starting over

Starting over, this blog and life, ...It has been a long summer and fall in some ways and short in others. Raymond has been lamenting that it is only a few days until Christmas and it was just the 4th of July. Welcome to the world of grown-ups, son! A lot has happened and changed in half a year. So many changes this summer, life going in a new direction for all of us in one way or another....S. finally confronting some of his issues and getting some long awaited intervention after "the crisis", Maria moving out on her own, Rick leaving his winter job in Alaska to come here. These pictures are from our "shotgun wedding" as Cori called it, long in planning but short in preparations. We had been waiting for Rick's mom to get better and get out of the hospital and after two months, it looked like she would be there even longer. Then, one day she called and was coming home the next day and thought that she felt well enough to come down for the weekend. Two days of planning and arranging and, on October 14, almost a year from the day I got the first letter from Rick in 2006, the family was at Panther Creek picnic area for a short ceremony. Thirty three and a half years after our parting at Camp Cohutta Springs we were back together again for better or worse for whatever years we have left. Fern was the only one of the kids that didn't come for the wedding since she had been down here the weekend before for her dad's wedding. How ironic is that? I told her that attending one parents wedding in a month was enough stress for anyone.
I will have to post some pictures from Thanksgiving tomorrow and get caught up. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving with all of the kids at home and around a campfire singing and being silly. It has been a long time coming, the wounds of the last couple of years starting to heal, some of the grief and anger and depression that we have all been through starting to smooth out into looking at the future again. Not a bad looking bunch of kids and grandkids.....but what a couple of old hippies the bride and groom are!