summer wedding #2...

my lovely anna’s wedding was friday night. a beautiful day complete with a rainbow framing over where she was about to stand and say her vows. she looked like a princess. and i was so thrilled to be there and to be her “other mother” for the event. and to see her whole family (they used to live here and now live in virginia). she has a really great family!

i took the cupcakes to her wedding and delivered all 200 of them safely and then proceeded to take more photos than there were cupcakes... here are a couple (of photos. i didn’t save you any cupcakes)...

greene girl wedding #1...

wedding #1 because there are still two greene girls to go (to the highest bidder) and also 2 more wedding for me to attend in the next three weekends.

i was a beautiful wedding. every moment was perfect. and almost every person involved was a friend and known to me which made it even more special. and fun.

plus we had lots of former students staying out our house. more fun.

the only downside was that we had to leave before the reception was over because we had to head to north carolina and drive through the night. 

which wasn’t as much fun.

but looking at these photos is fun...

i do so love a good wedding. good thing because i have another one to go to tonight. and i have to take the cake...

i mean, i ACTUALLY have to take the cake (and 200 cupcakes) to the wedding. in my car. and the wedding in over an hour away.

hmmmm, how many cupcakes will arrive at the wedding? no one will ever know. and i will never tell...

a little vacation...

adam and i had a long weekend away. very nice. and now i will give you reviews of three hotels where we stayed. all in the holiday inn chain because that is a part of the intercontinental hotel chain and adam stays in intercontinental hotels when he travels to korea and china and ergo (thanks d.b. for the clarification on that word, ergo now i use it all the time) adam has lots of intercontinental freebie points and so we stayed in three holiday inn hotels ALL FOR FREE this weekend. which makes adam very happy and he was so happy that he let me purchase THREE pairs of shoes as DSW in jacksonville. i will give shoe reviews later. you can’t get it all in one blog entry...

thursday evening we left tallahassee and headed towards raleigh, n.c.(we had to be in raleigh on friday afternoon for brian and michelle’s wedding.) we drove as far as savannah that night and stopped at a holiday inn express. it didn’t make me any smarter (as the advertising promised) but it is a really nice place to stay. very clean. and a free breakfast. i like hampton inns because they are always the same and they have the free breakfast and this holiday inn express reminded me a lot of hampton inns. 

then on to raleigh, n.c. for a friday afternoon wedding... we arrived in time to have lunch with meghan greene (like we don’t see her enough in tally) and nicole arbuckle and kate arbuckle who is a snazzy dancer once she decided that she liked me. 

the wedding was beautiful. brian is almost finished with his doctoral work for a phd in astrophysics and michelle has her doctorate from yale (yes, that yale) in clinical psychology and teaches at duke. we have so much in common with them. like, uhhhh, well, they use forks and knives and spoons and so do we. other than that, i don’t know why they associate with us. except maybe to make fun of us later.  

and speaking of something to make fun of... they asked us to emcee their reception. yes, these super smarties gave ME a MICROPHONE on the most important day of their life. shows you how valuable a phd is for real life common sense. 

i was seated next to michelle’s mother at the reception (again, these people need to start using the brains God gave them) and she told me all about the cheese class she is taking in canada (where she lives). yes, a cheese class. i now know so much about how cheese is made. and really people, it is rather interesting the different processes that occur to make all those lovely varieties of cheese. especially since all cheese starts with the same 4 basic ingredients (milk, salt, bacteria, and something called “cultures” which is from the fore-stomach of a cow) and it is the processing that makes it all different in the end. i think it is the ONLY time at a wedding where i heard someone say the words “fore-stomach of a cow”. i figured that a woman who would take a class in cheese to learn exactly how each variety is made would have produced a daughter who went to yale and earned a doctorate from that institution.

since michelle’s mom missed a cheese class (i guess your daughter’s wedding isn’t an excused absence) she has to visit some cheese farms in north carolina this week. good thing she didn’t miss the “cheese test” or the “presentations” they have to make for class (really. they had those for this class). 

