File under: Brings tears quickly / I love it
Humpback Whale Puts On a Show for Men Who Saved Her
22 July 2011
05 July 2011
Happy 4th! Belated...
Had a fun 4th of July. Pretty much any gathering that involves baby Ronan is awesome. :) He was exactly 6 months old a couple weeks ago, on Father's Day actually, and I took a few pictures of him last week.
We made a drastic change in our wedding plans. Paul and I were talking about a lot of things and we came to the conclusion that an Outer Banks beach wedding is the wedding for us. Even before my grandmother passed away, I was NOT into planning anything about the wedding. The cost of everything was a constant source of anxiety and I couldn't make a firm decision about anything. Then grandmom passed away and I was even less motivated. Paul was feeling the same way, and the beach wedding thing was his favorite idea originally, so we're headed south. Mm, a few people are on board but I guess a guest list won't be finalized for a while. I'm not a big fan of last-minute plans but I have to just take a deep breath and go with the flow. We've already booked a beautiful house right on the beach that we'll get to take a look at in a few weeks. I can't wait! The only vendors I'm looking to book after that are a caterer and some wonderful person to do my insane hair. Everything else is going to be SIMPLE.
Anyway, that's the update for now. Apart from the biggest news... I FOUND A WEDDING DRESS!! It's perfect!
This baby has the longest tongue I've ever seen... every time he laughs, he sticks it out. It's so funny.
There are a ton more. We can't stop kissing this kid or taking pictures of him. :) He's probably sick of us.
The camping trip I mentioned before was really fun. It wasn't serious, middle-of-the-woods camping. It was camping with eight children under the age of 10.
I think we may be going again in a couple months which is cool... I had forgotten how much I love these trips. Wake up - tent - outside - coffee - sleepy people - trees. I think the mornings are my favorite, which is funny because I am NOT a morning person normally.
Paul and I were talking about doing some more primitive camping but we'll see if we get around to that. There's so much other stuff coming up, like going down the shore and stuff. Hopefully we can squeeze it in somewhere though. We love our tent so much (two people in a six-person tent is awesome!) and we can't wait to use it again.
Speaking of the shore!
We made a drastic change in our wedding plans. Paul and I were talking about a lot of things and we came to the conclusion that an Outer Banks beach wedding is the wedding for us. Even before my grandmother passed away, I was NOT into planning anything about the wedding. The cost of everything was a constant source of anxiety and I couldn't make a firm decision about anything. Then grandmom passed away and I was even less motivated. Paul was feeling the same way, and the beach wedding thing was his favorite idea originally, so we're headed south. Mm, a few people are on board but I guess a guest list won't be finalized for a while. I'm not a big fan of last-minute plans but I have to just take a deep breath and go with the flow. We've already booked a beautiful house right on the beach that we'll get to take a look at in a few weeks. I can't wait! The only vendors I'm looking to book after that are a caterer and some wonderful person to do my insane hair. Everything else is going to be SIMPLE.
Anyway, that's the update for now. Apart from the biggest news... I FOUND A WEDDING DRESS!! It's perfect!
17 June 2011
Happy Summer
June is a pretty cool month. My birthday, Wizard World (geeky I know) and summer is here... which means I'm closer to my Outer Banks vacation in July. I can't wait to hit the road. We're getting closer to some camping too. Fun stuff.
My handsome nephew is approaching the 6 month old mark. I can't believe how much he is learning everyday and how big he is getting.
Here he is tasting rice cereal for the first time. He loved it!
I love babysitting this little guy. The smile he gives me when I walk in the door melts my heart. He's the best!
Otherwise there isn't much to report. Enthusiasm for the wedding planning has slowed considerably. Spending money causes me great anxiety. I do not enjoy it at all... so we could have a problem. We'll see.
Since the weather is getting nicer I am missing my beautiful home on the French Riviera. I miss my friends there, the beautiful weather, the sea being 2 seconds away and everything else about it.
Maybe we take wedding money and go on vacation? Seems like an elegant solution to me.
My handsome nephew is approaching the 6 month old mark. I can't believe how much he is learning everyday and how big he is getting.
Here he is tasting rice cereal for the first time. He loved it!
I love babysitting this little guy. The smile he gives me when I walk in the door melts my heart. He's the best!
