Thankful for Family

I am thankful for my family.

And you know why? Because they are always there for me. They support and love me, care for and listen to me, look out for and advise me, and – most importantly – they are people who live, love and laugh even when things are looking glum. How many people are still truly connected with their families? How many of them have lost touch or aren’t interested in building/ maintaining familial relationships?

I’m lucky. I am part of quite a big family: I have my mum and dad; four uncles; three aunts; one brother-in-law (i.e. my sister’s husband); and all the cousins (myself and my two sisters included, of course) come to a total of 17. Now that I’m married, I also have my Significant Other (I love you, Sweetheart!); my parentals-in-law; my four brothers-in-law (i.e. my husband’s brothers); and even more uncles, aunts and cousins. I even have a grandfather now!! 🙂

So here’s to a large family who enrich my life and who I love very much! I’ll be adding a few photos that were taken at our wedding, but before that, here are some quotations about family that I’d like to share with you.

“Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life!” – Albert Einstein

“The family is a haven in a heartless world.” – attributed to Christopher Lasch

“An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship.” – Spanish Proverb

“To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.” – Barbara Bush

“The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.” – Thomas Jefferson

“The family – that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.” – Dodie Smith

“If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable – each segment distinct.”  – Letty Cottin Pogrebin

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.”  – Anthony Brandt

My beautiful sisters, Addy & Libby

The parentals. Aren't my mum & dad lovely?

My parentals-in-law (who truly see me as the daughter they never had)

All the parentals

My Significant Other (second from the right, aka the guy wearing the white shirt) with his father & three brothers

My dad with his two brothers. They're standing from oldest to youngest (left to right)

Have a cigar! -- love this photo 🙂

My Life, my Love, my EVERYTHING ❤

Picture Perfect

I am not photogenic.

Or photographic… photographically inclined… not friends with the camera due to the manner in which it captures my physical appearance… how am I supposed to phrase it? *ponder*

I’m not saying that I’m ugly (though one would always like to be prettier). I don’t cause camera lenses to crack and accordingly blur or even distort photos that I’m on (though I’m not ruling out the possibility that this can happen outside of books, short stories and sci-fi films)… It’s just that the camera doesn’t seem to ‘love’ me.

Trust me, the feeling is mutual.

Okay, I don’t hate the camera. That’s not what I’m trying to say while busy being circumlocutory (yes, that’s a word – it pretty much means that I’m being verbose, i.e. rambling, skirting the issue).  It’s more a case of coincidental snapping. It’s as if the camera just knows in some weird, out-of-this-world manner that it has to snap away at specific moments in order to capture me (and a part of my soul…?!) when I’m pulling my face.

No foolies.

Think this can't happen? Think again... *dum dum duuuuuum* (dramatic reverb!)

[And, unfortunately, I cannot blame it on my genes. Meh.]

Note that this is not, of course, intentional on my part. It’s not like I derive any joy from pulling faces while having a camera pointed at me… unless, of course, the intention is to be silly and playful… *No I’m not being dramatic!!!*

In any case, let’s take an example:

Last night our wedding photographer came around to our apartment to bring us our photographs. The photos are stunning and he has an amazing eye for a shot, but of course, no photo album – and most certainly not when it comes to something as big, important and joyous as your very own wedding – would be complete without me making an arse of myself. I’ve never seen anyone who pulls their mouth as much as me: pouting, scowling, frowning, looking shocked/ in awe… and not because the photographer asked me to. It’s probably, unfortunately and unintentionally, the way I roll.

At least the photos will be memorable. Nothing like laughter (even when it’s at my own expense) to bring people together. So what if I’m not picture perfect? In their own way, the perfectness of the pictures lies in the fact that I’m an unwitting comedian! 😉

 Have a good Meh-day everyone!!!

[Aside: we’ll be receiving the disc with all of our photos tonight, so perhaps I’ll put up a few tonight or over the weekend to have you share in the laughter…]

Thanks, kitteh, I appreciate you laughing at me...

“I’m getting married in the morning…”

“…ding-dong, the bells are gonna’ chime!!”

Okay, so I’m only getting married in the afternoon (4PM, to be exact), and nobody has to get me to the church since I’m getting dressed and married at the venue – but you get the general idea.

I am getting marrried TOMORROW!!! One of life’s great occurences 🙂

We did a bit of driving around this afternoon, ensuring that everything for the tables was at the venue, that my Significant Other had a white shirt to wear tomorrow (his previous one mysteriously shrunk in the wash… or not so mysteriously – I’ve learned not to take my clothes in to the laundromat ‘we’ use), and that the last few things that needed to be done – practically nothing – were, in fact, done.

I’ve even already packed all our stuff for our flight on Sunday, so kudos to myself for taking away some post-wedding day ‘tension’/ worrying.

One thing that still remains to be done, however, is the following:

My Significant Other still needs to write his vows.

You see, it was his bright idea to tell our marriage officer (yes, he is a pastor) that we would write our own vows. He even had me a bit worried a few weeks ago when he told me that he had already thought about what he would say, when I myself hadn’t.

Yet now here we are, the evening before the wedding, with my vows having been written on Tuesday already (I was at home, sick, so I had some time… not that it’s very long), while he keeps telling me every now and then that he still has to write his. This is accompanied by a slight look of distress… or perhaps it could be nausea. I’m not sure.

It’s 8PM on the Friday before my wedding – 20 hours before the ceremony begins and I start my life as a Mrs.

And you know what’s worth looking forward to later in the evening (although, yes, the whole OMG-I’m-getting-married thing is one of the most exciting things that’ll happen in your life and thus you’ll be looking forward to the event in its entirety)?

A few simple words, whose origins have been attributed to our dear old friend Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake!”

[And love and marriage and eternal happiness and ‘starting’ our life together and all that other happy crappy, of course…]