From my eyes…

My niece Addison has arrived! She is the perfect little chubby faced baby and I am going to meet her for the first time this morning. I can’t wait to squish her! From what I can tell, she resembles Heather’s family most, but has my brothers dimples. Too cute! She has a heart condition that is being watched closely and will undergo open-heart surgery in 4 or 5 months. Click on her name above to follow her progress on a blog my brother set-up.

When I was kid, we had some neighbors who had kids we spent a lot of time with. I think it’s safe to say that daughter that was my brothers age (7 or so) was his best friend. The other kids were younger, so I spent time “baby-sitting” when the mom had to run a super quick errand or take a nap or make a big meal, be upstairs to clean for an extended amont of time, etc. Needless to say, we spent lots of time at their house.The Shattuck family were our closest friends just before we moved from Michigan to Arizona. We’ve kept in touch through holiday letters and to this day certain little things make me think of the friendship our families shared.
I was not happy to move to AZ. I was not happy to leave my life and move to what I pictured as the sahara. Seriously, I was 9 and they said “desert” how was I supposed to know there were different types of desert climate?
So I spent the better part of our first years hanging on to anything Michigan related that I could. One of my favorite things I held on to was a video my brother and I had made one day while playing at the Shattucks. Bill, the dad, had taped us parading through the house playing instruments with hats on our heads and just general silliness. At the end of the tape he recorded his son Josh, a toddler at the time, singing Holly Jolly Christmas. It was near the holidays and he’d just learned the song. I can’t help but think of sweet little Josh and the Shattucks everytime I hear that song - which you can imagine is often this tiem of year! I don’t know what the Shattucks are up to lately. Hopefully, there will be an updated holiday letter at my parents house when I arrive in two weeks. But I hope Josh is still singing his Christmas song!

What holiday songs bring up memories for you?

Others for me are Silent Night - in our Christmas Eve candle light service each year harmonizing with Amanda and Erin. And Hark the Harold Angels Sing, because it is simply gorgeous and because I wrote it on the request paper in the bulletin in third grade and even though I left it in the pew Carol Lyman found it and made it part of the service the following week with my name next to it.

On November 29th, Mike snuck out of bed early and sent me back up the stairs when I tried to come down a short while later. He was making me breakfast in bed. A little later in the morning, he brought up a tray or yummy breakfast foods and coffee. He stared at me as I said thank you and began eating with the impression that he was headed back downstairs to get his own plate. Finally, he said “you’re so blind!” in reference to the ring box on the tray hidden behind a teeny little rose plant he’d added.
I picked up the box and said “What’s this?” even though I knew very well what it was, I was in shock. His response, “What do you think it is?” Ha! He asked. I said yes. Then I asked him to put my new (beautiful!) ring on my hand. He said no! Can you believe it?! He said his hands were messy from cooking….and confessed he didn’t want me to get it all sticky from the cinnamon rolls that were on my plate. I scarfed down my food, washed my hands and then put on my engagement ring for the first time. It is the most perfect, sparkly ring and I absolutely love it!
After finishing breakfast and getting ready for the, we headed off to share the news with Mike’s family. It was a fun day and I can’t stop looking at my ring. We’re very excited, but haven’t made any set plans as of yet. We can have a few days to just be in love, right?