Otherwise there isn't much to report. Enthusiasm for the wedding planning has slowed considerably. Spending money causes me great anxiety. I do not enjoy it at all... so we could have a problem. We'll see.
Since the weather is getting nicer I am missing my beautiful home on the French Riviera. I miss my friends there, the beautiful weather, the sea being 2 seconds away and everything else about it.
Maybe we take wedding money and go on vacation? Seems like an elegant solution to me.
25 May 2011
This is what Dreams were made for...
As I'm beginning this post it is 2:30 am. I've not been inspired to write recently, I would imagine because my grandmother passed away on May 7th and I didn't want to go through it all again... but I just had a dream that I don't want to forget so here goes.
We called grandmom 'Sassy G' - not to her, of course, but whenever we talked about her outside of her house. She was hilarious. She was the most wonderful, selfless, caring, loving person you would ever meet on this earth - but she also had no qualms about telling you exactly what she thought of a person or a situation. Sometimes it wasn't so positive. Haha.. we loved it because we never realized she was like that until we got older. One of the many, many perks of getting to know your grandparents in your adult life. There were so many questions I got to ask her, that I never would have thought of as a kid, and we got to talk about a lot. I feel very lucky and I really do miss her every single day.
I feel so sad that I didn't spend more time with her in the weeks before she passed. I let life really get in the way and it was unnecessary, meaningless junk when I think about it. I should have spent Easter here, I should have gotten down to her place more. The Tuesday before she went into the hospital for the last time I called her. I wanted to bring some lunch and she agreed at first. A few minutes later though I got a call back - she was tired and just wanted to rest. "I wouldn't be very good company" she said... so I didn't go. At least we made sure to say our I love yous.
The church service was beautiful and it was tough to leave her at the cemetery. That's all I'll say about that.
Fast forward a few weeks to 2 am today - I just freaked out a little and I can't get back to sleep. This is the dream:
I'm in the kitchen of the apartment I share with Paul. There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, no weird dream exaggerations or anything. I'm washing dishes and wondering when Paul will be home which is pretty much a daily occurrence. I hear the lock click of our front door but something tells me it's not Paul so I walk around to see who is there. Grandmom is standing in my living room in her beige jacket that she wore a lot. Now, she has never been to my apartment and in the dream I know that she has passed away. I stand and stare for a second because I am pretty much terrified. She is smiling a strange smile I don't recognize on her which, now that I am awake and thinking about it, creeps me out a bit and she looks a little younger. I think after a couple seconds I don't even care that this is a ghost of her and I hug her very tightly, like I'm hanging on for dear life. I tell her how much I miss her and that I love her. Unfortunately I cannot remember what the rest of our conversation was but I do recall that I told her a hundred times that I love her and I miss her.
For some reason, when she needs to leave, she goes through the front door again. It was confusing because I though ghosts just appeared and disappeared? Haha! We are on the ground floor here and when she got outside she was looking at me through our window. This is when Paul comes home. He comes directly to the window and he's looking at me as he bends down with his hands on his knees and I'm wondering if he can see her... as I'm thinking that, he turns his head and looks directly at her with this shocked and amazed expression. He looks back and forth at the both of us for a second and I think he may have said something to her but I can't remember. Grandmom seems like she doesn't want many people to see her and she starts to walk along the windows to the back of our apartment complex. A girl that Paul and I went to school with pulls up in her minivan at this point and she sees grandmom too... she says "Steph, is this your dead grandmother?!" and that is when I woke up.
It's not unusual for me to dream about people I know that have passed away. However, when I dream about them it is usually in odd circumstances - my grandfathers playing cards in a smoky bar that somehow ended up inside a hospital, my uncle sitting on the side of a local road in a beach chair - stuff like that. Those dream are not super often either. Since my grandmom passed, I've had two dreams about her and they were perfectly realistic. In the other dream she was sitting in my parents' living room eating a lot of food and she said she felt so much better now that she was eating. This was days after she passed and it was nice to hear her say that in her voice because the last time I saw her was not pleasant.
The dream from an hour ago though has really thrown me for a loop. I've never had a dream like that in my life. I'm not super surprised that I am dreaming about her because we are in the process of going through her things and anyway I look at her picture everyday. There's one on my phone, one in my wallet and a few scattered around the apartment. I think about her all the time but I just can't get over how real all of that felt.
