Dear Mom and Dad,
I thought, driving home from Liz's shower this afternoon, that I should have brought a camera to take pictures. But I will try to give you a detailed report instead. Her fiance Andrew was there, and he looked so happy. So did she. They both just glowed.
I got there without getting lost, thanks to the miracles of GPS. That thing is amazing. I would have been utterly lost without it, even though Jane's directions were fairly good, just because the driving stretches are so long that you start to wonder if you're going in the right direction. Go GPS!
The party didn't get started for a little while, so I got to mingle, which was good. Claudia and Susan can't talk about you without crying, Mom. Claudia was so touched that you would call last night, and she gave me a hug from you. Everyone wanted to hear about how things are going--I said really well, and really busy. I'm excited to hear about your new missionaries and how everything went with this move call (it is still weird for me to call it a move call instead of a transfer. What's the reason behind the different name?)
For lunch we had salads and chocolate covered strawberries and fresh rolls. I looked around at everyone eating and gathered to celebrate Liz's wedding, and I thought of Grandma. I hope she gets to attend this kind of event. I imagine she will be there in the temple when Liz is sealed, but I hope she also gets to mingle at showers too. Everything was lovely and delicious. I talked to Jane for a little, and to Tamara and Annie and Christa and Liz's friend.
Annie's shower game was like the Newlywed Game. Andrew was right there and he and Liz answered the questions together. The highlight there was the answer to the question "When did Liz know she wanted to marry Andrew?" Andrew wrote on his white board "May 2, May 5, and May 22," and then elaborated with near-exact times. On May 2 he asked her what it would take, what more she needed, to move to Illinois. She said she wasn't sure and had too much school stuff to work on, so she needed another two weeks before she could give him an answer. But on the 3.5 hour drive home, she realized there could never be anyone more perfect for her than Andrew. She still waited till May 5 to call and tell him though.
It was so cute to watch them tell the story. And when he told about their engagement it made me cry. I think you've heard this story already, but they went on a hike, and he had his friends set up a place along the way with chocolate strawberries and sparkling cider, and he sang her a Josh Groban song, and brought out a book he had made for her. The end of the book was the proposal: will you be the right person, in the right place, at the right time?
It was so wonderful to see Liz basking in the glow of loving and being loved and of having her family around her being happy with her. She has been so kind and supportive of all her cousins, and i am thrilled that it's her turn for this spotlight. I'm sure I've forgotten things or told them wrong, so you can get more details from Melissa if you want.
Matt is gone to youth conference all day today. I need to clean my house. It's very hard for me to motivate myself to clean when he's not home for dinner. But it's so cluttered I am going a little bit crazy, and that needs to be motivation enough.
I have started working on a new book. I abandoned the post-apocalyptic Rapunzel set in Ecuador, although I might come back to it again sometime, and I'm now going for a mystery in the Ladies' Detective Agency style, set in Ecuador. We'll see how it goes. I really need to just finish a stupid first draft. I get to some point in the middle and think "this is terrible" and then life gets busy and I abandon it,because it's depressing to work on terrible books. But I think that the DB/Covenant mystery market is pretty strong, and there's nothing like this in the LDS market, so it could do well. If I ever finish it. 500 words a day! And I have decided that a good chunk of those words need to be planning words, which has been my problem before. I'm such a left-brained person that I can't create well unless I understand what I'm doing, at least with fiction. I can't just sit down and let the words spill out. I've been trying to write fiction like creative nonfiction, which is very much a "things spill out" kind of style for me, and it just doesn't turn into anything but mush.
I also need to finish recording the feedback from the writing retreat surveys, and that will be a project. And I need to inventory all the Primary music stuff I inherited from the previous person, so that I can take it over to the church. Our new building has enough storage space for it, so that I don't have to keep it in my bedroom anymore. I am so very happy about that. With that stuff gone I may have a chance of organizing my room somehow.
I love you both very much. Mom, you were missed at the shower today, but know that everyone loves you and is praying for you.
Love,
Emily
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