People have asked us for a long time what we were going to do for a honeymoon.  In July, we agreed a good honeymoon would be going home and turning off the phone and not leaving for a month.  By August we knew we’d never get away with a month, so we switched to two weeks.  By September it was one.  After Grandma Lila fell and we realized she was going to be coming home even sooner than previously anticipating, we started saying, “We’re hoping to get Tuesday off.”

Today is Tuesday, which means today is officially our honeymoon.  I can’t possibly imagine having gone anywhere interesting to spend the day.  It’s been pretty much a day of naps between sleep.  Somewhere around 3:00 we figured we’d better eat something, so we poked around in all the bags of groceries (one of our wedding presents!) and made some Malt-o-Meal (Ben’s new favorite food discovery) before going back to sleep.  I knew we were tired, but I didn’t realize how much the past few weeks had taken out of us.  I kind of hope we can still rest the next few days because I think it’s going to take that long before we stop doing artistic impressions of bumps on a log.

Yesterday was the best wedding day ever.  I’m going to preface my description by saying that whoever came up with the tradition of not having the bride and groom see each other until the bride walks down the aisle was nuts.  Out of all the traditions we ended up ignoring yesterday, losing this one gave us the most joy.

It started with decorating the hall in the morning.  Ben and I had carefully planned some details of the day, but there were others we’d been a little foggy about when it had come to specifics.  On Sunday, as our rehearsal celebration was winding down (that was quite an evening too, involving Ben’s friends Paul and Jason and about every musical instrument in our house), we had a family discussion about how the next day should go.  I was planning to get up early and head over to St. Clair Shores to pick up my bouquet (the only flowers at the event), then come back this way to help Elizabeth, Mom, Aunt Peggy, and my other siblings put out favors, ice cream handbills, and candle centerpieces at the hall at 9:00.  As Ben was leaving, he said, “You know, we’re going to be seeing each other before the wedding anyway.  I’d rather be here with you than get ready at home, so I’ll bring all my stuff and meet you at the hall at 9:00 and we can get ready together.”

Leah and Benjamin ended up deciding to get the bouquet, so my day started with bringing down the laundry, taking a shower, and going over to the hall.  Ben came in just as we were finishing up (he ended up going out to breakfast with his mom and sisters).  He looked at me with that big smile of his and said, “Lauren, how about getting married today?”

“Sure,” I said.  “What time?”

“Seven sound good?” he said.

After finishing at the hall, we ran little errands together.  We took pew bows over to the church and gave them final payment, we stopped at the bank, we took the rest of my clothes over to the new house, ate a nice big breakfast with my family, and leisurely got ready more or less together.  We didn’t get dressed together, but I kept him company while he was brushing his teeth and combing his hair and he kept me company while I was doing my hair.  There’s a photo Benjamin took that I’ve never seen in anyone else’s photo album: I’m doing my hair in our little green bathroom by the kitchen and Ben’s sitting on the counter watching me and talking with Elizabeth, who’s doing her hair too.

Apparently, it’s common for brides and grooms who see each other before the wedding to take something called “reveal” pictures, where the bride is revealed all dressed up to the groom for the first time.  We didn’t want that moment to be a big photo op, though, so after I got dressed I sent everyone else out and called down to ask Ben if he wanted to come up.  He said he did, so he came up the stairs to the sewing room.  To those who know Ben and how he plays chess, he gave me his very best “I just lost my queen” look.  It was the only time he teared up all day.  I cried like a baby after the ceremony, but Ben just got a little teary right then.

And then we had to hustle because we were running late for pictures.

The interesting thing about taking pictures outside yesterday was that it was FREEZING.  Thankfully, the rain held off and it wasn’t windy, but there was a bone-chilling moment when Sunshine our photographer (4-11 Productions, if anyone’s interested!) said, “Okay, everyone, time to take the coats off.”

Ben and I were standing there as our family was shuffled around us to get different series of pictures and Ben said out of the corner of his mouth, “Lauren…I hate to tell you this, but I think I’m getting cold feet.”  Then he looked at me and said.  “Nice necklace.  Looks like an ice cube.”