and maybe because i was interested in the whole cheese process and asked lots of questions that means that my children will do really well at, let’s say, community college.

so after the wedding on friday afternoon and late into friday evening (those phd candidates can PARTY) we stayed at the holiday inn brownstone which was the wedding hotel. and it was right by u.n.c. and just a mile from the wedding. this was an older hotel. refurbished BUT you couldn’t adjust the air or heat. you could only turn on the fan. adam likes to FRREEEEZZZEEE out a hotel room, so he wasn’t really thrilled about this. 

saturday morning we woke up fairly early and headed to columbia, s.c. adam had to visit a fish farm for an official visit since he helps them with their shipping of fish overseas. this fish farm is in the middle of NOTHING SOUTH CAROLINA  (oh, except there is a nuclear testing facility there too). don’t ask why the official visit, i could tell you but then i would have to drown you in the vat of fertilized fish eggs. so now i also know a lot about fish farming and shipping live fish to china and regulations for such things. which sometimes i get confused with my knowledge about cheese making and end up thinking that you have to oxygenate the cows fore-stomach. but that isn’t so.

then onto jacksonville, florida and to the cool hotel indigo which happens to be less than 2 miles from the shopping area with the APPLE STORE. or as i like to call it HEAVENish. we had dinner with thomas lee at p.f. changs. love it. it was totally worth the 90 minute wait. really. i would have waited HOURS for some orange peel shrimp and lettuce wraps.

we spent the night in the hotel of my dreams. i want my house to look exactly like this hotel. well, i don’t think i need a lobby quite that size, but i do want all the furniture, the carpets, the art work, the HUGE wall photo murals. and the maid service wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all.

woke up late sunday morning and went to the apple store to try out the new mouse. can’t buy one yet (unless i was to buy a smokin’ hot new HUGE mac, but that isn’t happening to a gal who stays in FREE HOTELS and visits fish farms for fun) but i did sing a praise chorus or two because it was sunday morning and because that mouse was sweeeeeet. like Jesus. but not able to save my soul. but nevertheless sweeeeeet.

then i purchased three pairs of shoes at dsw, maggiano’s for lunch (only because we had a gift card, that is a lot of eating out for adam who one year swore off eating out in restaurants as a new year’s resolution) and it was on the road back home to reality.

this was all made possible by kerry corven, babysitter par excellence. and lee shell, babysitter helper par mediocrity (hee hee).  i am sure that kerry, who is also a registered mental health counselor for children and teens, did a lot of “play therapy” this weekend with my kids. hope she has diagnosed them all and cured whatever ailed them...

all in all, it wasn’t a trip to the bonnie hunt show in l.a. (like another blogger that i know, and by “know” i mean i read her blog) but a fish farm, three new pairs of shoes from a discount shoe warehouse, and a really cool budget hotel are all a gal like me could hope for... that and a discussion about the fore-stomach of a cow.

a typical may weekend...

yes, a typical may weekend for the marshalls must always include a wedding... of course!  this was one for my cousin brittany. and of course it was a busy event for my camera.

the weekend started off with a little incident (which i will go into later in this post) and that incident slammed right into (and almost over) millie’s 8th grade dance. 

but even with less than 30 minutes to shower, change, and get her hair styled by me, she looked lovely. i took photos of every raa 8th grader at the dance that came to my photo corner. and some of them came LOTS of times. and millie danced in a little group of her girl friends. which i thanked the LORD over and over for her good sweet girlfriends because the other dancing 8th graders.... hmmmm, how can i put this? i think they weren’t dancing proverbially. like perhaps they haven’t read proverbs 5...

so after i arrived home with utter exhaustion from my full day of decorating for the dance, getting millie ready for the dance (and please lets take a moment to comment on how WELL i did her hairdo in less than 5 minutes), actually making it to the dance, and taking over 400 photos at the dance. i fell into bed.

