what was I saying?

Oh yes.

While our freezer was dying and our washer was waning, we were on a road trip.

To that sweet land of Virginia to celebrate a kind and generous and hilariously fun family that I like to call my cousins.

Amber was getting married.

And my Piper Finnian was the flower girl to Amber.

 Amber.

A grown up who was once a kid who once wore a white dress and served as the flower girl at my wedding nearly eighteen years ago.

Me.

A grown up who was once a kid who once wore a white dress and served as flower girl at Amber’s mother’s wedding about thirty years ago.

Sherry.

Amber’s mother.  A grown up who was once a kid who wore a white dress and served as flower girl at my mother’s wedding more than forty years ago.

An incredibly blessed tradition that we’ve joked about carrying on for years but couldn’t really imagine the day coming to follow through.  (I wish my momma could have seen it all.)

And Otto was the bearer of the pillow and walked beside his sister.

It was ridiculously cute.

The bow tie.  The suspenders.  The sailor dress.  The little blue hat.  The grins as they waltzed down the aisle.

When Otto and Piper began their little stroll down the white path, there was an audible gasp.

It was just that adorable.

I was so proud of them.  Piper took her role seriously and they were both so patient.  Otto had this closed-mouth smirky smile the whole time and when he saw Kevin in the second row, he bolted head first into his lap.  Piper finished her task all the way to the end and politely turned back to sit beside me.

The wedding day turned out to be lovely and mild – a slight breeze across the golf course to cool us all down.

The bride was beautiful.  The groom  handsome.

Relatives I hadn’t seen in years were hugging me and trying to figure out which child went with which name.

Laughs and tears and dancing.

And cake.

Goodness – we’ve attended a plethora of weddings this year – and, at the risk of making other people sad, this was the best cake of all.

I refuse to confess how many slices our table enjoyed.

And then, after the party ended and we had all the children settled into bed and Sherry and Willy arrived home, we opened first one box and then another to discover that there was more cake inside!

Of course we ate more – after midnight – at the kitchen table, complaining all the while that we would regret our decision in the morning.

But we were wrong – I didn’t regret it at all.

I only regret that I didn’t take the other box of cake home with me.

It was a good weekend.

Worth the long drive.  Worth the college tuition poured into the gas tank of the Suburban.  Worth it to have one brother and one sister-in-law and one nephew and his girlfriend and Dad and a half dozen cousins in one room at one time.

We’re all crossing our fingers that one day Dan and Amber will have a daughter who can serve as flower girl at one of my many daughters’ future weddings.

But I’m more than happy to wait a looong while before I even start to think about weddings in conjunction with my own children.

For now, it’s more than enough to attend weddings and provide cute little attendants.