If you see me laughing in any of the park photos, it’s probably because of a remark like that.  My mouth got really cold while I was smiling until I couldn’t feel it anymore and my toes were literally blue by the time we got in the car.  But we got some really pretty photos, I think, and Sunshine was great about rotating everyone in and out of pictures and getting everyone promptly bundled back into warm cars.  We’d expected it would take about half an hour for family photos and another half hour for single portrait pictures of Ben and I and we got done twelve minutes ahead of schedule. 

After that we went out to visit Grandma Lila so we could have photos taken with her before we went to the church.  It was kind of a strange experience walking through an assisted living home dressed as we were.  A lot of people just stared at us in a sort of stupefied way.  They were probably thinking, “What on earth did they put in my coffee this morning?”

By the time we left for the church, it became clear we were going to have plenty of time to arrive an hour before the ceremony started.  We had left plenty of cushion time in our budget just in case (hey, the first rule of planning an event is never plan anything for the last minute…and leave lots of last minutes) and we weren’t using any of it.  Ben said, “Does this mean we’re going to have to sit around in a back room for a whole hour?”

“You could greet people at the door,” I suggested.  “I mean, it’s not normal for me to be out there but you could.”

“I’m not spending all day with you and then leaving you in a back room while I greet people,” Ben said firmly.  “It’s not good for a man to be alone, remember?”

“True,” I said.

“I know,” he said.  “Let’s greet people together.”

My first instinct was to say, “that’s just not done” but then I stopped and thought about it.  The reason it’s not done is because it’s considered bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding.  Out of all the traditions we were ignoring…what allegiance exactly did I hold to this one?  And we’d always been a little concerned with how we were going to make sure to say hello to as many of our guests as possible considering we were going to take photos with our grandparents instead of doing a receiving line.  Furthermore, the problem with receiving lines is that they involve everyone trying to exit the church at once, saying hello to the whole bridal party along the way.  If we greeted everyone coming in, we realized, we would say hello as people came in at staggered intervals and we would avoid the bottleneck on the way out, allowing everyone to go over to the reception and enjoy dessert…and get home early if they wanted to.

So we stopped off in the back room for a few moments to make a quick repair to my sleeve, feed Ben a sandwich (I wasn’t hungry), and say hello to our family as they were arriving.  Then we went out and stood by the doors to sanctuary and said hello to nearly every one of our guests.  It was a spontaneous decision I would’ve never thought to make, but I think in some ways it was one of the best parts of the wedding.  We didn’t have time to sit around getting the about-to-play-in-a-recital stomachache or wonder how things were going out there, and we didn’t miss Leah and Mrs. Gurin playing Bach’s Double Concerto.  It was great.

The funny thing about the day was that it went by so leisurely that it was almost a shock when all of a sudden it was time to start the ceremony.  All the girls were standing in the little hall off to the side of the sanctuary and Rebekah – who was the official Bridesmaid Support Staff – went down the whole line of them and lit their lanterns.  It was a really beautiful sight, all those beautiful girls in their dresses and white shawls with their lanterns being lit.  When I first came up with the idea of having them carry lanterns instead of flowers I thought it’d be pretty, but I wasn’t prepared for how lovely all my sisters actually looked.

Ben and I both shared the processional – he and his parents went down first, and then my parents brought me.  The most fun part of doing this method was that people didn’t really recognize I was coming down the aisle until I was about halfway there, so there was this very dramatic moment when I was almost to Ben and everyone stood up all of a sudden.  It felt like an acknowledgement that something big was happening for both of us rather than everyone paying homage to a queen.  And Ben came down the aisle first, so it wasn’t like I got all the attention and Ben just crept in by the side door.

The ceremony went picture-perfectly.  Ben was a little disgusted because he got right into the middle of his vows and his mind went blank until he was reminded of the next word.  I didn’t have any trouble like that, but I thought we were on microphone a little louder than we were, because I spoke in a normal-to-loud speaking voice and a lot of people sitting in the back of the church told me later they couldn’t hear a word I said.  I feel a little bad about that, but at least it was out of ignorance and not because I was too nervous to say anything.

And then the ceremony was all over; and even though Ben and I had discussed for weeks what we were going to do about the traditional kiss at the end of the ceremony, in the end we did nothing at all but smile and walk off down the aisle.  Oops.

If anyone’s interested, we got through the reception without any kisses too.  As for when Ben actually kissed me the first time, I’m not telling.  Some things can just stay personal.

