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Less than 48 hours after we finished opening presents, we were on a plane headed to Alabama to keep on celebrating. The girls sat with me as always. And of course, it’s important to review all the safety procedures before taking off.

The first stop on arriving in Birmingham was to go see Great Grandma Dot. She’s recently moved into a new place in the Alzheimer's unit where she lives, so we went by to check it out.

Our next stop was Aunt ‘Chelle and Uncle J’s house, where the entire Batson family gathered for an evening soiree. JJ loves his Grampa, especially when he’s giving him snacks.

I think Grampa’s about to get this little cutie from behind.

He got him.

Leah loved hanging out with the single ladies, especially Maggie.

Emmie may only be four, but she kept the older girls giggling with her stories of her boyfriend.

Leah captured the attention of Sadie and Mary with some interactive learning on the iPad.

JJ’s already got a knack for the harmonica.

OK, maybe he needs a little more practice before we call him an expert.

That's all I've got for the first day of our trip, but there was still a lot more family and celebrating to come.

After taking in the beauty of the bluff, we had a good visit with the Savannah family. My aunt and uncle threw an oyster roast for EA and Scott to celebrate their recent nuptials. Our family was not shy about digging into these oysters (at least those of us older than 6).

As always, the hammock is the girls' favorite destination at Grandaddy's house.

They do love to hug each other.

Molly and Leah love for me to swing them in the hammock. Getting a picture while I swing them requires a really wide angle, but I think it works.

These girls love their great Grandaddy.

Molly had a couple days off from school, so we spent a long weekend in Memphis with my family. Friday morning, we headed to some nearby trains to play. I think this one is haunted with the ghost of Leah.

Kids and grandparents, on an old train.

A festive photo.

JJ loves his "Yayyee".

The trains were right beside a lovely square with pretty red flowers,

and lots of room to run!

These girls had so much fun together.

So much so that Molly just had to jump for joy!

JJ's getting pretty good at playing with Legos.

We decided to go bowling with the whole family while in Memphis. Leah and Molly loved it. Leah needed a bit of help, but was excited to bowl the entire time.

We had to keep telling Molly to be patient for the guard to lift because she was so excited to bowl that she couldn't wait.

Not sure if this was a spare or a strike, but Chad caught the excitement either way.

We had a night-time dance party at G'Mom and Grampa's house. What you can't see is that the room was dark except for a small disco ball.

Leah is doing The Raspberry Scare, while Emmie is doing Pretzel Arms.

We had a wonderful weekend celebrating the wedding of Elizabeth and Scott. Our entire little family participated in the wedding. Chad took many, many photos and thanks to my Dad, we have some pictures from the ceremony too. Here are some of my favorites.

Mommy love at the rehearsal dinner.

The morning of the wedding was a beautiful day on a beautiful estate. On the way to breakfast, we stopped by a gazebo to relax a bit.

Flower toss. I hear this event may be added to the 2016 Olympics.

Leah has not been allowed to wear these white patent leather shoes before now, so she was very excited to be able to put them on.

We're all ready! Not sure what Leah's excited about here, but she sure is cute.

The ceremony.

The first dance.

Molly had been asking all day when the dancing would start. She was disappointed that we had to eat dinner first before the dancing began at the reception. So, of course, she was ready to get out on the floor as soon as we could.

The girls couldn't resist the opportunity to dance with Aunt EA and Uncle Scott.

Leah was dancing with Aunt EA to an oldie, when the DJ changed the song to a newer hip hop song. EA put out her arms and dipped low, and Leah didn't miss a beat before matching Aunt EA's new dance. It was adorable.

Leah took some breaks, but Molly couldn't get enough dancing. Eventually she was adopted by the bridesmaids as part of their dance circle, which she loved.

Molly made it all the way through the reception (including the last song), but Leah couldn't quite make it. She tuckered out on Grampa toward the end of the reception.

You can see all our pictures from the wedding weekend on Flickr.

We headed to Atlanta this weekend to attend Mike and Mary's wedding, which featured Molly as the flower girl. We flew in on Friday and then headed to the church for the rehearsal. Molly was very excited.

Not only did we get to join in the wedding festivities, we also got to see cousins. Molly and Leah were thrilled when Emmie showed up.

