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Livin' the Good Life
May. 20th, 2012
07:58 am - Random Great Picture
Here, Maya and Ollie have arrived at the "wedding house" and are ready to get ready! I love this shot!
May. 19th, 2012
09:21 pm - Getting Ready
The hustle and bustle before the wedding included getting dressed. Even our little man was included:
For Ollie, it was all just a fun game. This definitely WAS a laughing matter for him!
Almost there
Nathen relaxing before dressing. Check out the dramatic colors in this room!
Last few quiet moments before the ceremony
Ely's turn. Reanna made the 8 bow ties necessary to outfit the seven brothers plus Nathen. And they all had to learn how to tie them on the spot. Good job, Christina!
Girls putting the finishing touches on the guys... pinning on a delicate sprig from a local plant:
Many buttons required lots of help. Reanna altered and "remade" this elegant dress:
08:08 pm - The Talent Show
I'm showing here just a few of the "acts". Steve and I were last, and I don't have a photo of that. But, here's what I have:
Grace bellydancing for us
My niece and nephew, Mikaela and Brandon, singing us an original tune:
Ely and Christina swing dancing:
I think there were about 10 all together. Quite a variety of entertainment and some of it was reading or speaking, so couldn't be well-represented with a still shot. I thoroughly enjoy talent shows and appreciated that they included one in the line-up of events.
03:52 pm - The Sites
As far as the places where this celebration took place, there were three different sites on three different days. I don't have pictures of the first site, which was the house that Reanna's family rented for the occasion. It was a welcome dinner with socializing and dancing. The second day, we met for a Korean barbeque at a campground in Joshua Tree National Park. Here's the site:
This site looks out over the valley floor. Behind us was a magnificent, towering pile of boulders. The barbeque was produced and orchestrated by our dear friend, Jeannie. It was delicious! Radish relish, brocolli stem slaw, meat, and forbidden-rice salad. Yum!!
My long-time friend of 18 years, Jeannie has been with me through thick and thin. She's a loyal, trusted person in my life, and I love her dearly.
She slaved over a hot grill for hours in 100 degree heat for our sakes. What a trooper!
Here's what was "behind us" and the small hike we had to take to get to the talent show site after dinner.
Here we are beginning to gather for the entertainment at the small amphitheater.
There I am front and center, always ready to be entertained.
The next day, we took a long, winding dirt road up through the hills of Pioneertown to get to the wedding site:
After the wedding in the clearing, we walked to the house where the reception would take place. It was a stunning sight:
Here is the reception dinner. If you look closely at the top of the mountain, a little to the left, you'll see what looks like a tiny open door in the rock. That's exactly what it is! It is a small prayer/meditation room carved into the mountain that you get to by hiking up a narrow trail. Quite a wonderful little surprise.
Inside this magnificent house we found lots of treasures from all over the world. Eastern-style ornamental furniture, paintings, decorations.... you'll get the feel of it from this picture (more to come).
12:18 pm - Me and My Big Brother
As wedding pictures start to pour in, I will be posting, probably randomly, with my comments. Get ready!
This is the guy I wrote about "way back when" in my journal: Don, my one and only brother. And he was a good one! He's the one I idolized, pestered, and followed around my entire childhood. I wanted his attention so much that I learned to; pitch baseballs (when he'd call to me saying, "Come on DD, you wanna go throw the old apple around?"), play rounds and rounds of basketball, play ping-pong with him (even though he'd cream me every time), act in his original plays, memorize all the names of the players on the Dodgers and listen to their games on radio, show up for his daily puppet shows, appreciate his sense of humor and think the same things were funny, watch all his favorite TV shows, count him doing pushups every day (he got up to 300), run the movie camera (very badly) while he did high jumps, help him with his spook house in the basement while he took neighborhood kids on a tour (I was the one pulling the strings in the control room to make ghosts rise out of graves and devils move around their den), sit by him, when he'd let me, while he did his many intricate projects, sing along with him to the hits on the radio, sit for long periods at the table after dinner resisting taking that one bite of asparagus so we could be excused... the list goes on. Needless to say, I adored my big brother.
May. 18th, 2012
09:03 am - Married!
On Wednesday May 16th, Nathen and Reanna made their lifetime commitment. It was a moving experience for us all, and I don't believe there was a dry eye in the audience. Nathen and Reanna were both smiling and crying throughout the ceremony, which was expected in Nathen's case, as he usually does not surpress his tears.... never has. It was held in a beautiful isolated spot up in Pioneertown, CA with breathtaking views, giant boulders, with an out-of-this-world, castle-like house for the backdrop. The ceremony took place outside in a little clearing between two cottonwood trees with the audience either standing or sitting on blankets. The vows were simple and touching... like no others I've heard.... which didn't surprise me. Nathen and Reanna are unquestionably "unconventional". The officiate was their long-time friend and mentor from Not-Back-To-School-Camp, Grace Llewelyn. She set a tone for the wedding that was reverent and intentional and inclusive of the audience. We were definitely a part of the union, as she asked us to participate and support them, both during the ceremony and for the rest of their lives as a married couple. We were all more than willing to do that, so enthusiastic was this crowd of people who love them both so much. We seemed to unanimously agree that they are an excellent match, and that feeling was almost palpably swelling in the air around us as the marriage took place. At one point, Grace allowed a period of spontaneous speaking from the audience, with silent moments in between, that was very powerful. I loved how the mother AND father walked the bride AND groom down the path to the site while members of our band played a beautiful tune in the background. By the time they got to the vows, "Wherever you go, I will go. Where you stay, I stay", we were all weeping. And they had the bride's and groom's siblings (a total of 7 brothers!) stand up with their moms and dads to pass the rings, one by one, to Nathen and Reanna. They wanted us all to touch them before they gave them to each other.
I will be posting pictures and more musings over the next couple of days, and you will love seeing this beautiful couple, so stay tuned!
May. 13th, 2012
12:47 pm - Taking a Break for a Picture
Nathen just told me he wanted a Mother's Day picture of me, and I said I was in my work clothes and hadn't brushed my hair yet this morning. He said no matter, so here I am resting for a moment for a quick shot. Later, I will get dressed and we'll go out to lunch. But, for now, here I am:
Yes, that's a fly on my leg. All my watering, plus the intense heat, has brought out a new crop of very happy flies. Welcome to the desert!
May. 12th, 2012
07:14 am - .... and in the Morning Sun
Yesterday's picture was taken in the afternoon when the porch is cool, shady, and breezy. In the morning, the porch is flooded with sunshine. It's a warm, cheery place to meditate, pray, drink a cup of coffee or a morning smoothie, listen to the springtime sounds of very busy birds, watch the cats wrestle and chase, smell the nearby jasmine, and feel the sunshine penetrating the skin as it foretells the sizzling day to come. It's supposed to be in the mid-90s today.
I think I'll just go relax in the sun, instead of sitting here writing about it.
The rug appears much brighter in the direct sun. I love it.
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