one decade

my love and i have been married for ten years today!  

at times i wonder how all those months 

turned into years. and ten years from today i hope i'm still wondering..... 

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY JAKE. 

 i love running, (tripping, crawling, laughing, crying, praying,)  down the aisle of life alongside you.

we belong together. 

"Love seems the swiftest,

but it is the slowest of all growths.

No man or woman really knows what perfect love is

until they have been married a quarter of a century."

~Mark Twain~

be sure your posts will find you out

Back about four and a half years ago I came upon an old friends blog.  By "old friend" I mean that we had lost contact after knowing one another through our involvement at the same church.  He also married a childhood friend of mine which made him a friend-in-law I guess.  I was delighted to see that he had some blog postings in his archive from 2002, (not alot of people were blogging "back then").  Narcissically I clicked on September 2002 to see if, per chance he had posted something about our wedding day!  HAHA!!!  WHO DOES THAT??  And why would I even think a MAN would waste his time writing about OUR wedding day???

To my complete shock and excitement I came upon a posting ALL*ABOUT*OUR*WEDDING!!  I started reading as fast as my little eyes could scan and realized rather quickly that this post was a total mockery of our day!! I wasn't upset, just surprised.  I wondered if I should leave a comment, maybe something like this: "Hi Brian, (he gets annoyed when people spell his name incorrectly), nice blog you have here.......jerk!!"   I don't remember exactly what I did, but I did make known my "presence" on his blog one way or another.  A few months later I returned to the blog post to see he had changed a few things and tried to cover his tracks, for instance: "in July at a wedding in Massachusetts" and other such fallacies! It felt good to know he was a little sorry......or ashamed.

Fast forward years later and Bryan's blog has really taken off and his first ever published piece was done in Collide Magazine last year.  And want to know what it was all about?  The way he made fun of our wedding....and how I found out!  The title of his article was aptly named "Be Careful Little Blog What You Flame." 

His article begins like this:
" This was it. "This was the last straw.

Sitting us outside in the sun I could understand. I mean, how were they supposed to know it was going to be 90 degrees outside in September?

And the musical numbers? Definitely a bit much for my taste, but I could live with those too. Hey, it was their wedding. If they wanted it to feel like Mamma Mia!-meets-The Bachelor, that was their call.

But a season of prayer for the bride and groom? A stinking, 15-minute-long season of prayer when it felt like my sweaty neck already boasted a third-degree sunburn? This was too much. This wedding needed to be flamed, and I needed to be the one to do it...." 

For the rest of the article you can go here.
You'll have to read the entire article to know how it all ended. And if you're a blogger, you'll find some very helpful and insightful tips to seeing your blog become a success....and how not to be mean!   

"If you can't forgive and forget,
pick one."
~Robert Brault~

Guest Posting

What an AMAZING WEEKEND we had!

My brother Tom got married to a lovely woman named Becky.

I'll share more about that later this week,
with some stunning pictures!

Real quickly though,

As I mentioned earlier,
I did something new last Friday.

I guest posted over at Bryan Allain's blog.

Just thought I'd give you a little background information today:

*We met years ago when he married a lifelong friend of mine.

*He was forced to attend my wedding by marrying said friend.

*He wrote about it on his blog.

Basically totally bashed our wedding day!!

7 years later I found his blog and saw that he had posted back in September, 2002, (which was rare because blogging hadn't really caught on yet)....so I happily clicked into his archives thinking that perhaps, (OF COURSE) he SURELY had to write about how he attended the most beautiful and moving wedding ever, (besides his own of course)!

.....and that's when I found the dreaded post,

(he tried to save his hiney by later changing some of the information:
such as "2 months ago in Massachusetts" and what not, but it was too late)!

After a few days of wanting to place a dead fish in his car wheel well or hide some stinky cheese near his engine, (he has a long commute to work so in my eyes that would've done the trick)!!

I had to start laughing about it.

After all, it WAS funny!
He's a funny guy.
Here's a little funny video he made if you'd like to see some more humor.
Oh, and he has a whole section called "Amish Paradise" which is stinkin' hilarious,
(especially to us Lancaster Countians)!!

