Sister, Sister--and a Growing Family!

The pictures from son #2's wedding to Ginger this past weekend just keep on comin'!  My baby sister and her hubby were both johnny-on-the-spot all weekend (not just at the wedding, but at the rehearsal dinner the night before), flashing away with their cameras in their zeal to capture every possible photo-worthy moment of this fabulous occasion.  My boy and his bride had hired a professional photographer, of course; but my sister and her man (a jack-of-all-trades who was once a professional wedding photographer himself) didn't let up all night anyway.  Already, she has posted hundreds of awesome pictures on Facebook.  She's a real peach.

This particular sister is probably the #2 fan of this blog, after my husband; or perhaps #3, after my husband and my middle son.  She's a fan of everyone she loves, and everything her loved ones do.  She's a bubbly, happy person who knows how to shower affection on others with an effortlessness and beauty that I have yet to master.  I might be the older of the two of us, but I think I've learned more from her than she'll ever learn from me.

Oh, yeah--and she's stunning, too.  Did I forget to mention that?

My other lovely and loving sister was also at this wedding (it was just us Harding gals, since my dad and my two brothers were unable to make it).  She flew down from NY to VA with my indomitable mom, who's been having trouble walking due to some issues stemming from her arthritis (and one of our nephews came along to help out as well).  My mom, a great-grandmother of four now, didn't kick up her heels the way she used to when she was known far and wide as the "Energizer Bunny"; but she did plenty of dancing in place and had a wonderful time in general.


The Harding women, left to right: the sister on the left is #4 of 5 in our family, I'm #2,
and the sister on my right is the baby.  (The photo-bomber is my oldest son!)

My mom and the older of my two younger sisters are both dark-haired, dark-eyed beauties, as you can see.  The funny thing is that my brunette sister up there on the left looks a lot more like the beautiful new young bride of son #2 than she does like me.  They could be sisters!  (Or aunt and niece, or whatever.)

I normally refrain from posting pictures of my three granddaughters (the children of my firstborn son), out of deference to his and his wife's wish to protect their privacy; but this shot is rather blurry, so I thought it would be okay.  I just wanted to show you our growing family.  Once, we were seven.  But between December 2009, when our oldest son got married, and November 2014, when we celebrated this latest wedding, we have more than doubled in size.  In a mere five years, we've added four daughters-in-law and four grandchildren--so we've gone from seven Pearls to fifteen (sixteen, really, with another wee one in utero: a sibling for our little girls).  Here's our ever-expanding gang, with my mother (who goes by the handle "Mimi").

Praise God from whom all blessings flow! (And there will be more pictures where these came from, just you wait and see...)