An Open Letter to My Grandma

To my dearest Grandma in Heaven:

It has been three whole years.  Can you believe it?  Because I can’t.

I feel like it was just yesterday that you were still alive.  I feel like we were just in your car on the way to the park, making a pit stop to eat McDonald’s breakfast together.  The hotcakes were (and still are) my favorite.

I feel like it was just yesterday that we drove from Latrobe to Indiana to visit Kelly.  I feel like you just introduced me to my twin cousin Jessica.  Don’t worry, I do stay in touch with both of them.

I feel like it was just yesterday that we were sitting in the church pews together with you holding my hand.  You always had Winterfresh gum for me because I was always hungry before the church service was over.  I feel like it was just yesterday when I would fall asleep on your lap in the church pews.  And after church, we’d always go to Shop N’ Save to get foot-long hot dogs for lunch.

It feels like just yesterday that we were making homemade ham pot pie together in the kitchen.  You always let me help with the dough noodles.  That was (and still is) my favorite part.

I feel like I was just participating in the 4th of July Parade for the church with you and pappy watching proudly from the crowd.  Mom and dad have the picture you took with the polaroid hanging up on their fridge.

Weren’t we just on the way to Ohio to meet my cousin who I never knew I had?  Or wasn’t I just sitting in the backseat singing along to Christian songs with you on my way to Vacation Bible School?

Wasn’t it just yesterday when we watched game shows together in the living room, and always talked about how someday we’d go on The Price is Right or Wheel of Fortune as a duo?  The Price is Right toured near Harrisburg and Kyle and I were going to go, but it wasn’t going to be the same since you weren’t with me.

Wasn’t it just yesterday when you taught me how to play a form of Gin Rummy, and I was asking you to play anytime we weren’t doing anything?  And those time when you played with Uncle Bum and Aunt Carrie and never let me play with the grown-ups so I was forced to watch The Sandlot in the living room for the millionth time?  Trust me, I have no complaints because The Sandlot is still one of my all-time favorites.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that we went to Idlewild Park, where we took train rides through Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood?  Or when we rode the Tilt-A-Whirl together and I was mystified about how gravity forces you against the ride?

Wasn’t it just yesterday when you encouraged me to play basketball with your neighbor’s son or when you asked the neighbor if I could ride her horses?  I have a picture of those somewhere but they’re probably still in WV.

Wasn’t it just yesterday when we would play Bingo together, I won $500, and you would tease me about marrying the kid who brought me my french fries?

And yet, none of that happened yesterday.  I’m not a child anymore.  And you left this Earth to be with pappy, Uncle Rick and Angie three years ago today.

Just over three years ago was the last time that I talked to you, that I gave you a hug, that I held your hand, that I brought you flowers for your birthday.  I didn’t know at that time that that would be the last time I ever saw you.  

You were so concerned about me having to drive all the way back to Harrisburg by myself, when in reality there was nowhere else I would have rather been.  I knew you weren’t feeling one hundred percent, and I knew it had been quite some time since you felt that well.  I knew that the one place I had to be at that moment was by your side.

I didn’t know at that time about the dreams you were having, where you saw pappy and Uncle Rick again.  I didn’t know that only a few days later, you’d be lying in a hospital bed with tubes and machines surrounding you.  I didn’t know that I’d be driving out to Latrobe on Good Friday to say my goodbyes.  I didn’t know that I’d be the one to have to tell you that it was OK for you to go- that even though we needed you here on Earth, pappy, Uncle Rick, and Angie needed you more.  I had to tell you that even though we would be in pain because we missed you, that we would get through it together.

I went to the church after leaving the hospital to pray for you.  Pastor Ralph’s wife magically recognized me after not seeing me for at least 15 years.  I had been pacing around the church for at least ten minutes until they saw me.  The doors of the church were locked, but they let me in to pray for you.  Pastor Ralph stayed and prayed with me and held my hand at the same altar where I’d go up with pappy as a kid to pray.

Mom and I ate McDonald’s breakfast on the morning of your funeral at the top of the parking garage that I thought was so cool when I was younger- the same one you and pappy always drove me to after getting McDonald’s.  It was a cloudy morning and rain was in the forecast, but while we were at the top of the parking garage, the sun broke through.  Mom and I knew you were there.

I know you’ll never physically see this letter, but I hope and pray you somehow know it exists.  I need you to know how much I love and miss you.  I need you to know how sorry I am that I wasn’t around more often as I grew older.  I stopped coming up for the summers when I became a teenager, and even though I enjoyed those summers with my friends, I wish we could’ve spent more time together.

I long for one more card game, one more conversation, one more hug, one more laugh, one more adventure at Bingo, one more church service, one more smile.  However, I know these wishes aren’t feasible, at least not anytime in the near future.

So today I write to you in hopes that you’re proud of me.  In the years that you’ve been gone, I got engaged (to Kyle- I hope you remember him), we moved into two different apartments and just recently a house, Kyle and I got married, I started another new job, I received a few promotions/raises, we adopted a cute little pup named Oakley and I leased my first car.

Kyle is doing really well for himself, too.  He has a reliable car and a good job that he loves.  For only being 25, we’re both doing really well for ourselves.