The rehearsal dinner was held in a great outdoor space, and included yummy barbeque from Jim 'N Nick's. After dinner, Brian (Mike's dad) made sure to embarrass Mike with a walk through his life so far.

They also had some fun stuff for kids of all ages, including these foam swords.

There were also quilt squares that guests could sign or decorate, which Jan (Mike's mom) plans to put together for the bride and groom.

A bunch of cousins. They cross generations and don't include others, but I believe the one thing they have in common is that they were all unmarried (at least for the next few hours).

Our little flower girl on the day of the wedding, just after putting on her dress and having her hair braided.

I made the majority of Molly's dress in March, but finally brought out the machine again last week (after packing it away while selling the house) to finish the dress for Saturday's wedding. Mary sent the sash to match the bridesmaid dresses.

The key skill required for being a flower girl is patience. Molly was outstanding in this regard. Here she is patiently waiting for pictures to begin before the wedding.

Molly posing with the bride and groom.

Each bridesmaid had a bouquet with a different color of daisy. Molly was very excited that her bouquet had flowers of all the colors of the bridesmaids.

When Molly was in the picture, people would often try to get her to smile. So, when she was done being in pictures, she decided to help the photographer out in getting others to smile. She made an excellent assistant.

The four of us, ready for the wedding to start.

Final instructions before heading down the aisle.

Here comes our little flower girl.

She made it. Now we just need the bride.

Molly did a great job standing still and paying attention at the front for the entire ceremony. She even laughed at the pastor's jokes.

After the wedding picture with cousins and grandparents.

Lots of flower girls across the generations. Anne was Susan's, Michelle and I were Anne's, Maggie was Michelle's, Maddie was mine, and Molly now joins the group.

In addition to the wedding cake at the reception, they also had blue velvet cupcakes (because red velvet just doesn't work with Auburn and Georgia Tech grads!). Molly, of course, mostly focused on the icing.

Leah caught the ear of her Uncle J.

And finally, a bubble send-off for Mr. and Mrs. Batson!

We went down to St. Mary's College of Maryland to see Aunt Caroline graduate on Saturday. We sat so far back, and outside the covered seating, that all we could see were the silhouettes of the graduates. Thanks to Chad's photography, these pictures were like seeing Caroline graduate for the first time.

Going in for the shake and the diploma.

Congratulations Aunt Caroline! You've just graduated from college with more honors than anyone else in your family (Major, 2 minors, Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa). Well done.

Big smiles for a happy day!

Hooray!

The Sellers family.

Caroline and Charles, very decorated.

After graduation, we went out to lunch at Nicolletti's (which was excellent). They also had a kid's play area, where Molly found this hat and thought it went well with her smocked dress.

A quick picture before we headed back to Caroline's apartment for the most furious 2 hours of packing imaginable (sorry, no pictures of packing).

We spent part of Spring Break in Birmingham visiting with my family. It was possibly the shortest time between visits with G'Mom and Grampa that the girls have ever had.

It's always fun to see what Grampa sees.

JJ loved his first ride in the Cozy Coupe. Leah stopped to chat along his route.

We went out to dinner at Joe's Crab Shack where the servers dance. Molly took that to mean that she should dance as well, and she spent much of the evening dancing and dancing and dancing.

The reason for our visit was to attend JJ's first birthday party.

The birthday boy is a happy boy as he waits for the party to start.

Who needs cake? The icing is the good stuff.

Emmie loved sitting with Uncle Chad. And Leah's always wanting to share in Daddy's love.

There's always time for reading with G'Mom.

Leah loves "baby JJ."

Grandma Dot came over for a post-party visit. Here she is with her four great-grandchildren.

JJ loves playing with his trucks.

Molly was super sweet with JJ. Every time he was fussy, she was right there trying to cheer him up. She even sat with him a few times and played trucks with him.

While in Savannah, we had a lot of family time that included playing a bunch of games. Aunt EA, Molly, and Leah (and many of the rest of us) got into Where's My Water?.

After the funeral, Uncle J, Aunt 'Chelle, and Emmie were happy to entertain Molly and Leah with a fun game of What's in the Cat's Hat?

Grandaddy imparted some wisdom to Leah, of course.

