Wedding

Home from Texas and now getting ready for company for supper. The house is a disaster, with getting Heather ready to leave FOREVER, tho they'll come back and get all the stuff she packed. And then I was sewing her outfit up until the night before we flew out.

Bill's chaplain, who had been with him in Iraq, and was his best man, asked me, "how are you feeling?" I told him things hit me moreso afterward.

And that it did and will as time passes. Yesterday I looked thru all the 365 pictures Dawson had downloaded on my computer. Other than when he was playing the piano and being soundman (all the way up in the balcony of this chapel)(Monte and me sang a song and then Jim), Dawson kept snapping pictures from the beginning to the end. Arranging and rearranging them in various folders and albums, I could re-live everything.

In the busy-ness, none of us really slowed down until Bill's pastor from another base, did the service. THEN I started thinking about "this is real", my daughter is really getting married.

I'm glad for the people who came. They were going to elope, but there was probably more realness for them, to have some close family and a few friends and fellow comrades.

I was glad that my sister Kelli came, driving from Tucson, with my mom and Jim. Kelli has done lots of photography at weddings. She captured pictures while Dawson was busy. She's the one who made everyone stay and pose for pictures. I can't wait to see her photos too.

So...our kids marry and our families grow and the dynamics change. I have a daughter-in-love Sarah, who we see with Travis at least once a month, and we IM all the time. And now a new son-in-love, William. So now my daughter's name is Heather Lavendar - how cute!

We're not empty-nesters yet, tho it pretty much feels like it, since social Dawson is gone so much. But it looks like he'll probably be home another year and half, since he's fine with staying at the community college another year! (By the way, he got a 4.0 grade this semester.) It tells me two things: He sees the value in saving money by getting a lot of preliminary classes done in this setting, AND He must feel such freedom at home to come and go, that that urge to leave home for more freedom, does not exist. And what this means for us, is that I'll still need to stock food for him and his friends who still like to hang out here.