I don't know what to believe about the afterlife and ghosts but I sincerely hope that, if grandmom is still out there somewhere, she felt what I just felt with her and she knows what I said to her in the dream. I do love her and miss her so much.
Maybe I can fall back asleep now? Not sure...
We called grandmom 'Sassy G' - not to her, of course, but whenever we talked about her outside of her house. She was hilarious. She was the most wonderful, selfless, caring, loving person you would ever meet on this earth - but she also had no qualms about telling you exactly what she thought of a person or a situation. Sometimes it wasn't so positive. Haha.. we loved it because we never realized she was like that until we got older. One of the many, many perks of getting to know your grandparents in your adult life. There were so many questions I got to ask her, that I never would have thought of as a kid, and we got to talk about a lot. I feel very lucky and I really do miss her every single day.
I feel so sad that I didn't spend more time with her in the weeks before she passed. I let life really get in the way and it was unnecessary, meaningless junk when I think about it. I should have spent Easter here, I should have gotten down to her place more. The Tuesday before she went into the hospital for the last time I called her. I wanted to bring some lunch and she agreed at first. A few minutes later though I got a call back - she was tired and just wanted to rest. "I wouldn't be very good company" she said... so I didn't go. At least we made sure to say our I love yous.
The church service was beautiful and it was tough to leave her at the cemetery. That's all I'll say about that.
Fast forward a few weeks to 2 am today - I just freaked out a little and I can't get back to sleep. This is the dream:
I'm in the kitchen of the apartment I share with Paul. There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, no weird dream exaggerations or anything. I'm washing dishes and wondering when Paul will be home which is pretty much a daily occurrence. I hear the lock click of our front door but something tells me it's not Paul so I walk around to see who is there. Grandmom is standing in my living room in her beige jacket that she wore a lot. Now, she has never been to my apartment and in the dream I know that she has passed away. I stand and stare for a second because I am pretty much terrified. She is smiling a strange smile I don't recognize on her which, now that I am awake and thinking about it, creeps me out a bit and she looks a little younger. I think after a couple seconds I don't even care that this is a ghost of her and I hug her very tightly, like I'm hanging on for dear life. I tell her how much I miss her and that I love her. Unfortunately I cannot remember what the rest of our conversation was but I do recall that I told her a hundred times that I love her and I miss her.
For some reason, when she needs to leave, she goes through the front door again. It was confusing because I though ghosts just appeared and disappeared? Haha! We are on the ground floor here and when she got outside she was looking at me through our window. This is when Paul comes home. He comes directly to the window and he's looking at me as he bends down with his hands on his knees and I'm wondering if he can see her... as I'm thinking that, he turns his head and looks directly at her with this shocked and amazed expression. He looks back and forth at the both of us for a second and I think he may have said something to her but I can't remember. Grandmom seems like she doesn't want many people to see her and she starts to walk along the windows to the back of our apartment complex. A girl that Paul and I went to school with pulls up in her minivan at this point and she sees grandmom too... she says "Steph, is this your dead grandmother?!" and that is when I woke up.
It's not unusual for me to dream about people I know that have passed away. However, when I dream about them it is usually in odd circumstances - my grandfathers playing cards in a smoky bar that somehow ended up inside a hospital, my uncle sitting on the side of a local road in a beach chair - stuff like that. Those dream are not super often either. Since my grandmom passed, I've had two dreams about her and they were perfectly realistic. In the other dream she was sitting in my parents' living room eating a lot of food and she said she felt so much better now that she was eating. This was days after she passed and it was nice to hear her say that in her voice because the last time I saw her was not pleasant.
The dream from an hour ago though has really thrown me for a loop. I've never had a dream like that in my life. I'm not super surprised that I am dreaming about her because we are in the process of going through her things and anyway I look at her picture everyday. There's one on my phone, one in my wallet and a few scattered around the apartment. I think about her all the time but I just can't get over how real all of that felt.
I don't know what to believe about the afterlife and ghosts but I sincerely hope that, if grandmom is still out there somewhere, she felt what I just felt with her and she knows what I said to her in the dream. I do love her and miss her so much.
Maybe I can fall back asleep now? Not sure...
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