The reception was fun too.  I guess there was a mixup with the seating chart and people had too many names on the same tables and things were all turned around, but Anna straightened things out to the best of her ability and I suppose on the scale of things to go wrong, that was a fairly simple one.  We didn’t have a big bridal party introduction and didn’t make announcement when Ben and I got there either – we had a few short speeches by Dad Turner and our sisters and Aaron and Ben thanked everyone for coming, and we went around and visited nearly all the tables. 

Actually, the only time we sat down for a bit was when Jenny brought us some ice cream and we stopped at the table we were visiting and ate.  Then later in the evening I finally got to sit on Ben’s lap.  We’ve been waiting a long time for that.  Benjamin took a beautiful photo of that moment which is so pretty it looks completely posed even though it was spontaneous.

And we finally, finally got to go home together without saying goodbye.  That’s probably what made it the best wedding ever.

Since I haven't been able to write much this week, I thought I'd compensate a little by writing now.  It's 3:00 and we're about to get all ready to leave to take pictures at George George Park.  It's been a very peaceful and quiet morning that Ben and I have been together for most of the time.  I have to say, I like getting rid of the Groom-Can't-See-The-Bride tradition.  It's made the day so much nicer than it would've been!

We've already been out to the hall and decorated and also dropped off bows at the church to go on chairs.  Then we took all my clothes over to the new house and came back to Beacon Square to get ready.  Right now Leah is practicing violin and Ben is getting dressed and I'm getting ready to go get ready.  Make any sense?

And to answer the question everyone wants to know: yes, we are very excited.  Very!

I’m writing tonight from our new bedroom.  It’s kind of a shame to have to get up and leave again, but I suppose I’ll look on the bright side: it’s now all set up and looks like a real place to live!  Ben’s been sleeping here the past few nights since Kim is in town and the beds at the Turner’s house have gotten scarce.  Besides, I think he couldn’t wait to try everything out.  He was all excited about getting to test the new mattress.

The bed has been delivered and all our collected shower gifts of blankets and sheets and pillows and mattress pad has been put on it.  Ben’s clothes are all moved in.  The Tuckfields and Turners (and representative Josephs) moved all Ben’s things from his parent’s house next door this evening and we have all been busily scurrying around trying to put things away.  It takes a lot of decisions to put a whole houseful of things away!  The kitchen seems pretty randomly sorted to me, but things like that are probably good to take care of later when we have a little more spare time.  At the moment, I’m just content not to have piles of things sitting on the floor.

The house has changed tremendously over the course of this week.  Ben and I have spent most days doing extensive shopping trips at Home Depot or Lowes with Aaron, purchasing everything from a new toilet for Grandma’s bathroom to laminate floor for the kitchen.  Most evenings the house has been so full of people busily working away that you can barely move without bumping into someone.  There were even people crawling around in the attic running new electrical and fixing old electrical problems (a ground wire touching a power wire in the garage caused all manner of weird problems this week – we went through a whole pile of fuses before one of our friends tracked down the culprit).  A whole lot of stuff we weren’t expecting to get done until the wedding has been completed, even down to getting rid of the debris from the old wall and clearing all the tools from the living room and garage.  At one point this week you could barely walk through the living room because of all the tools covering the floor, but it’s all clean now.  Jenny’s even planning on doing a Mop’n’Glow cleaning on the floor tomorrow before new furniture is delivered.

We had kind of a funny moment Thursday evening when I brought over all the things that had collected at my family’s house for ours.  Included in all the household items were two boxes I’d packed up of things that were mine.  I have other boxes, but not too much more.  Ben was looking at the things in our bedroom and said, “What are these?”

“My belongings,” I said.

He started laughing.  “That’s it?” he said.

“Well, no,” I admitted.  “But it’s a lot of it.”

“You don’t have anything,” he said.  And then he looked around at the people filling the house working steadily away to prepare it for us to live in by Monday night and said, “What am I saying?  This is what you have!”

I was feeling a little badly a few months ago when I started looking at what I was bringing to our marriage to help get our household started.  At the time we had no real household items (we hadn’t had either shower yet) and I had nothing.  I hadn’t collected sheets or towels or kitchen appliances or furniture or even a savings’ account.  My belongings have always been my family’s belongings, not mine and theirs.  The downside of this was that I had very little I could separate out and say, “Oh, I can bring this.”

