In the words of the great Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff

..."There's an air of love and of happiness and this is the Fresh Prince's new definition of summer madness...."

This weekend has been chock full of summertime madness....and it has been wonderful! And I think it's not actually technically summer yet, but you could have fooled me with this weekend's weather and summer festivities.

We attended our first summertime wedding on Saturday. This was Amelia's first wedding reception, and we quickly discovered something. Amelia is a BIG FAN of the wedding reception. She thoroughly enjoyed the cake and punch, just like her Mama. But then she really surprised us all by loving the DANCE FLOOR.

Now this is where she and her Mama differ. Most of the time, the only way you will find me shaking my groove thang on the dance floor is if I can COMPLETELY surround myself with other people so that none of the non-dancing wedding guests who are sitting around watching the dance floor can see me (and judge my very bad dancing skills).

Amelia, however, was pretty much having herself a solo dance recital on Saturday. She danced to every single song. She ran across the dance floor waving her hands in the air. She ran up to the wedding guests and clapped her hands at them and smiled and laughed and then ran back across the dance floor. She twisted and shouted and dropped it like it's hot. Okay so maybe she didn't drop it like it's hot, but if she knew how to, she totally would have.

I'm pretty sure they wrote that Abba song about her.

"Dancing queen, young and free, only seventeen."  They were totally talking about 17 months, not years, right?

Besides the wedding reception, our weekend was filled with tons of other summertime festivities that caused my sweet girl to smile and laugh more than I have ever seen in her entire life. And boy did that feel good.

She got to take her first ride in a little toy dune buggy, up and down Nana and Papaw's driveway.

After cruising in her dune buggy, she had her first experience swinging. It was so sweet. She was equally nervous and excited, so she would hold her breath on the swing back and then let out a squeal of delight on the swing forward! I couldn't tell if she loved it until I tried to take her out and she cried to get back in!

On Sunday, Amelia had another summertime first with her first "swim" in a baby pool. Let's face it, a baby pool is essentially an outside bathtub - and in our case, rubber duckies and all.

But Amelia thought it was the bee's knees. I'm sorry, apparently  I have been transported back into the seventies this morning with my Abba reference and now bee's knees.

Sunday evening we all went out to dinner for Chris's birthday at a new restaurant on the river. It was very good and food always tastes even better when you have a waterfront view, in my opinion.

It was nice to have an extra day off after a weekend full of sweet summertime activities, so we were able to get caught up on laundry, cleaning, groceries, and all those other fun things.

If this is a preview of what our "summer summer summertime" is going to be like this year, I think it's safe to say it's going to be a good one.