And once again, I am in awe...

I am writing this from the wicker love seat on my patio tonight! To my loved ones living in warmer climates this will not seem an astonishing accomplishment, but right here...tonight...in Nebraska, it is nothing short of miraculous. It is a bonafide wonder in fact! This is special and amazing because two or three weeks ago my patio was literally covered in about 3 ft. of snow. The snow first appeared out of the blue (uninvited I might add) in October and there it has stayed without relief until a couple of weeks ago. My son, Colt, was married on February 20th and we were buried in snow for his wedding. We shot another wedding the middle of March and were still buried in snow then, yet here I sit on my lovely decked out patio staring at the stream as it rushes into the pond. In the daylight, the grass is green and the daylillies seem to be shooting up at the rate of about an inch a minute. I am in awe! I have never been a garden person. Our yards have consisted of...well...not a whole lot. One of the nicest yards we've ever had was in England, but it was just always sort of there. It frosted where we were, but we rarely ever got snow so though it greened up a bit more in the spring, it didn't change drastically. Of course, we had a spectacular yard in the Philippines but as it was tended to by our gardner and it looked pretty much the same twelve months out of the year, I was never in awe. Since having our yard landscaped a couple of years ago though, I have reveled in the amazing resilliance of nature. What was a wintery wasteland a mere 10 days ago is now breathing in a whole new life. Derek, sensing my impatience for spring, indulged me wildly by putting the canopy and netting back up on the gazebo weeks before I know he would have preferred. He even dragged out the patio furniture. For the past few days I have watched in amazement as the withered, brown meadow behind our house has greened up noticably before my very eyes. Yesterday I decided to clear away all of the dead leaves and debri from the Lady's Mantle and found to my amazement a wealth of new green growth bursting with tiny, tightly furled leaves hiding beneath last years brown remnants. Excited by my discovery, I started the same process with the Speedwell and again discovered with delight, all new growth. You can sense the eagerness and growing excitement of the entire yard! So here I sit, two weeks after the last snowfall staring out into my own garden fairyland. Even thought it is dark, my gazebo is lit by tiny white lights wrapped along its cross bars and frame. Little solar lights highlight the fairy doors against a few choice rocks (that only fairies can open, of course). Spot lights catch the water tumbling over four waterfalls as it slips into the blue pond, lit from under the water. The Koi are dashing wildly across the pond reveling in renewed life, ravenous after a long winters sleep at the bottom of the pond, and our big wind chimes are singing softly from the ceiling of the gazebo. In another week or so, the wildflowers will have taken hold and soon after that will explode in a riot of colorful blossoms. This has been a hard winter, in so very many ways. It has been dark and cold and difficult and at times, it felt insurmountable. But now, here we are on the other side, emerging intact and excited and ready for spring and all of the possibilities that it brings and here's my little revelation. Spring and it's beauty would not be nearly so awe inspiring and spectacular and filled with promise if we had never endured the hard cold winter. So go outside, take a deep breath and then plunge headlong into a new season.

...so I didn't buy the pizza rolls

There I was, meandering through the aisles of the grocery store when I saw the extra large party bag of Totino's Pizza Rolls in the freezer section end cap. I automatically reached for them and as I started to put them into my cart I looked down at my other purchases. Fresh marinated mozarella, Hummuss, poppadoms, watermelon. Everything there looked suspiciously dissimiliar to the bag of pizza rolls in my hand. A sad sigh escaped my lips as I realized that I hated pizza rolls. Derek mostly hated pizza rolls. Colt is the only one in the family who embraces pizza rolls. I put the pizza rolls back in the freezer dejectedly. I miss Colt.

I discovered today that I particularly notice his absense when i'm dragging all of the groceries in from the car by myself, or dragging the vaccumm cleaner up two flights of stairs and then back down again. I also realized that I am going to figure out how to haul off the bales of hay in my backyard all by my little lonesome and I get no more get out of jail free cards when it comes to hauling laundry up and down the stairs. Oh sure, I can probably get Derek to do a lot of that, but Colt just does it all with such flair and panache. I suspect that even as I type this, he is being mentally beaten down and remolded to suit the army's needs.