Then, of course, we had two showers and all our family and friends got us pretty much everything you could possibly want to start a house out with.  And with the almost unbelievable amount of work that got done on our house the past few weeks, I realized that what I really bring into our marriage – besides myself – is the vast resource of people who love me.  Not only are they around for encouragement and advice…but Benjamin can build an archway between our kitchen and living room and widen the doors for Grandma Lila’s bathroom, Aaron can plan an exact list of what we need to get for each different project, Isaac can rewire the house to get all the switches in the right place, James can run all the plumbing for a brand-new bathroom, Mr. Joseph can raise the dining room floor and the doors to the garage and the basement, Joseph can put new lights in the garage and the laundry room, and so on and on and on.

Someone asked me this week if I was happy.  I said I was thrilled.  Because I’m getting married to Ben the day after tomorrow.  Because God provided a house next door to Ben’s family so we could take care of Grandma Lila.  Because he also provided an army of people to get $10,000 worth of work done for $1,500…in two weeks from getting the keys.  And that’s just getting started.  How could I not be happy?

This has been a week of decisions.

Most times when people talk to us, they assume we're very busy because we're working on the wedding.  As Ben said yesterday, "Of the 75 decisions we made the past few days, about 4 of them had something to do with the wedding."

He's exaggerating a little, but not too much.  The situation with Grandma Lila's hip/leg has taken a lot of thought and concentration, between trying to understand what would be best to do to help her heal and trying to work out what would be best to do to the house to make it ready for her.  We were more or less expecting to just get the house ready a bit before the wedding and then work more seriously on modifying it to have Grandma move in afterward.  The decision to let Grandma heal naturally means she will be moving in much sooner so we can give her more one-on-one attention to keep her healthy; and this means the house needs to be modified at lightning speed.  We've also been going back and forth to the hospital to keep Grandma company and try to give Mom Turner a chance to be at home.  This has made our schedule fairly complicated.

Once we began working hard and fast on the house, a lot of decisions were required that we hadn't yet made a plan for and needed to figure out and decide on quickly.  Some of it is on fairly complicated stuff, like the electrical system in the house; some of it's cosmetic and can be easily changed if we make a mistake, like the paint colors.  Even so, it takes constant attention.  What's been absolutely wonderful is how our family is working right along with us.  Benjamin and Leah have been at the house every day, often when Ben and I can't even be there.  Mom and Dad Turner and Jenny have been in and out and spent a lot of yesterday feeding everyone (and that's a big job!).  Benjamin built a beautiful arch where the wall between the kitchen and living room used to be; his brother Isaac spent all day yesterday up in the attic modifying the electrical lines to accommodate a bathroom being where a bedroom used to be and moving plugs and switches around to make up for the fact that the walls they used to be mounted on disappeared; my siblings spent all day yesterday painting the house with us; and Dad spent much of that time hanging new interior doors...that he gave to us as a gift when we realized our budget probably didn't include them right now.  I sort of figured we were just going to have to do them a little at a time someday down the road, but to have them now is really, really nice!

A lot of random house parts left over from jobs are getting used, like a new entrance door that comes from the very first job my family's business did years ago.  We ordered the wrong style and it's been sitting in the garage ever since.  Benjamin's family gave us a shower pan that had been sitting in their garage for 10 years.  We found all kinds of things in my family's basement, like all the faceplates for new plugs.  Benjamin had drywall and drywall mud.  And that doesn't even begin to touch all the time everyone is putting in.  We have a budget for these things, but every little bit helps so much.

The decisions on the wedding this week have been pretty straightforward.  We needed to ask two people to be ushers, so Ben called his good friends Jason and Paul.  We needed to pick out a bouquet for me and that took us about 20 minutes to settle.  I got a veil.  Ben has straightened out some mis-communication about the tuxes with Men's Warehouse.  The hall asked us what color napkins we wanted them to put in the center of the tables.  And this morning we reviewed the seating chart with Anna and approved the final version.  Not nearly the thought-consuming task trying to sort through Grandma Lila's future or deciding on our house's layout is!

So when people say, "I know you're busy with the wedding," we sort of chuckle.  Because only a very small percentage of our mental and physical energy is going to the wedding: it's the rest of it that's keeping us busy.

Every decision we've had to make about our wedding so far has had two outstanding characteristics: fast and easy.

