The Future Mrs. Pearl

In my  post yesterday, I mentioned that my husband and I had flown out to Detroit to meet up with our youngest son and his girlfriend, and hinted that maybe there was more to that story than just a simple visit...well, that's because it was not exactly a run-of-the-mill weekend.   At all.

Our boy, who is currently stationed in OK, was flying out to MI to meet up with his girlfriend of more than two years, who currently lives in St. Louis (and whom he met on CatholicMatch.com, the "family website" as we like to call it), at her sister's place in the Ann Arbor area.  TO PROPOSE!   He figured he could play the whole "we're just getting together for a fun St. Patty's Day weekend with your sister in a crazy college town" angle, and he might be able to take her by surprise.  He wanted his dad and me to fly out there, and her folks to drive there, too, from their home about four hours away, so that both sets of parents could be present to witness the big moment...

I might as well let these pictures do the talking for me!

With my newest girl.

We love her already!

Check out that rock!

The two sets of parents were told to meet under the marquee of an historic old downtown theater, and to be there out front waiting when our son, his girlfriend, his girlfriend's sister, and one of her good friends came out of the restaurant across the street where they'd just had lunch together.

The surprise worked--she really didn't know this was going to be the day--even though she has been semi-expecting it every time they've gotten together since he returned stateside from his three-year stint in Germany.  (The amazing thing is that it went off without a hitch, in spite of several people--myself included--almost totally giving it away ahead of time!  There's another story for you...but I don't want to get into that here in this happy post!)

My daughter-in-law Ginger asked us yesterday if that theater had any special significance; the answer is not really and sort of.  Our son and his future sister-in-law were just trying to pick a landmark that would be easy for the two sets of parents to find, in a city where she hadn't been living that long and that he didn't know at all.  But I love that that's where it happened, because he is one of the most enthusiastic movie buffs of all time. (There is a link to his blog, The Layman's Movie Corner, up there on the sidebar if you want to check it out and see what I mean!)

The neat thing about having it happen on a busy downtown street was that right as our boy got down on his knee, a passing car honked its horn like crazy.  It was so fun!

Another plus was that the bride-to-be's good friend is a professional photographer, so she took lots of great shots while it was happening.  And then she made this wonderful image using photoshop.

Our daughter-in-law Preciosa made the happy couple a framed sign commemorating the event, using an Etsy download, which they held up for many of the photos.  She also designed and crafted two special t-shirts for her future sister-in-law.  Here's my favorite.

So the Pearl boys are four for four with Catholic Match. That's quite a success rate, isn't it?  (And the fifth couple, son #2 and Ginger, met when they were both members of the wedding party of son #3 and Preciosa!  So that's practically five for five?)

When we sent out the word on the family text stream that includes all the boys and their spouses--saying "They're engaged!"--this is the reply we got from son #4.

I love my boys!  They make me seriously LOL on the daily.  They tease each other mercilessly (it is their "love language," if you will), and I think our baby might even have been slightly disappointed if his big news hadn't elicited at least a few ridiculous comments like this one from his older brothers.

I don't know if my heart can take all the excitement!  First this beautiful proposal on Saturday--seeing our baby boy happier than he has ever been and imagining the beautiful life ahead of him with his Babisiu (that's her blog handle, I think); and then almost immediately afterward, a long-awaited trip to Rome!  (We leave tomorrow!)   I feel like I'm living la bella vita, truly I do.

I will be sure to share pictures of our Italian adventure when I can.  In the meantime--

Dio ti benedica.

Time Flies When You're Having Grandchildren

Hey, remember me?  I'm a blogger.

It's true.  Pictures don't lie.

That's my trusty laptop behind me in this nerdy selfie.  I opened it up for the first time in weeks today, with fingers itching to get at that dusty keyboard.  (I could have sworn I heard the old girl say,"What is going on here?!"  She thought she was getting the whole summer off, but no dice.  It's back to work, my little beauty.)

I remember when I used to blog every morning, first thing, with a mug of hot coffee parked close at hand and a head full of potential topics, any one of which I just knew would be the perfect subject for the BEST.BLOG.POST.EVER.  (Not really--but I was very enthusiastic about this blog--it was my baby; and after decades of dreaming of becoming a writer but never writing at all, I couldn't wait to write about EVERYTHING.)

I know I sound like a broken record here...but I really am going to try to get back to blogging more regularly. Really.  Pinky swear.  No more of this weeks-and-weeks in between posts.  I'm not going to promise daily activity, because I have found that life gets in the way much too easily these days, so that's a promise I can't possibly keep.  But I can do better. And I will.

But time really does fly when you're having grandchildren!  They keep you young and they keep you entertained and they keep you busy.  Our latest addition, a wee lad I'm going to call "Jedi" here at String of Pearls, was born to son #2 and his wife Ginger in mid-June, and we were able to attend his Baptism in early July.

Papa and Grammy with the new little Christian.

Our youngest son was able to come home on leave from Germany just in time to play the role of godfather for his new nephew. 

Our baby holding his godson; Papa holding Jedi's big

brother, Junior.

We also attended a big, lovely party in Jedi's honor on the Fourth of July, with all the rest of our VA gang, before we headed north for the summer.  Our baby's girlfriend--she's another CatholicMatch.com match!--joined us, too.  (Eight of our twelve grandchildren are present in this photo, four of them in utero; our other four granddaughters are currently living out in the Midwest with our oldest son and his wife.)

For the months of July and August, we will be staying through the week at my husband's childhood home on Lake Champlain, which is only about three miles down the road from our Oyster Haven VRBO property.

This is the view my husband grew up with.  Not too shabby, eh?  (That's his older

sister, owner of Valcour Brewing Co., in the middle, one of his younger

brothers on the far right, and his brother's wife next to him.)