woke up early because we had a full saturday....

boy scout honor court. wedding. graduation party. PTO officers end of the year swim party. and finally at 10:00 p.m. procure items and have an entire Passover meal ready for sunday morning Bible study for all of the middle school students at our church. (do not ask why i planned that, it sounded like a good idea the week before).

so saturday was a bit BUSY all day. just a bit. like the bit that makes one want to cry.

so after i fall into bed and then in quick succession get up early to get passover meal ready and head up to the church. do passover meal with the kids. come home from church. NAP (sigh). and then we all went to see cirque du soleil- saltimbanco. adam had gotten some HEAVILY discounted tickets on friday morning for the sunday afternoon production. it was GREAT. we all enjoyed it and i hope the kids don’t try ANY of those things at home...

anyway, it was a typical may weekend.

except for one little thing...

we were robbed. actually it was a burglary. robbed means you were home when it happened and we were not home...

you might have read about it in the newspaper.... make sure you watch the video in the upper right hand corner. yes, i love to see someone shoving adam’s 40th birthday gift in the trunk of their car and slamming the trunk closed. i also love to see someone’s underwear showing in my driveway... it just doesn’t happen enough. 

the newspaper did get some details wrong. it occurred at 2:15 p.m. (not 5:45 as they reported). i had JUST left to go decorate the cafeteria for the dance at the middle school. our youth minister had just dropped by to pick up the senior class DVD of photos that i had just finished making on my computer and then i left the house right after he left.

and one guy came and peered in the side door window and knocked. and when no one answered, he called some friends and the car backed into our driveway. he pried open the door with a crowbar (and destroyed the lock and the frame of the door). they were in and out in less than 2 minutes and took 2 t.v.s. the big one in the family room that i had given adam for his 40th birthday 2 years ago. and a little one that didn’t work all of the time that was in millie’s room. they tried to get the playroom t.v. but it is really mounted to the wall. 

and they were gone. and so was our t.v. the same one that has been struck by lightning TWICE and died both times and replaced by the service warranty. which doesn’t cover theft. do you think God is trying to tell me something....

millie and maxx arrived home 2 hours later. saw the busted door and called the police and went to a neighbor’s house. the police came with guns drawn and searched the house (and told me later that it was very CLEAN, whoo hoo). i arrived home a few minutes after the police with ALL these police cars ALL around my neighborhood (they had “established a perimeter”) but none in my yard, so i wasn’t really thinking anything was wrong. the kids had called my cell, but you all know that i always have it on vibrate and always forget to check it...

a neighbor was waiting in my yard to reassure me that my kids were fine and at their house. millie was so worried that i would be worried about she and maxx (rosie was with me). the police escorted me through the house to see what was missing. and then adam arrived home (he had answered his cell phone when millie called).

and adam remembered what i had not...

that we had a nice little motion sensor camera that he had bought at costco about a month earlier that he had installed over in the area of the side door. and maybe just maybe that had captured these guys on video.

and it had.

and boy those police officers that were at our house were EXCITED! and so they ran the video on the news that night. and were able to get some kind of good shots of the guys. 

and so we are in the newspaper and we were on the 11:00 news that night (never identifying us or using our street address). we are all fine. the kids were fine. i think the fact that we were able to see what happened via the video really helped us. we knew they were in and out really quick, they weren’t lingering over my underwear drawer, they weren’t rifling though the kids room. they just wanted that big flat screen t.v. and knowing that we DON’T know them and that they weren’t teenagers from our neighborhood, or the greene girls, helps us too...

onto the proverbially lesson...

proverbs 18:11 The wealth of the rich is their fortified city;
       they imagine it an unscalable wall.