We've had things go quickly and decisively for us in almost every respect except finding a church building - and even that, in the end, turned out way easier than we thought it was going to be.  It took some time, but it was never a case of long searching with no results.  When we've asked, we've received.

Which is why I was a little startled yesterday when we went out to a bridal store that was having a sale so I could by a veil...and I couldn't find anything.

Well, I could find SOMETHING, but even on sale the veils I found cost as much or more than my dress did.  I brought along a veil a friend of mine had lent me to try on, since when I tried it with my dress I really like it.  I showed it to the sales lady and she said, "Hm.  I don't know if we have anything like that."

And they didn't.  Not even close.  And the ones they did have were just not the right kind.  The problem is that I'm leaving my hair down, so all their normal length veils look funny with it.  I needed something about knee length; but right now the style is pretty much very short, fingertip length, or cathedral.  In passing, I have to say cathedral veils are really strange.  Who wants a veil with a train ten feet long?  I bet it gets caught in all kinds of stuff!

So Ben and I went on to another store.  It was a much smaller one in the same shopping mall as our reception is going to be held, ironically enough.  That store didn't have any of the right kind of veil either, but the nice lady helping me made a suggestion.  "What if you try one of the cathedral type," she said, "and I'll ask our seamstress if she can cut it to the right length."

I was open to ideas, so I agreed.  "I'd really just like to know two things," I told her.  "If it can be done; and how much it's going to cost."

"How much were thinking of spending?" she asked me.  I thought for a second and named a price much lower than I actually expected to have to pay.  Ben's influence is beginning to rub off, I think.  She looked a little dubiously at me.

"I know," I said.  "It's low.  But if I would really like to spend that much if possible."

"I'll see what we can do," she said.  She went into the back of the shop and was gone quite a while.  Ben and I sat and watched the activity in the store.  Ben does not like bridal stores.  He says there is something strange about a whole store catering to brides and besides, he picked up a bridal magazine and got an eyeful.  He says somehow he expected brides to be general more...demure or modest, not look like they belonged in a lingerie ad.  I should've warned him, but I forgot about it since I haven't looked at many bridal magazines myself.

At any rate, after a while the lady came back out and said, "You know what, we'll just make you a veil for that price rather than cutting this one down."

I was astounded.  I said, "Really?!"

She smiled and said, "Yes, really."

"Could you make it the same shape as the one I brought in?" I asked.

"Yes we can," she said.  "It's no problem."

So the seamstress came out and measured my friend's veil and smiled at me and said, "It'll be ready on Wednesday."

I said, "You have just been my blessing of the day."

And she was.  Decisions are so much easier to make when they are made that simple for me!

We successfully closed on our new house Monday afternoon.

Monday evening we got to work.  Our families came over to see the house and began taking paneling down in the kitchen before I'd even finished putting the paint samples on the walls.  By yesterday afternoon, Benjamin had brought his toolbag over and was saying, "So, you want this wall down?"

Jenny says she picked the right day to take a personal day from work.  We put up a new light for Dad Turner in his office, raked the leaves in the front of our new house, looked at paint colors, took down the wall between the kitchen and living room, and began widening the doorway for Grandma Lila's temporary bathroom.

None too soon, as it turns out.  Grandma Lila suffered a fall last Thursday and was gradually noticing more and more pain from her leg and hip, so she and Mom Turner spent all day yesterday at the hospital where they discovered a small fracture at the top of her right leg where it joins the prosthesis from her halfway-complete hip replacement.  Part of the reason Grandma has such a difficult time walking is because of a fall in 2006 that resulted in a hip replacement-gone-wrong.  She's been walking with just a spacer in there rather than the full hip because of an infection that forced the original replacement to be removed.

The fall this week resulting in a small fracture is a fairly serious thing, because without surgery it means Grandma would most likely have to remain in a facility that allows her to be on IV pain medication for quite some time, if not permanently.  Assisted living is not able to administer IVs, so Grandma would have to be in a genuine nursing home.

Our goal is not to have that happen.  Grandma doesn't want to be in a nursing home and none of us want her there either, so we are united in doing what it takes to bring her home as soon as possible.  It does change things, however, because she may be in a convalescent facility for a bit recovering before she can come home; and then she may be wheelchair-bound instead of mobile with a walker as she's been up until this week.  We've been preparing our addition plans as though Grandma was in a wheelchair, since we figured it was best to plan that way given her usual difficulty in walking; but this pushes up our timetable quite a bit further than before.  Life can change very, very quickly.

