Author: RHonda (Page 4 of 10)

I feel almost like Santa Claus as I check my list once, twice, three times….have I remembered everything? We are packing and making final preparations for our trip to California tomorrow and Kristina’s wedding on Saturday. We will meet for a Thanksgiving dinner after traveling, pick up Kristina’s ‘sister’ who is also the Matron of Honor, Rose Miller, and her family from the train, and last but not least, attend an open house at Daniel and Kristina’s “California parents’ home”, the Enders. It will be a long but wonderful day full of blessings to be thankful for! We are tired all ready from the preparations but we can sleep later. To be sharing this weekend with Daniel and Kristina, the Brown family, the Enders and the Millers is such a blessing, I am sure we will float through the time.

The days have flown by since Daniel asked us for Kristina’s hand in marriage July 12th. It has been fast and furious! Kristina has been sick two of the almost 4 weeks she has lived in California. A lot of things she thought she would have time for have had to be compressed into smaller blocks of time or abandoned all together. Twenty four hours are just not enough hours in a day when you are trying to furnish your first home, finish wedding plans, and trying to enjoy being with your fiance who works a sporadic schedule.

Hopefully most of the preparations are in place and we can have some relaxing family time in California!

Well, a mere seven days until Daniel and Kristina’s big day and the Mother of the Bride is still working out what she will wear! I thought I had it covered a long time ago and my ‘almost’ menopausal body went through changes again! I became thick in the waist and nothing seemed to work. I went in search of a petticoat for a dress Matt found on line. A gracious woman who owns a local dance studio here told us to go to ‘the purple house just north of Union and Boulder”. Yesterday while running errands, I went in search of it. By the time I found it, they were closing and asked me to come back today.

I corralled Matt into coming with me this afternoon, promising to be good and only look for what we came for (Matt shops safari style – you go, bag the game and come home!). I’m not sure what he thought when we drove up to the light purple building, it is a bit ‘antique’ and not very well marked. The sign by the street let us know that we had arrived at Antique Mart. The items flowing out the door were just a taste of what was to come when we entered. It was such a sensory overload in all directions!! “Rooms”, if you could call them that, lined from floor to ceiling with everything you could imagine and then some. All of it vintage! There were wedding gowns, gorgeous furs of all varieties, dresses, hats, gloves, cases of jewelry, shoes, dishes, all types of vintage memorabilia, the list is endless. Continue reading

“Today is the day after”! It is a day of joy! Yesterday was not only Josh’s birthday but also another birthday as Ezra James Miller, the first son of Rose and Willie Miller, was born at 5:23AM at 8′ 1″ and 21″ long. His delivery took only about 4 hours! What a great labor! Congrats to you, Willie, and Big Sister, Abby, on the addition of a lovely son and brother! Ezra, you share a birthday with someone else very special to us! Hope you don’t mind. What’s also awesome is that Ezra gets to bring his Mom and Dad to Kristina’s wedding in California and we get to love him up! Rose will be Kristina’s Matron of Honor.

The other source of joy is that Kristina is embarking on a whole new chapter of her life today. Over the weekend, Daniel visited us here in Colorado, helped her pack most of her belongings and she said goodbye to her wonderful friends in Denver. Yesterday after we worked on wedding invitations, she packed the rest of her belongings, and I had the honor of taking her to the airport to board a flight to California. Continue reading

Dearest Josh,

We can’t let this day go by without saying Happy Birthday! It was a snowy Iowa morning that dawned with your Dad exclaiming, “it’s a BOY!” as you were raised to lay on my tummy a short 29 years ago. The pride of you being our son will never change! The anticipation of seeing that handsome smile, the glint in your dark brown eyes, hearing your laughter, excitement over your newest invention and/or getting a warm hug from those long strong arms will never cease. Though we can’t be together today, I had to say that Dad and I prayed for God to draw you close to His heart, bless you immeasurably and release angels to keep you safe. Trusting that he will give you the grace and strength to continue your internship and go to school full time.

To your continued success and happiness – We will love you always! Mom

Happy New Year to you all! May this find you walking in the rich blessing of goals already met, dreams dreamed and are in the process of being implemented. I write this morning to say that we still love you and that we are moving towards not being so reclusive. I have been noticeably absent from our website for some time. I apologize. Matt has done a good job keeping you up on most of the family current events. We have been immersed in moving, going back to school, sending Kristina off to CA, my early December trip to Iowa, and the holiday preparations. All of those activities culminated on Christmas Day which I spent in bed. Not because I was sick but because I was just plain exhausted. I had been going, going since early summer with no real breathing room. Matt and I both became cave dwellers! With no family in town for the holidays, Matt and I decided to decline offers of fellowship and spend our first Christmas Day alone in 31 years. We did spend Christmas Eve with Josh and Selenda as I wrote about in December’s post and had two nice times with our neighbor, Donna Renea over the holiday week. Her laughter is contagious and was excellent medicine for our healing souls. It felt odd not to be in the middle of a lively celebration but it was good in a whole different way. Neither of us had the soul energy to be ‘good company’ to anyone. Continue reading

We keep ‘family history’ here on the website so I want to record my mad dash to IA. I finished finals on the first Thursday of December and headed off to Iowa feeling like Santa with my trunk and back seat full of presents. It was a lovely, snowy Colorado picture perfect morning as I began to head east. Little did I know that I would drive the entire 750 miles to the Farm in unlovely snow, ice, freezing fog, and almost every other form of precipitation imaginable. The entire trip the temperature was a constant 19 – 21 degrees. No greater variance – it was the craziest thing! As the day waned, I stopped often to scrape off the headlights and windshield. The miles north of Kansas City were the longest, most dangerous, and arduous. By the time, I arrived in Iowa, I had been driving for over 12 hours and on the road for 14. One and a half inches of ice covered the front of the Caddy! This was BEFORE the ice storm! Continue reading