March Magic

For the second year in a row, March has brought us a lucky visit from Ethan, Brooklyn, and Lilly. Pure fun, and high energy, too! When the girls bounced out of bed Saturday morning, Brianna was ready with an invitation to walk to the farmers market with her. The night before, they were so excited by the wonders of the new fairy room that they'd barely eaten anything other than a few marshmallows. We'd broken out the fire pit for the first wiener and s'more roast of the season, and I'd made potato salad and cole slaw, but although they stopped long enough to roast a hot dog each, they never got around to actually eating them. They were too busy to pay much attention at all to food.. So I asked Brianna to see if she could tempt them with some juicy strawberries or something that contained more nutritive value than marshmallows while they were there. They came home laden with strawberries, bananas, watermelon, apples, pears, asparagus, a few honey sticks, and a bag of Strawberries and Cream popcorn. Brianna washed the strawberries, while Brooklyn carried out three cups of water and a blanket, which Lilly and Brianna spread on the trampoline, whereupon they had a breakfast-picnic of berries and popcorn in the sunny backyard. Staying close to home, making sand castles in the little park type space by our house, laughing at Ethan's and Colin's kite-flying antics, and watching movies, Saturday was kind of a time for winding down after the exciting but exhausting Disneyland vacation their family had just returned from.

The other March magic? We finally met Brianna's fiance` yesterday. He spent several hours with us, just visiting, helping Brianna move her belongings, teaming up with Ethan to solve the nation's healthcare crisis, picking up a cute little dining set they bought from Craig's List, and so forth. That's how we came to find out that we really like him, which is very good, because it would be even harder to see our beautiful, kind Brianna go if we didn't. Not until this past Thursday had she given me the go-ahead to call all the brothers to let them know she was getting married on March 16th, Jordan's birthday. Not having known she was even dating, they were pretty surprised. One of them, the most tender-hearted of the bunch, got pretty choked up, wishing her happiness, understanding that her upcoming marriage was right and good, but feeling sad that Jordan had to miss out on the bright future they'd planned together. It was tough last night when I briefly became overwhelmed with the feeling that Jordan really got a bum deal. We're certain that Jordan would want Brianna to take this step in her life, too, but it is bittersweet nevertheless. One of her worries was that people would think she no longer loves Jordan. I assured her that that was not the case, that everyone would be happy for her and Jason. And so we are. We pray for them to have a long and wonderful marriage. And we pray that our Jordan will have compensatory blessings of joy far beyond our mortal comprehension, from our wise and loving Father in heaven.