Today at 2:00 or so, we acquire the rights to a new house.

In many ways, it doesn't feel quite real.  We had a long final walkthrough of the house yesterday and saw it empty for the first time.  Empty houses never feel ready to live in.  They're cold and often feel a little dingy around the edges because no matter how clean the previous occupants, there's a always a little scuffing on the paint and other little details that need to be cared for before new people move in.  But even empty and cold and a little scuffed around the edges, the house is beautiful.  The gift of it is beautiful.  

It still doesn't quite feel yet like a place where Ben and Grandma and I are going to live.  My head might know it, but there's a feeling in you whenever you walk in the door of your home and that feeling isn't there yet.  It's weird how we bond with our homes, but we do it; there's even a little sensor inside that goes off when you're driving and you're almost home, a sort of settling-in like your sub-conscious says, "Ah, here we are!"  I'm looking forward to developing that for this house, but it's not there yet and I think that's why the whole thing seems a bit unreal still.

Ben says that because the layout of the house and the furnishings are so similar to the house he grew up in, it feels like he's going back in time to the house he lived in as a little boy.  It feels a little funny to him and Jenny to go through the house because it's so close to theirs but yet not the same place.  We even call the bedrooms by the names they go by next door - "Ben's room" "Jenny's room", etc.

We brought Grandma Lila to see the house for the first time yesterday afternoon.  Ben and I were a little worried that it would seemly very uninviting to her empty and not ready for her to live in yet, but she's got imagination and she looked at it and said, "My, what beautiful floors" and "I'm glad I'll be living next door to Mary Allison."  She also said, "It's a cute little dollhouse!"

She used to live in a big farmhouse on a big farm in Pennsylvania, so it's no wonder the new house feels like a dollhouse.  In some ways, that's probably going to feel pretty good to her, though, because right now she has to walk a long way to get to her meals and she's ready to be in a home where she can move around in a more condensed space.  We definitely have to get rid of the step in the dining room and widen the doorways, though.

I was really glad she came.  She got to be present while we had all the closing documents explained to us and we gave all the papers into her care.  Then we went next door and ate dinner and talked about what we need to do over the next few weeks and then over the next month and then over the next year.  It's all a big project, but it's exciting to really be able to get started on it instead of waiting for things to get processed.

This evening we're probably going to have a lot of company at the new house; Elizabeth is even making plans to bring hot dogs and all the stuff we need to make dinner over.  We have a stove to cook on, at any rate, even if the kitchen isn't set up yet!  Ben and I bought paint samples to test out on the walls and we'll be putting those up right away so we can get painting.  Mom Turner says that we should open up the Turner's garage and have everyone who visits bring one item of Ben's from their garage over to the new house.  It's not a bad idea.  We might just do that.  Which means today isn't just House Acquisition Day: it's also Moving Day!

Our good friend who's also our real estate agent sent us a wonderful note this morning saying that today was a day to rejoice and be glad in; and he also reminded us what Jesus said about blessing a home when entering.  When a man of peace places the blessing of his peace on a home, if there's a man of peace in that home the blessing will be received.  Our friend blessed our home with his peace by describing to us how to have the same peace in our home and marriage that he has in his.  That was a special email.  Ben says we have to save it and add it to our blessing book. which seems a very appropriate place to put it!

But the list of things to do sure isn't!

Here are a few things I worked on today:

- Calling the last few people we haven't heard from on the list to find out if they'd be attending the wedding
- Arranging to return a pair of shoes I tried out with the dress (I ordered two and liked the other one better).  If anyone's interested, these are the ones I chose.
- Arranging for an appointment with Mancuso's florist to discuss a bridal bouquet (I really like their bouquets!).  I think my favorite style is a toss-up between the Nosegay style and the Hand-Tied.
- Emailing to ask about where I should go look at veils (I've been looking at pictures - mantilla style or oval-cut with two tiers, I think)
- Asking if the vases for the centerpieces are still available
- Deciding on a good day to meet with a good friend who's going to be our coordinator the day of our wedding (tomorrow, hopefully)
- Giving guest information to Anna so she can do another masterful seating chart ;-))
- Giving guest information to Aaron so he can finalize the reception and make an outline for Dad about what's going on.
- Deciding on tea for favors (Ben and I are going to go get it after dinner)
- Sorting through the list of things to do and prioritizing what's left
- Packing up all my summer clothes and various other things that need to be moved and that I'm not going to need in the next two-and-a-half weeks.  