we do not live in a fortified city, we do not have unscalable walls or even a door with a really good lock. what we do have is an all seeing, all knowing God. He knows, He sees, He acts... talk about your motion sensor... in Him we live and move and have our being (acts 17:28)

whether we had ever seen that video or not, we can rest secure because not only does God tell us that our riches, our fine security systems, even our motion detector video camera really is NOT enough protection from this world, in the verse before 11 He tells us what is secure... eternally secure.

proverbs 18: 10 The name of the LORD is a strong tower;
       the righteous run to it and are safe.

so, be safe out there everyone. and if any of my blog readers recognize those underwear's from the video... call the police...

another weekend. another wedding...

well, not just ANY wedding. our sweet jojo’s wedding. she lived with us one summer and all three kids were a part of her wedding and as i mentioned last week, i was asked to pray in the wedding...

however, the pastor in charge of the wedding kind of forgot that little factoid, so... i didn’t actually get to pray at the wedding.

but i wrote a great prayer. so IF i had prayed at the wedding, this is what i would have prayed...

i thought about praying for prosperity, for blessings to shower from heaven for this couple every minute of every day, for wonderfully easy days and nights of joy and mirth forever. i thought about praying that their lives be an easy sweet ride through the tunnel of love or a lot like the winnie the pooh ride at disney world. easy, fun, no real twists and turns, no soaring ups and downs, and a sweet permeating smell of honey.

but then i thought that wasn’t really wasn’t what makes a marriage great, prosperity never leads anyone to grow or even to know the true fullness of love and life. the easy ride never challenges us or causes our hearts to race.

it is not in the still calm of life or in repose that great character is formed. great love stories involve contending with difficulties and overcoming them together with God’s help. we learn to trust each other and God the best when things are the darkest. we cling to each other on the downhills of life.

so instead this is my prayer for Jo and Justin...

“may they have enough blessing that they know Your hand is upon them Lord AND enough difficulty to force them to always hold on to each other and to You”.

i know it seems wrong to pray for difficulties at wedding, surrounded by such beauty, everyone looking so fresh and perfect and fairy tale like and i know right now Justin and Jo are wondering WHY exactly they asked ME to pray since i am actually PRAYING for hard times to come, but after almost 20 years of marriage i realize, as many of you in this room realize, that this is the truth of life...

we need ups AND we need downs or we will never know the true joy of marriage and togetherness and how to live through the best AND the worst with a person. 

we need the roller coaster life because the highs and lows makes us hold on tight to that person sitting next to us. we don’t hold on tight to each other on the winnie the pooh ride. 

we hold on tight, screaming with fear and delight on the roller coasters. they take our breath away and they give it back to us as well.

i think that is why the marriage vows encompass both sides of life’s roller coaster ride as well...

“to have AND to hold from this day forward, for better, (AND) for worse, for richer, (AND) for poorer, in sickness AND health, to love AND cherish until death do us part."

there has to be worse to truly know the better, 

there has to be poorer to not grow lax in the richer, 

there has to be sickness to cherish the health. 

there has to be the fall down, to know that the other person will be there to pick you up. 

there has to be the times that shake us to the core, to shake off all that is worldly in our lives so that we know what is unshakable... our love for each other and the Unshakable truth of a God who died for us so we could live for Him.

so that is what i pray for Justin and Jo today...

blessing to know Your hand is there and hard times so they have to trust Your hand when they don’t see it. 

may they cling ONLY to each other and to You looking into your face in the good times and especially the hard times. 

may their lives together be a roller coaster and may they love every minute of the ride until they greet You at the end of it still holding hands and wishing for one more up and down together.

in the Strong Name of the One who Holds it all together, the Lord  of the roller coaster ride, Jesus Christ...

AMEN

wouldn’t that have been a nice prayer? i am sure that the pastor was just worried that MY prayer would show him up. that must be why he skipped over me. other than that, the wedding was perfect... 

so if you need me to NOT pray at your own wedding, call me. i will write a beautiful and meaningful prayer and then will NOT pray it at your wedding....