HAVE A GREAT MONDAY.

IT'S BEAUTIFUL AROUND HERE,

70* AND IT'S OCTOBER 11TH.

wE'Re HeAdEd OUT......

"There's no such thing as fun for the whole family."
~Jerry Seinfeld~

Our 8th Anniversary is Today!

"There's another kind of love,

one that gives you the courage to be better then you are,

not less then you are.

One that makes you feel that anything is possible.

I want you to know that you can have that,

I want you to hold out for it,
I want you to know that you deserve it."
~Nights in Rodanthe~

Two-thousand, nine-hundred and twenty days and nights together, (give or take a few)....

WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN, how wonderful!!!!!!!!!!

(For more about our wedding you can see this previous post if you so desire.)

Our Wedding Day

"You have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes." Song of Solomon 4:9
I spent countless hours writing out our invitations, getting the wording and each stroke just right. My most talented cousin Freiman painted lovely watercolors of Jake and I, used on our invitation and our program.

My parents front yard. They put so much hard work into making their home fit for a king!
I will never know all the hours they put into this day! THANK YOU SO MUCH DAD AND MOM!! (and everyone else that worked so hard). It did not go unnoticed!

the beautiful bridesmaids.

I will NEVER forget the feeling of floating down the aisle toward my man!
I walked to the song by Rita Springer, "Moving with the Lamb."
Bless him, he just cried and cried! I couldn't stop smiling....

TOGETHER AT LAST!!

"Perhaps it is waiting that transforms
an ordinary love into an exquisite one."
~Joyce Landorf~

We washed each others feet as a symbol of servanthood to one another.

SO handsome!

Our fourteen flowergirls....how was I to pick only a few of my darling nieces?
Why not have them all? It was so sweet. They all walked down together, sprinkling rose petals, the smaller ones being pulled along in a red wagon....

look how little?? Oh how seven years turns little girls into little ladies!!

so nervous before our first kiss....we just laughed....

and then finally....our lips met and we kissed for 20 seconds!
even now, when I watch our wedding video I get slightly uncomfortable at the length of the kiss....and it was me!! I guess that's what's happens when you wait until your wedding day to kiss for the first time....it just goes on and on and on..... this was the BEST part, he totally dipped me down....it was heavenly!!
we ran out to a song called, "Good Mornin' Life" by Dean Martin!

Our lovely wedding party! The program.... Looking back I realized I over-planned our ceremony...not something you want to do on a sweltering September day. There we were in the shade of the gazebo while our dear guests melted under the blazing sun. Sorry to all of you, if you're reading this now, for not having water for you to drink and shade for you to sleep...um, I mean sit under! Our lovely ceremony lasted a good two hours or more!! You can read this post to get another bloggers insight of our wedding day, well, he says it's not about our wedding day, but it very well could be!!!
I think it's hilarious!! Anyway, time was standing still for us.....

port-o-pots CAN be cute! the place cards hung on wash lines...
every time we kissed this guy would blow the shofar! it was GREAT!
look how young we look?? i love this picture....

we had our own little table so beautifully decorated. above us hung a gigantic grapevine wreath lit up with Christmas lights and dried hydrangea bunches....it still hangs in our living room today.

Jake's creation!! I had seen a picture in a magazine similar to this and he, being the creative, visionary man he is, came up with this idea using pvc piping...he spray painted it brown, then it was wrapped with grapevine, Christmas lights and dried hydrangea bunches. I thought it looked like Cinderellas carriage!! I loved it!!
our fabulous cake! i loved the little white dots all over it....
My Dad in the background, Jake's Mom, (Annie) in the forefront...good friends since they were babies....literally! Annie's Mom died when she was a baby so my Dad's Mom helped take care of her.

our first dance to "At Last" by Etta James....still one of our favorite songs. Dancing the night away! JOY came down rain like.....My Mom is on the left, behind Jake, in the blue dress....I can almost FEEL the fun in this picture.... "My lover spoke and said to me,
ARISE my darling, my beautiful one, and come with me.
See!! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land."
Song of Solomon 2:10-13