But he didn't just teach the little ones, he learned from them too. Here's Molly showing him how to play Cut the Rope on her iPhone. (The huge black eye is courtesy of tripping and falling at 3am the night before the funeral, requiring a trip to the ER and 17 stitches around his eye!)

Another fun game was "Let's wear Aunt EA's shoes." Leah was surprisingly good at walking in them - so good in fact that Chad had trouble taking her picture before she had sped across the room to him.

Of course, Molly couldn't let Leah have all the fun, so she grabbed another pair of Aunt EA's heels. Apparently, wearing heels causes kids to make ridiculous looking smiles.

Not a game, but something else Leah loves…Scott! We've been telling her that when he and Aunt EA get married in August, he'll become Uncle Scott, but she got confused at some point and started saying he'd be her Ankle Scott. Very cute. Sadly, Molly is too pedantic to let that slide, so she quickly taught Leah how to say it properly.

G'Mom's birthday is later this month, so we had an early birthday celebration. Chad was impressed with my fast baking skills when I decided to whip up some cupcakes during nap time and they were baked and decorated in 1.5 hours.

JJ sure likes hanging out with Aunt Jen - especially when he's wearing the snazzy pajama pants I made for him.

We also checked out the excellent Children's Museum of Memphis while we were there. It has a a tons of fun stuff for kids, including the cockpit of this FedEx jet that Leah is flying for us.

Leah and Emmie are ready to fly this jet wherever we need to go. Emmie said we were going to New York, though Molly radioed from flight traffic control saying we were supposed to go to South America.

The museum has two areas with green screens where they show the kids on TV screens superimposed over some other video feed. The band here is rocking on the beach to Surfin' Safari.

Emmie selected Justin Bieber's Never Say Never, and the younger girls filled the role of his backup dancers. (Chad clearly had a bit of fun with these green screen pictures!)

Molly and Leah decided to soar through the sky a bit as well.

We also played at the toy river they had set up. Apparently, the little toy shark is very exciting.

We visited Grampa at his office before having lunch at the Bar-B-Q Shop (which was outstanding). The girls wanted to go to Grampa's office so they could draw on the whiteboard.

G'Mom and Grampa took us to paint pottery on Monday night. Molly saw this castle piggy bank and fell in love with it. Now she says she needs some money to put inside!

Leah painted herself the perfect sized ice cream bowl.

With G'Mom and Grampa helping the girls, I was able to paint a piece too. I turned the girls' handprints into owls, inspired by this blog. And I left strict instructions for Mom to keep this one in Memphis. :)

We had a great weekend all together, but we did miss Uncle J who was on a mission trip in South Sudan. On our way home from the airport, we stopped for dinner with Aunt EA and Scott to avoid rush hour traffic. If you are local, you must check out Cheesetique in Arlington. Mmmm, it was so good!

Our county uses schools as polling centers, so Molly was off of school Monday and Tuesday for the election. We took the opportunity to fly to Memphis to visit with my family. Leah was thrilled to sit in the seat like Molly and we were excited to not have to carry her carseat through the airport!

G'Mom and Grampa took us to a giant county park near their house. It has a spectacular playground, including this extremely tall and fast slide.

Molly's favorite part of the playground was this teeter totter.

The girls had fun all together on this basket swing.

Emmie must have thought that G'Mom and Grampa's house was really frigid! Or it may have been that she was excited about her new gifts from G'Mom.

Molly loved her new sparkly clothes so much that she decided to cheer about them!

JJ was happy to watch all the dancing and cheering!

I couldn't resist making JJ a fleece monster hat. He'll be sporting a super fun hat this winter.

Emmie was the recipient of a cute monster hat too. She was also excited to model her new cherry corduroy jumper.

Saturday night we had an early Thanksgiving dinner. In preparation, Aunt 'Chelle needed to snap the green beans, so she enlisted some extra help.

You can never get enough holiday food, right?

The girls all enjoyed playing games together on any available iOS device. They were even seen playing old school board games!

JJ was sick over the weekend, but he did have some smiley moments.

Molly found that JJ's puppy played Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes, so she spent one afternoon trying to teach him all the moves. He was very entertained!

More to come tomorrow…