A Family Wedding Part One

 In June of this year my oldest child was married. She announced her engagement in early May and so the wedding planning was quite intense.

The wedding day was very deeply special. Many many people came together to make the day possible and it meant the world to me. Dear friends and family worked so hard to provide beauty and whimsy and love through the whole process. They dropped everything and were by our sides. Thankyou to you all. 

My daughter is a person who has always been in a hurry to grow up and is often looking ahead.  I hope for her, that there were moments in this time and this season where she was able to be present, and where she could feel the vast amounts of love lavished upon her. It was magnificent and full of light. It was what dreams are made of really.

My daughter and her friend did all the bouquets for the wedding day

So many precious people helped with the set up of the reception hall but my sister, my friend, her daughter, and my daughter's friend did a majority of it,

The morning of the wedding had many special moments. I have a few photos. Alexises friend's parents kindly allowed us to get ready at their house. There were a lot of people getting ready there and their home was so perfect and so beautiful.

                                                The precious flower girls and a bridesmaid :)

                       My sister had so little time given to her to do my hair and she did a lovely job.

My husband had been getting the ceremony set up and then getting himself and our boys ready at our home. This is his first look at his oldest daughter in her wedding dress. It was immediate tears.

                                                         This was such a special moment!

Our Baby Turns One

 

   

   My sweet baby girl is one. My sister hosted a celebration for her that was so beautiful and so perfect. Amaris loved it, we all did. My sister is such a gracious thoughtful hostess and she thinks of all the details. She provides such lovely food and caters to all the allergens. I am so thankful for her and her kindness to my children and I. I had just gotten back from Germany not long before and had jumped headlong into trying to get my home back in order and things ready to start a very big busy year of homeschooling. I did not have the bandwidth to do anything really for my baby girl and my sister stepped in amazingly. 

A year with this little girl in our family has been incredible. She is so strong, so sweet, so precious and smiley. She has weathered a lip and tongue tie revision, colic, candida, and issues with sleep and sensitivities to food. She has been rocked and snuggled and loved so dearly. She has been so deeply treasured and adored. I am so thankful for the gift of her in our family for a full year! It has been the best.

Germany Part Two

 My trip to Germany was very full. I had no idea what to expect when I went. I did not do a lot of research. I did try to learn a bit of German but was really too shy to try it when I was there. People were very gracious to me when they realized I spoke English. My dear friend had many plans for us but it was all dependent on how the baby did, and she ended up doing really really well. So we went on numerous adventures in high temperature weather. It was glorious. We visited the sea, castles, villages, towns, and gardens. We visited her family and churches and cathedrals. Every day was something new for me to see and experience. I loved it all! The cobblestone streets, the buildings that held the mystery of hundreds of years of people who lived within their walls, experiencing food and shops and roads and schools. I have always loved history and it felt like Germany lived and breathed history. To go a village that was a thousand years old, to walk into a church built in 811, to see a nunnery that was still functioning, to see a road where on one side the buildings had been bombed in World War Two and on the other side the buildings from as early as the 1600's were still intact and original ~ it all mattered so much to me. I felt like myself there because somehow there are parts of me that miss things I've not known. Where I live the buildings are quite young and most old buildings are not preserved and were not built to last the way they are built in Germany. I had, quite simply, not experienced the depth of history that Germany held and it was so so beautiful to me. There is also such depth of detail in the older buildings there. The artistry and craftsmanship was something I had not experienced either. I felt like all my senses were being ministered to every day. 

I loved how villages all had water features in them that brought tranquility and also were needed to water animals back in a different era.

I can't quite fathom how old this house is and what it has seen and who has been blessed by its presence in the world. 

I had this magical moment where a violinist was playing and it was raining and this building was just so so beautiful and I wanted to cry.

                                This cathedral was beautiful and cool inside on a hot hot day.

 

                 This building is a nunnery and this is just a very small portion of it.

The details of the roof, the window, the stone...all of it spoke to me,

There were so many grand doors that could withstand the storms of battle and weather and more.

I love how people took the time to just sit and visit and drink out on the cobblestone streets as they had been doing for time out of mind.

My friend took this photo of me. I am in awe of the beauty of this ancient town surrounded by vineyards.

I was so impressed by the German dedication to window boxes of flowers. They were stunning always.

                                              These next two photos were taken by my friend.

Here you can see what is inside the walls of these buildings that have allowed them to last for hundreds of years! 

My friend would always remind me to look up ~ look up ~ so I would not miss the beauty.

     Inside a medieval castle...the rocks so worn from the thousands of feet and animal hooves.

Reaction

 There are moments where I write something that is purely reactionary and also from a core place of pain

This is one of those writings

I have said

' I feel'

So.many.times

'I need'

Often

Broken record often

And it's a grief

To see

And see again

That you CAN'T see me

OR hear me

Truely

For so many reasons

The complexity astounds me

Overwhelms me

And you tell me

It's all about me

Accusations

When I try to speak about it all

And I quietly inside

Die a little more

Knowing beyond all shadows

It can never really be about me

Because in this world

Your heart has been so wounded

It holds itself so close

Every action towards me

Is a supreme sacrifice

You feel almost heroic

And I feel gone

Stripped

Gypped

Exhausted

Sad

Completely hopeless

And that

Is good

Because seeing what is

That brings clarity

Germany Part 1

August has ended and what an August it was for me. 

I went on a trip to Germany on August 8th to visit a friend I made when I was in grade ten (many moons ago). I took my baby who turned one at the end of August. I have not left the country since 2006 so this was quite an epic happening in my life. I felt totally out of any sort of comfort zone. As I walked through customs and left my family behind I felt like running back. My five year old had been crying for half an hour and my ten year old was furious. I felt like I was making such an unwise choice.

Then I went into a ten hour flight through the night with my almost one year old baby. I also chose an airline with notoriously cramped seating. I did not know this. The flight was very challenging. However there were angels in human form on that flight that had compassion on me as my baby could not sleep, screamed long and loud, and we had nowhere we could stretch our legs or really move. 

One girl, Rosie, actually held my baby and shoved through the cramped aisles so my arms could have a break. Holding a baby for eleven hours straight, who is twenty three pounds, is challenging, and add that to a night flight where everyone is trying to sleep...it wasn't my favourite life moment! However, lesson learned and thank you Rosie for being so sweet and kind. May you be rewarded somehow someway!

After the plane ride I landed in Frankfurt, Germany and wrestled my bags and baby through customs realizing I had not written down my friends home town or phone number. This was fine in the end but could have been a disaster.

Finally, there she was! My friend Juliane who I had not seen in fourteen years with her daughter I had never met!  I was so happy and thankful. Juliane had thought of everything. She had gluten free snacks, a stroller, a car seat, water, and it was so so kind. The baby fell asleep immediately and to Juliane's home we headed. I was so glad to have a body break from the baby and food to enjoy. 

I landed in a heat wave and had left a heat wave in Canada. While flying into the country I had already been struck by the beauty from the air! It was stunning. Acres of beautiful green farm land that had red roofed villages nestled amongst rolling hills. I was enchanted. Then as we drove home I was struck by the speed at which we drove and the narrowness of the country roads. 

When we arrived at our first village that was when the absolute beauty and history of Germany overcame me and never left. I eagerly stared at every building I could trying to take it all in. I also was fighting exhaustion and was so deeply tired. 

This was my first hour in Germany and already I felt like a different person. I felt like someone who had done something so different and so big. I had left my family on another continent and that was something I had never fathomed doing. It felt so monumental and so freeing as well. 

So here I was. I had no idea what was in store... no known plans but I was here and it was so beautiful my soul already knew that I had made such a good choice.