so the wedding has come and gone!

Wow, now that went quick! All that planning and all those details, now memories we must hold on to and treasure! It was all beautiful! Blanche was a beautiful bride! And the food and flowers were all phenomenal, thanks to my friends and family who all pitched in. Things always go well when they are rooted in love. I am so blessed to be surrounded by such a loving group of people God has placed in my life. My only regret was that we were limited in the number we could affordably accommodate. But that is life, always making compromises.

We have caught our breath again and are now planning a July trip to San Antonio to visit Bryan and Kristin, which will include a day at Sea World with the kids and an evening on the River Walk, as well as a Michael Buble concert for SOME of us! We usually always plan a beach trip, but had already planned the SanAntonio trip before the beach catastrophe! Am praying daily for all those affected by the oil spill. SO sad

Matt and Blanche have returned from their honeymoon, but we haven't had a long visit yet. They will be back here late tonight, in time to spend Fathers Day with Ricky tomorrow! Can;t wait to hear about their trip and see their pics!

Here comes the bride!

This year Ricky and I will celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary on June the 12th. Our daughter, Blanche is getting married this Friday, June the 11th! Have lately been paying close attention to the words "wedding vows"! I was truly a young bride, maybe even obsessed about marrying my high school sweetheart. I remember my wedding day so vividly. It was a warm sunny day, the tux's were MAUVE, truly a sign of the groovy seventies! ( Ricky had a lot more hair then! :) )I was so happy! I had NO clue what growing up together would be like. But that special day was the start of our vows. What I knew for sure was that NOTHING would ever make me walk away from the young man before me, promising his love to me. And then life happened and we were challenged time and again. Six months into our marriage we found ourselves expecting our first baby. We were so happy, ready to start the family we had hoped for... 5 maybe six children! Complications arose in the pregnancy and our first baby boy was born stillborn. It was heart wrenching, more pain than I had ever imagined. There we were, two teenagers grieving a lost child, hoping to be able to one day breathe again after the pain would subside a little! The young man who vowed his love to me grew up a little that year as he tried to carry the broken shell of his young bride. That was our first experience of the depth of the wedding vows! Many trying times followed, along with much joy and many precious memories. Our hardest task, to date, is raising our children... PARENTING... one of my biggest challenges ever! Yet God stands with us as we fumble through and make many mistakes, mistakes that hopefully our children will forgive us for later when they meet similar challenges when they are all parents.
And then came cancer. If at that point I had ever doubted my husband's commitment to me, I am convinced now that love can be so deep, it lives in our very core, in our soul, where it is so profound when we share that kind of love, it is Christ himself, loving our spouse! I have received that love from my spouse, my life partner! I rejoice in our pain, because it gave us an opportunity to love so deeply!
My wish for Blanche and Matt, as well as all of my children, is to find ways to love so deeply. I pray that your lives are blessed with so much joy and with as little pain as possible, but if life presents circumstances that bring suffering and anguish, you will grab hold of each other and support and love each other through every thing, especially the hard times. There have been many instances that would have made it easy to give up and walk away, but we held on to the vows, whenever we couldn't find a thing to love in each other. And with the vows, each time God brought us back to a place of love! I wish Blanche and Matt all the joy in the world and a lifetime commitment of everlasting love and the strength to love deeply even through the tough times. I love wedding vows!