Now that last was a weird experience.

I'm 29 years old and I've lived with my family all my life.  The longest I've ever been away from them was three weeks when I helped my Aunt Sarah move out to Seattle a few years back.  I've never even considered moving out.  Beginning the process of separating what's coming with me from what is staying behind sort of feels like splitting perennials - the root systems are so intertwined it's kind of a painful process getting them apart and sometimes you just have to take the shovel and cut them to free your newly-split clump of flowers.  Part of me is having occasional breathless moments when I think, "How on earth can I leave?"

Not to mention I really dislike packing up to move and this is the second time I've done it this year.  There's just something very disturbing about taking all the settled little bits and pieces that you're used to having around and wrapping them all up and putting them in boxes.  At least I'm usually an organized mover, so I know the routine.  Step number one is never leave packing for the last minute.  Far ahead of the move, begin packing by putting away everything that isn't going to be needed for the time before moving.  Hence, boxing up all my summer clothes.  Next week I'll probably figure out what I'm going to need for the week afterward and put away everything else.  I just wasn't quite ready to do it today.

With the closing being set for Monday, it's quite likely our free time next week will be taken up with preparing our new house for us to live there.  It's very clean, so we're going on concentrate on painting it the colors we'd like it to be and moving everything we can into it.  Ben will probably start sleeping there as soon as it's somewhat ready.  He's very excited about that and says he wants to go there to prepare a place for me, which is pretty special.  He's also enacted a rule that we're not to be there by ourselves since he says that's a pretty foolish thing to do at this point.  I doubt that's going to be a problem though - our families are almost as excited as we are about getting the house and I expect we'll have a grand old painting party and have plenty of company!

We took the paint chip book with us when we visited Grandma Lila for lunch yesterday and she approved of the colors we're thinking about but said she doesn't know which ones she wants for her bedroom and bathroom yet because "they always look so different on paper than they do where they're actually going to be."  I promised her I'd put some samples up on the wall so she can see them before choosing.  She said she trusts my judgement, which made me feel pretty touched; but if I were moving into a room I'd sure like to have a little bit to do with choosing the color and I think it'll make Grandma feel much more a part of planning if we hold off on picking that color and let her get a chance to pick when it's in a place she can see it right.  We're thinking about mostly a nice neutral linen brown color with some blues and Grandma said she thought the one medium blue would be a very nice color for a bathroom with white woodwork and towels, etc.  I agree.  I've got a picture saved from a magazine that shows exactly that color mix and it's beautiful.

Monday afternoon.  Deed filed this morning, paperwork should be arriving by Friday.

Ben and I got some paint samples this afternoon.  We want to be ready to move everything in and get the house all set up as soon as possible with as little fuss as possible: and we are very excited.

In the original purchase agreement - back before things got all topsy-turvy and had to make way for the previous contract signed with the family living there - we stated that we wanted to be in possession of the house by the 15th of November, if I remember correctly.  We thought of that date as probably the latest we could comfortably give the seller and the tenants and still get it all ready for us to live there.

Monday is the 14th.

God is very, very, very good to us.

Part Two:


God’s Expectation for Marriage

1.)    We are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. We submit to the Lord because we love him with all our hearts and minds and souls and strength; and we are then to love each other as ourselves.      

      Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
                                                                                                                                            - Ephesians 5:21

      28And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them
       well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29Jesus answered, “The most important is,       
      ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30And you shall love the Lord your God with all your
       heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ‘You
       shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
                                                                                                                                             - Mark 12:28-31

2.)    Wives are to submit to their husbands as to the Lord.     

      22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the       
      head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 
                                                                                                                                           - Ephesians 5:22-23

3.)    Husbands are to love their wives by giving themselves up for her so she may stand holy and blameless before God.

     25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26to make her holy,     
     cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27and to present her to himself as a radiant church,
     without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
                                                                                                                                           - Ephesians 5:25-27

There were a lot of good passages for what God expects of a marriage, but this was a good, simple, clear overview.