's festival wouldn't qualify for TV-viewing-worthiness, but it's still become a fun little tradition for our family the first weekend of every October. There are craft booths, inflatables for the kids to play on, fire trucks, ambulances and police cars to climb in and explore, and PLENTY of food booths along with live music from local bands. It's not large and I have to admit that the four of us HATE country ham, but our family always has fun exploring the festival and watching the fireworks at the end of the night (while eating our caramel apples and funnel cakes, of course). This year, we proudly wanted to show off our little festival with my family in town and loaded up my van to head to the festival. For this event, though, I felt completely free to use my camera.

Unfortunately, this morning Will woke up with a 102 fever...again. He's complaining of his throat again and occasionally his stomach hurting. My heart hurts thinking that we're headed for our third round of illness in slightly over a month but given the fact that his fever doesn't seem to want to break, it looks like I can't deny it's here again. His illness is only complicated further because his doctor is in the middle of transitioning from the large practice she was in to her own private practice and isn't reachable for the next two weeks. So we're left working with his "back-up" doctor at the larger practice. Since I'm pretty sure I'll be off to get him tested for strep again tomorrow (his sixth strep test since Aug. 31) and I'm a little tired of having to explain the whole history of the past month, I decided to sit down and write everything that has happened throughout the past month. It broke my heart to know that there has been so many tests run and yet it looks like my little calendaring isn't going to end anytime soon. So please, please pray for our sweet little boy and for the doctor to finally be able to isolate whether or not this truly is a third round of viruses or if perhaps we're looking at a larger, more complicated illness. All I know is that I'm tired of hearing the word "virus" thrown at me with no further answers other than to simply "give it time to run its course." I'm ready for answers, medicines, and a resolution. Mainly, I want to see my baby happy and playful once again.