His wife, Michelle, asked me if he would come back a different person. I said yes. He will, but only the parts of him that the army uses. He will always and forever be my Colt. He will always throw his fist into the air and yell "Colt Wins"! Whenever things go the way he wants them to, and when things don't go his way, he will always say "Oh...sad day". He may never have learned to keep his room clean...at all...ever...but I tip my hat to him for his cheerful attitude whenever I asked him to haul things for me or put things away.

I love you kid!

I sit back, take a deep breath and turn the page on a new chapter.

Yesterday I stood in a crowded, wood paneled room lined with carved wooden seals of the various branches of military and watched as my youngest son raised his arm and swore an oath to become a soldier in the United States Army. His dad was also there and so was his brand new wife. It was not only the final step in a month of huge steps, it was the culmination of a chapter in Derek's and my lives and the beginning of a whole, brand new book for Colt and Michelle.

In the space of ten days, Colt and Michelle were married and will now be separated for at least 2 1/2 months while Colt completes boot camp. As for Derek and I, we are now empty nesters. Don't get me wrong. We are willing to embrace our empty nest. We've been telling Colt for the last couple of years that we can't miss him if he isn't gone.

To mothers everywhere, don't get the mistaken impression that I don't want him around. Colt is incredibly easy going and has always been pleasant to have around. I kind of have a soft spot for him because he has always been comfortable hugging me and telling me he loves me. Even in high school, he would invite to to go to a movie with him. I love having him around. Well, HIM, not his room. His room is not pleasant at all. In fact, it's a little scary. What is important here is that it is our job to miss him. He's all grown up. We don't get to keep him. it wouldn't be good for him. What I saw in him for a long time, was someone getting increasingly restless. If we keep them too long, they don't grow (and they can get spoiled and start to smell). So we worked on kicking him to the curb, in the nicest possible way.

In the end, he kicked himself to the curb, or at least changed streets when he and Michelle announced that they were engaged! Michelle is a very sweet girl that he's known for a couple of years. So, the past few months have been a whirlwind of surgery, Christmas, and wedding plans. I'm eternally grateful that I was the mother of the groom. So much easier! The only real challenge with the wedding preparations, was getting the bride and groom to make a decision on ANYTHING!

So time flew by and the wedding day approached. As with any wedding, or should I say, more accurately, any Hester wedding, there has to be at least one catastrophe on or before the day. Just to keep things interesting, and to give us stories to tell for years to come.

A week before the wedding, I was getting into the back seat of our SUV and somehow whacked my head on the door frame. Within ten minutes I was throwing up. The next day, Colt had to take me to the emergency room for a cat scan, where thankfully, I was declared to have no fractures, just a concussion. This incident is not wildly relevant to the wedding except for the part where I had a raging headache and a very low tolerance for...we...everything. Family started arriving mid week. Samantha and Mark arrived with their girls on Wednesday. Colt's best man, a very pretty blond woman named Christine, arrived Thursday at 10:00 pm from Las Vegas, and Derek's parents and sister were scheduled to arrive the same night at 1`1:30 pm. As they were whisking their way across the country, Chi and Heather were heading over to our house. When they arrived it was immediately evident that Chi was not feeling well. Heather reported that he had actually called in sick to work the night before because of terrible abdominal pain. The symptoms she described sounded suspiciously like appendicitis and after some intense co-ercing, Chi's friend Brandon drove him to the emergency room while Heather stayed at our house with their kids. Sure enough, within a short time, Chi was calling to say that he was being whisked off to surgery for an emergency appendectomy. This was VERY late Thursday night. The wedding was Saturday.

Having survived Friday without incident, we headed into Saturday. Much to my amazement, Chi actually insisted on donning his tux and standing with his brother at the wedding as Colt's appointed "Patron of Honor"...duly titled by the same confused groom who had a woman as his best man.

