Fun weekend

This weekend, we traveled to Tulsa to celebrate my parent's 30th anniversary. Their actual anniversary is not until April, but all of us were able to get together this weekend, so we went for it. I am amazed that they have been married for 30 years! Thanks, Mom and Dad, for being such a wonderful example of having a God-centered marriage and family. We are so blessed to have you as our parents!

I have always been especially thankful that my parents are and have always been authentic people. Considering that Dad is a minister, it would be easy for him to pretend that they are perfect and that life is always perfect. Instead, they are always honest with us and have taught us how important it is to be real. That is one quality I really, really appreciate about both of them and that they exhibit beautifully in their marriage.

On Saturday, we started by having a family photo shoot. It is pretty rare for us to all be together any more (we are spread out: us in NWA, Abigail and Tyler in SWMO, Joel in Oregon, and Lyd and James in Tulsa), so we had to take advantage of it! We got a sneak peek of the pictures from our sweet photographer. I am so excited to see all of them!

We took some inside and them some outside. It was a little rainy, so the photographer gave us umbrellas as props and arranged us in our smaller families within the larger Curran clan. So fun!


At one point, it was quite windy (after all, it is Oklahoma) and our umbrellas just about flew away. This is us reacting to the wind. I am freaking out because it reminded me that Mom actually broke her hand a few years ago while trying to open an umbrella on a very windy day. So the crazy look on my face is me laughing really hard while trying to remind my family about the funny story. This picture cracks me up because we are all reacting in a way that reflects our personality... I mean, look at how calm Joel and Nathaniel are! Funny stuff! :-)
For dinner, we took my parents out to the OG. Typically, we would stay home and Mom would cook a ton of food and we would all eat around the dinner table at home. We wanted to do something special for her so she wouldn't have to cook forever and clean up after all of us. It was a lot of fun!


Brynlee is getting so big!!

Grace entertained others, as always. Apparently she made up some sort of dance and then she and Joel named it the "owie" dance. I have no idea where this came from. But I am thankful that she was occupied! This picture is of her performing the owie dance.

We are always happy to eat at Olive Garden! :-)

Brynlee has these gorgeous pouty lips!

Grace loves, loves hanging out with her aunts and uncles. It is special to see her with Joel since she doesn't see him very often. They had a lot of fun! He is so great with kids and I know all of the nieces and nephews will love him!

My attempt at getting a picture of the two girls. This family weekend reminded me that it's the last time to take a big family picture without our baby boy in it!

Of course, no celebration is complete without a cake from Rick's. I had this one made with The Blessing on the side. Mom and Dad have always been such a blessing to us!

My sister also had the great idea to put together a photo album of pictures Mom had from the past 30 years. She did it on Shutterfly and did an AMAZING job! She had pictures from their wedding, us growing up, graduations, our weddings, and grandkids. We all had a great time being together and I certainly hope the future allows us to all be together more often!