Growing Up

This weekend I went home for my cousin's bridal shower and a much needed visit. I hadn't be home since January and it was nice to drive on the ever familiar roads. It was also a time to organize/reduce the mass of things collecting in my former room. I should have taken a picture of the stacks of boxes, clothes, papers, and blankets that were all over the room. To be fair a summer where one sister has an internship, makes a trip to the ICU, and then is home briefly before going back to K-State combined with another sister who prepares for a wedding, gets married, and makes the biggest move of her life results in a few piles of stuff. Now that I have a house with storage my mom would like to see the mementos I left behind take up residency with me. Unfortunately that means sorting through boxes that hold the most "important" and "valuable" artifacts of my entire childhood as well as all those must haves but will never use again items from a wedding. I've listed a few highlights that will give you a glimpse into the fun, entertaining, and laborious process of sorting.

1. Goodwill goes wedding -- Renting and borrowing as much as possible is a must when it comes to wedding preparation. However, there are those details that are custom made or a collection of lots of little things that you just end up buying. For me this resulted in table jewels, silk flowers, scrapbook paper, picture frames, and the list could go on and on. All of these things are reusable in some decorative function, but I have enough of each of the listed items to decorate thousands of rooms/tables/whatever exactly the same. It's a little too much of a good thing. I have a few friends who have contacted me about borrowing stuff, but I still wish there was a place I could take things that would be open to the public to rent or buy. If nothing else, having a collection of all the things brides used would be a great way to get ideas. Goodwill already has some pretty "special" wedding dresses, but I think they could really step up their game if they could start their own wedding decoration section.

2. Betty Lou -- Most of you probably don't know that I was formerly known as Betty Lou in 6th grade. Three other friends and myself decided it would be cool to come up with new names and make up adult lives. We shared what was going on in our lives through letters. I chose to live in California and from my understanding we were all going to meet at Disneyland to catch up and talk about our friend's recent marriage...how grown up!!! I don't think I've laughed as hard as I did when my mom and I were reading through these old letters (which were carefully decorated) for quite a while. I'm not an advocate for being a pack rat, but I'm really glad I kept those letters so I could have a good laugh.

3. Salad prayer -- This has nothing to do with the weekend, but I was working with a 1st grade student on Friday who ate a salad during science class. The salad was supposed to teach the kids about the different parts of a plant. First of all, he was so grateful for the salad and then he looks at me and says we need to pray. I think he thought it was my job to get everyone at the red table to pray. I told him to go ahead by himself. I looked over and sure enough his eyes were closed and his hands folded. He stayed like this for a while then quietly said amen. He looked at me again and said, "I prayed." It made me so happy and I couldn't help but smile.