Matt's Married!

Kristin, Chris, Jenn, Katie, Mat, Adam and Brian enjoying ourselves at Matt's lovely wedding. Unfortunately, Cami and Danielle, Adam and Matt's wives weren't close enough to us to be grabbed for the picture... But an almost complete crew!

The Hawkins/Barlup/Greene crew was finally reunited. We all made the trek to Hopwood, PA to see our stepbrother Matt married. We had so much fun telling stories. We reminisiced about our sibiling vacation (which we, of course swore we were going to take every year and only actually took that one year!). I cannot believe it was almost 6 years ago. We were telling stories from the trip and other events and I cannot believe how much I had forgotten. We traveled - rather spur of the moment - from Ohio to Ocean City and up into Delaware. It was great and the stories included Matt's Huey Lewis shirt getting bombed by the sea gulls, waking up to Matt and Adam raiding our hotel room with cap guns and little boy cowboy hats, my barfing after numerous rides on the Ocean City roller coaster, our trip up the tower at the state park in the middle of the night (it was completely pitch black and Katie bonked her head into the concrete so hard it echoed)... It was so great to be together. We promised once it warmed up enough for camping we would all meet in Hocking Hills for a weekend (or, yes maybe even make it as far as recreating our sibling trip. Matt swore he would even buy another VW Bus to accommodate us all, but I am thinking with spouses it might be time to upgrade).

Brian commented that we all obviously missed each other. Throughout the wedding we all kept gravitating back to each other. We have been around each other, but not very often. The last time we all saw each other was probably my wedding three years ago. Unfortunately, at my wedding we didn't get to spend as much time talking. It was so nice of Matt to take time from his day to spend with all of us.

His new wife Danielle is beautiful and seems just as fun and sweet as I would expect anyone who was marrying Matt to be. Sense of humor is definitely required to keep up with that boy!

I hope we are able to get together over this summer. I would love for our children to have a close relationship with Matt and Adam. They are such important people in my life, even if we don't talk every day. And I hope that our children are luck enough to have such a close and positive relationship with their siblings as I have with mine...