On the weekends, we clean our place and change all the linens as soon as one set of guests leave.  Check-out is at 10:00 a.m. and check-in is at 4:00 p.m., so we have a six-hour window to get everything done for the next set of vacationers.  It's exhausting but so worth it!  (Because someday, hopefully, we'll be in a position to actually spend the summers here and have this little slice of heaven available to our kids and grandkids whenever they wish to visit!)

Our view isn't too shabby either!

One great motivator for me to keep up with this blog is that I am planning to attend the CWBN Mid-Atlantic Conference in Front Royal, VA (not far from our new house down there!) on August 26.  If you follow Time Flies When You're Having Babies, then you know who Catholic blogger Ana Hahn is.  She is hosting this event, which will feature some other popular bloggers you might have heard of if you spend any time in the Catholic blogosphere.  I'll most likely be one of the few ladies in attendance at this shindig who's grown children are the ones having babies; but maybe being an older blogger--old enough to be the other attendees' mother, in most cases--will make me seem wise.  ("Fake it til you make it," as one of my dear Pearl sisters-in-law likes to say!)

But Catholic bloggers are only called bloggers because they engage in an activity called blogging, so I'd better keep at it, right?  No more neglecting this here blog of mine.  I almost-promise.

Small Successes to Report This Thursday

Sometimes it's too easy to view every small failure (and we're human, so there sure are lots of them) as a mountain and every small success as a molehill.  That's why I was glad to see this link-up at CatholicMom.com, one of my favorite websites.  It celebrates the small successes that don't seem all that momentous at the time but can be true game-changers, and it's a reminder of that pithy, oft-quoted saying, "life is not a sprint, it's a marathon."  (Although holy moly,  the last thing I would ever, ever, EVER do is sign up to run a marathon, so I don't really like my life being compared to one!)

I guess I tend to dwell on my failures more than I do on my successes, because when I sat down to write this post I had to think really, really hard about the events of the past week in order to come up with three small successes to share.  And just the fact that it wasn't that easy to do makes me realize that this link-up might be a good exercise for me.  Good for my outlook and good for my soul.  So here goes.

-1-

Okay this is kind of funny: I was sitting at my laptop, trying to come up with success #1 and getting stumped, so I clicked on over to the CatholicMom.com site to see if the link-up had gone live yet...and when I did, I saw that the article I submitted titled "Three Reasons I Love CatholicMatch.com" had been published yesterday!  I didn't know when it was going to be posted on the site, so it was a wonderful surprise.

Ever since the first of my five sons was born in 1983, I've been a stay-at-home-mom; the only real career aspiration I've ever had, from the time I was a young bookworm in love with the written word, was to be a writer--which always seemed like an unattainable, pipe dreamy sort of a thing. But here I am, a writer.  (And coincidentally, the article is about three successes, but they're rather huge ones: three successful on-line matches that produced three beautiful Catholic couples.)

-2-



I just found out that the flower girl dress I made for my future daughter-in-law's cousin's young daughter fits her.   Woo hoo--success!  I had to hope that the size 6 pattern I used to make the dress for this little girl--who lives down South and whom I've never laid eyes on in person--would fit the same way the off-the-rack size 6 she normally wears fits...and thanks be to God, it does.  (Phew!)  When I mailed the ivory satin frock off to her, I was so worried--especially since the wedding is now exactly one month away, and if it wasn't a good fit, that wouldn't give me much time to either do alterations on that one or just stitch up a new one.  I was able to bring a completed dress out to CO with me when my husband and I visited our wee granddaughters recently, so I knew that the twins' dresses fit them; but until today I didn't know about flower girl #3's dress.  So life is good.

When my son's soon-to-be bride asked me, shortly after their engagement back in April, if I would be willing to make these dresses, I was thrilled at the prospect--but I am now exhaling a major sigh of relief.  (Three flower girl dresses that fit: that's three darling small successes right there.)

-3- 

Successes #1 and #2 each contained three for the price of one, so I think I should be done here.  But let me see, is there anything else I can tell you about?  Well, this week I came to the realization that I might be making some progress in overcoming my vanity.

When I had to have the two back molars removed on the upper right side of my jaw this past summer (due to some weirdly twisted roots and root canals that had seemed to fix the problem for a while, but were now failing), like a great big baby I cried tears over the loss of those teeth.  I did not find out I'd contracted a serious disease.  I had not been given the awful news that I have cancer.  I merely had to have a couple of teeth extracted.  (I know--I am ashamed.)  But you see, it was a huge deal to me, because I saw that when I smiled really wide, or threw my head back in laughter, the gaping hole was extremely obvious.  It made me feel so ugly.  And so old.  And there was not going to be enough time to finish the process of getting an implant before my #3 son's wedding next month.  Woe is me.

On Monday, I had a metal "root" screwed into my jaw, which will one day hold a nice faux molar...but not in time for my son's big day.  So to tide me over, my dentist made me a clear plastic retainer that has a false tooth embedded in it.  The device is not all that noticeable, but it makes me lisp a little.  So my choice is to speak with a slight speech impediment throughout the wedding reception, or to expose the fact that I have a big black hole where my teeth should be.  It will be an excellent opportunity for me to practice humility.

You're probably asking where the success is in this story.  It's a small success, but I've finally achieved it: I've accepted the measly little cross I've been asked to carry.  And by the time I was sitting in the oral surgeon's chair on Monday as he drilled away at my jaw bone, I was finally at peace with the whole thing.  There were no silly tears this time--just a feeling of relief that modern dentistry has an answer for pretty much every situation.

Baby steps, right?  It's not a sprint.

Now if you head on over and check out this post on the CatholicMom.com website, you can read about the small successes others are having and let their stories serve to inspire you in your daily life.