The wedding was held in a tiny historical church in Old Bellevue, It's actually very quaint, with lots of stained glass and honey hued wood. Fortunately the ceremony was relatively short, as part of the churches quaint and rustic charm is its lack of a restroom. Apparently the city has solved this particular problem by having a porta potty out behind the church, unfortunately, as the temperature was in the twenties, we were informed that it was frozen and would not be usable.

As preparations for the wedding began, a kind of ordered chaos filled the building. Bridesmaids primped, the bride's parents cried, pictures were taken. Did I mention that we were the photographers? Once Michelle was ready, she had to go out the side door and go back around to the front door to enter. The flower girls (my two oldest, stunningly adorable granddaughters) performed flawlessly, dropping flower petals down the aisle as they entered. The only hitch was that they seemed to be having a fabulous time and were hesitant to continue over to their seats, instead electing to twirl for the congregation a couple of times before being enticed to their seats by their mothers with (I suspect) gummy bears.

Next came the ring bearers (Michelle's three year old twin nephews), who did not actually bear any rings, but were, in fact, carried up the aisle, one under each arm, by a cousin of the bride.

The rest of the wedding party entered and the ceremony began. It was lovely, in spite of Chi looking like he might pass out at any moment. The Bishop spoke, then Samantha sang a song (beautifully I might add). Then the Bishop had them exchange their vows. That all went smoothly, but I was a little surprised that when they went to exchange the rings they each had a little slip of paper, which they both dropped, from which they read the sentence and a half required to complete the transaction. I know for a fact that Colt can recite the lyrics to several hundred songs and will come home from a movie and retell the entire story line, quoting entire scenes verbatim, but apparently could not remember that simple line and a half. The important thing though, was that they laughed and they smiled and they were obviously completely in love. Once the ceremony was complete, the guests were invited to congregate outside with bubbles as the couple left the church. I was a little fearful that there might be injuries caused by frozen bubbles smacking guests on the head, but all went well.

Between the wedding and the reception, we took the wedding party to the Joslyn museum for photographs. The museum is beautiful and this seemed like an excellent alternative to the whole wedding party being treated for frostbite and hypothermia, which were very real possibilities if we tried doing the shoot outdoors.

Upon our arrival at the reception, we were informed that the chef had gotten the time wrong and somehow thought that in spite of the fact that the reception started at 5:00, he didn't need to have the food ready until 6:30. After a run in with an angry mother of the bride, he hustled and provided what was essentially, roast beef tartar at 6:00. The guests were very patient! After that, things went pretty well, other than the mother of the groom (me) discovering than an outrageous headache, the stress of shooting the wedding and trying to participate as a guest, and a few minor run ins with persons unnamed, had stretched me a bit too thin. All you had to do was look at me and I was likely to burst into tears. Just ask Derek.

Finally, the bride and groom headed to their hotel and we headed home. I sat on the couch and realized that our last child had just gotten married. Children are always your children, no matter how old or how married they are, but at some point, they aren't your responsibility anymore. As Derek is so fond of saying, "We don't get a vote". So all you can do is continue to Love them and their spouses and their children and be their cheerleaders and be there to pick them up when they fall, IF they ask for your help. They are forever and always your children, but they are also adults with their own families and their own lives. I was a little sad.

The week flew by and suddenly we found ourselves in that crowded little room surrounded by other parents and spouses, while a handful of young men and one women took their oath of service. At times I cried, just a little, but mostly I thought how great it was to see Colt starting his own adventure. It made me think of myself, nearly thirty years ago, standing and watching as Derek took that same oath. A time he will never forget mostly because I was wearing neon yellow overalls and a bright striped shirt (cut me some slack, it was the 80's).

I know how Michelle must have felt as they took the recruits away and she faced a couple of months on her own, but i also remember the amazing adventure that began all those years ago for us. The places that we lived, the fun that we had, the trials that we faced, raising our kids in various countries and various parts of the states. It has been an amazing adventure. Now it's time for a new adventure, both for Colt and Michelle, and for Derek and I. It feels a little like we are newlyweds again, only this time we get to rediscover each other, play with Grand kids and enjoy the adults that our children have become.

I think this will be a very good adventure.