It's raining gifts

The week that spanned the end of February and the beginning of March was Spring Break at the college where I work. So I decided to take advantage of that time and get a few wedding things accomplished.

The first major task was to make and send the invitations, which we did assembly-line style over a period of 3 days. By "we" I mean my mother, her friend, my sister and I...each helping out when she could.

The second task was to finish the scrapbook that my sisters had started for me. For my birthday, Alicia and Alaina (with Leona's help) took the pictures of Darren and I that had been blown up for the engagement and scrapbooked them. It was a wonderful idea and a wonderful gift, but the problem was: it was incomplete. I am not a scrapbooker but I was determined to finish the project, which we did...in only 2 days.

Now, I didn't have to travel so far to complete these projects; I could have found some people around here who don't mind cutting and 'ribboning,' but the real reason for the trip to Forest was the shower that Leona threw me. She and her friend Stacey invited over 60 ladies from the church - and my favourite cousins from London - and then (with my mom's help) hosted them all in their house. They took out pretty much all the furniture that wasn't appropriate for sitting on in both the living and dining rooms and then brought in another 25 chairs for the evening.

It was amazing to me how many ladies showed up, and how many gifts I received. I am now the owner of enough bakeware to make anything I ever wanted, enough towels to have guests over and even some items to make our new little apartment look like a home.

When I showed Darren the treasures, he was as blown away as I was. I still can't believe that people who don't even know Darren or me would bless us in such a huge way.

Of course, this generosity sparked a third project for the week: the making of thank-you cards. That task, although it did take 2 days to complete, was one that I was very happy to do, remembering the way that these people had given Darren and I a nice start on our new journey.


(On a related note: I have updated the wedding blog again. I make mention of this here because it's so rare an occurence that one may stop checking.)