the Grand and the Grander

This weekend, I took some major swigs out of the milkshake of life, both literally and metaphorically. 

milky way malt.  better than it looks and sounds. try to wrap your head around that. 

 It was one of those very sweet stretches of time that felt more akin to the realm of eternity.  Like right after you leave Middle Earth for Narnia and right before you get to Hogwarts.  

Nerdy enough for you?  Hold onto your hats, because the cheese will not be in short supply in this post.  But it’s the cheese of life that gets my heart all warm and cozy in the winter so I say three cheers to the cheese!

So it’s like this: When I hear my 3-year-old peach say the word stethoscope in that unreasonably precious voice, and watch as she uses said play stethoscope to listen to the heartbeat that mysteriously resides in my stomach.  That’s when I knew I had arrived in the land of complete Gift.  Which every moment of life is, but this was one of those blessedly obvious times--the undisguised blessing times.

this google.  oh man.

When I watched that little nerdicle flitting from grandparent to aunt to uncle, sweetly doctoring us, making pretend calls to the hopsital, and generally charming the pants off of all of us with her perfect blend of precocious innocence and red headedness... well, it was in this moment when I understood a tiny bit of why Jesus Loves us. 

 Because to Him, we are all little children pretending we know things but really don’t and really needing Him for everything.  It’s sort of really grand to be useless from the perspective of eternity.  To be Loved merely because we exist and were created by God for God and not for anything we do. Grand I say!

She is the googliest little munchkin of a 3-year-old and I love her so.  She was the first niece and granddaughter in our family, and she has brought immense joy to each of us just because she exists.  Thank you for your love, Sophia Rose my little buggy ruggy boo (I make no apologies for rhymey baby talk. it's the bread and butter of any auntie).  

She shares a Birthday with one of the other loves of my life, my Momma’s Momma, Mimi. 

 I miss Mimi, but I rejoice in her Joy.  She is finally with Jesus and away from the immense suffering she endured on this earth.  Suffering that I am certain purified and sanctified her because of her share in our Lord’s Cross.  She picked it up and followed Him to the very end.  What was bitter for her on earth has been rendered all sweet in Heaven.

Man oh man do I love Easter, the Resurrection and Jesus even more since Mimi was called Home.  I get to see her again because of Jesus.  Death is not the end because of Jesus.  {Insert some serious cabbage patching, cartwheeling, Hallelujahs and WOOTWOOTs, over the Goodness that is our Lord here}

And of course, this week marks the first anniversary of another Peach sweetening the buttons out of all of our lives.  

April 17th, 2012 our Madeline Cecilia McCabe made life so much sweeter

could time be any weirder if it tried.  How does one year render such change? riddle me that if you dare.

Madeline Cecilia, more affectionately known as Maddy Bear, Maddy Bear, Oooh Lala Maddy Bear, you are the sugariest little plumpkin I know.  I am thrilled that you exist and are a part of our family.  I love you so.  

And now I pose to you the same question Kevin McCallister posed to the “Sticky Bandits”: 

“Have you had enough, or are you thirsty for more?”

As was the case in Home Alone, so ‘tis on this little blog: That was merely a rhetorical question designed to lure you further into this post.  

Don’t worry,  I mostly want to just bombard you with iphone, instagrammification and what not photos now.

Having the mops and the pops here was glorious.  I love them so, too.  Have I said that already?  Well I love my siblings so, too.  So thereeeee.  

this girl loves herself some serious Lita Bear. What else can I say but that the girl has good taste? that's mah Goddaugther

cherry blossoms with the Boss of patience and mellowness. He's just cool.

We had a wonderful bite and sup together on Friday.  The peaches ruled the roost and we all laughed at the charm of being completely at the mercy of wee little humans with little deductive reasoning to speak of.  At least I am laughing about it now, because it’s grand.

this is when trixy magee got me to let her illegally romp in a fountain.  yes, we were banned from it shortly thereafter.  no, it was not entirely her idea.  and by entirely I mean it was 99% my idea. she is a leetle more law abiding than her auntie.

The parade of joy marched on into the Cherry Blossoms Saturday.

the evangelista owning it as per ushe

Lita Bear does the Citaaayyyy and sort of dislikes it a lot owns it.

And well, it wasn’t perfect.  By that I mean it was one of the largest congregations of humans in a rather small section of the planet rendering (if anyone is keeping count, that's the 3rd time I busted out render in a sentence...maybe I should invest in a thesaurus?) it a little thin on personal spaceage.  

the Evangelista parts the human sea under a canopy of blossoms.  Hello, the Grandeur of God, thanks for kissing us on the nose.

I spy with my little eye a Bubba and a neon shirt making nice with each other 

But, well, trees imported from Japan and originally imported from the Garden of Eden are sort of completely worth the hype.  I felt at one with these humans in wanting to praise the beauty of God’s creation.  His Love is tattooed all of over the place through all of creation, and the cherry blossoms in D.C. are an especially high concentration of Love in one wee spot. 

I love the little Mamacita wave. It is so blessedly her.

 So the love sort of made up for the lack of personal spaceage.  And we took pictures to document the love and the neon-ness of Bubba’s work out shirt.  It was, as we say a lot in this particular post, grand.  

The Birthday shindig was pretty near perfect.  Perfect weather, the whole Dehan famdamily (as Mimi once so aptly stated), and a solid contingent of the McCabes, were present and accounted for.

I loved it so.  Annnnnnd I learned a fun (and unsurprising) fact.

My nieces know how to show cake who is boss:

I got to photograph these mufkins and their beautiful Mama (otherwise known as my babay seeester #sototesweirdandamazingthatshehaskids) and Daddio.

could this one melt my googly lovin heart any more??

apparently the answer is: duh.  of course she could. 

I love Sophia's Eagle's wings  approach to kissing Madster.  I also Love the Madkins facial expression as she watches her parents mackin'. God is so so Grand.

I think I shall write a song about this photo. I shall call it: "Dancing in the Sunlight".  Original, I know. p.s. they warm my heart

the Maddy Belly is honing in on epic status. As in epically adorable and edible. The little Mufkin.

I said goodbye to dear friends later that night whom I will miss a lot.  But, Christians don’t say goodbye as C.S. Lewis asserted with all the authority of his brilliance.  So it’s never really goodbye.  {Insert another cabbage patch here at the Goodness of the Lord}.  It’s So long, farewell, until we meet ag-a-ain (think Frauline Maria). 

Until we meet again,dear Mosses, stay Mossy.  

Sunday was Resurrection day and the real birthday of those two beautifully unique and Beloved souls, and it was a Grand day.  

It was a day for joy and hope and Resurrection, and all of those were present and accounted for in my Resurrection day.  Some were incognito, masked in the imperfections of this life, others went boldly unmasked and undisguised.  God gave me the grace to recognize both.  I am sure I missed a few, but hey that’s what being human usually entails.  I hope you spotted them in your day, too!

As may be obvs by now, I could probs go on for a few more pages of cheesy bliss (complete with photos) but instead I’ll just leave you with another wisdom nugget I collected from a whole lot of listening to Dr. Laura as a child:

“Now go do the right thing”.