Whenever I think of love, I think of you and pappy.  You were married for 60 years before pappy passed away.  I knew that whenever I said yes to Kyle’s proposal, we would have a love like yours and pappy’s.  I want you to know that I’m so truly happy, but I wish that you could have been at our wedding, to see our house, and to meet our puppy.

I’m sorry I don’t get to visit your last Earthly resting place as much as I’d like to.  But I did bury those bright blue flowers with you.  They survived through your funeral, which I never thought would happen in a million years.  They looked just as fresh as the day that I bought them for you.  I hope you liked them as much as I did.

And this is where I leave you.  It took me days to write this letter, years to even have the strength to write it to you.  So I’ll leave you with this- I love you so much, grandma.  I miss you dearly.  I hope I’ve made you proud.  Rest peacefully.

Love,

Emily

Married, In Love, and…Not Pregnant?

Most of you now know that I got married in June.  It was the best day of my life and I’m truly lucky to be in love with my best friend.  But lately something has been bugging me, and I need to get it off my chest.

Ever since we got married, it has been the standard question of our friends/family/strangers who just found out that we got married to ask me if I’m pregnant and/or if Kyle and I are planning on having kids soon.  Don’t get me wrong- I’m excited to be a mom and experience something as wonderful as that.  But Kyle and I just got married in June.  Literally four months ago.  And right now, we both have agreed to just enjoy being married.

I know that the people asking this aren’t trying to be rude, mean, or nosey.  I mean, I understand why it’s a common question to ask after two people get married.  I love Kyle with my whole heart and I’m looking forward to the day we bring a little one into the world.  But right now, it’s nice to just enjoy each other’s company and what it means to be married.

When women get married, it’s not their duty to just pop out a child right away anymore.  It’s okay to wait a little while and to enjoy all the little things that come with marriage.  The spontaneous date nights, the weekends spent in pajamas, the freedom to take road trips to see family and friends a few hours away.  These are the things that I love enjoying right now and that would become more difficult when we have kids.

And frankly, I still have some growing up to do.  Being only 25, I feel like I still have a lot to learn about myself.  I feel like I’m still learning new things about Kyle, and I’ve known him for almost 5 years now!

When the time comes, I know it’ll be the most wonderful blessing, and it’s a day I truly look forward to.  But right now, our small family is perfect as it is.

Even though Kyle and I are choosing to wait a while before having kids, there is nothing wrong with having children right away, having children before marriage, or choosing not to have children at all.  All marriages, all families, and all families with children are beautiful and perfect.  No one should have to worry about what others may think or say because they’re doing things a little differently than others.

So if you just got married and are being asked about children, I want you to know that you aren’t alone.  I want you to know that it’s okay to wait.  I also want you to know that it’s okay to have children right away.  And if you’re not married and you’re pregnant, that’s okay too.  There is no standard right way to have a child, nor should there be, because everyone in this world is so vastly different and it’s okay to do things differently.  Don’t be afraid to be different.

Update on life

To those of you who read/liked my post earlier this week, thank you for the love!  It’s always hard starting up with writing again after a long hiatus, and you have given me more inspiration to consistently write.  Again, thank you.

Over the past few months that I have been MIA, I’ve actually been quite busy with life. I thought I’d share some updates with you as to what I’ve been up to so you get a little glimpse into my life.

• 5/20/17- Harrisburg Comic-Con: So, as an early wedding gift for my then-fiancé Kyle, I purchased tickets from a comic con in Harrisburg, PA.  This was only Harrisburg’s second year for doing a con, so it really wasn’t anything spectacular, but I wanted to go for the sake of getting photo ops with both David Ramsey and Matt Letscher who were two scheduled guests making appearances.  For more explanation as to who these actors are, David Ramsey plays John Diggle on Arrow, and Matt Letscher plays the Reverse Flash on The Flash.  Both of the panels were extraordinary.  David Ramsay’s panel was filled with non-stop laughter and Matt Letscher’s (who teamed up Michelle Harrison who plays Barry’s mom on the show) gave hints to the season finale.  Funnily enough, since this was my first con, I didn’t realize that when purchasing photo op tickets, you can have between two and four people in the photo per ticket.  I accidentally bought two photos per actor (aka four photos altogether), and even though I wasted more money than I should have, the results of the photo ops were incredible.   Oh, and one even blew up on Twitter!  Honestly, it was just a great experience, and I’d love to go back next year if they have other amazing guest stars in attendance.
• 6/3/17- I GOT MARRIED: What an incredibly amazing day.  I’m not sure that all of you know this, but I got engaged in May 2015 to my best friend, Kyle.  We had always planned on waiting two years to get married (i.e. to save money), so we planned our wedding for June 3, 2017.  It is insane how much planning goes into a wedding just to have that wedding fly by in a blink of an eye.  Co-workers, friends and loved ones joked with me prior to the big day saying that it was going to go by so quickly that I wasn’t even going to remember half of it.  I laughed with them, thinking they were wrong but boy were they right!!  I can’t even tell you much about what happened at my wedding, but I do remember a few details.  One, I completely forgot to wear my veil.  I didn’t notice until someone asked me about it after the ceremony as over.  Two, I wasn’t aware that in a Catholic wedding there are two times you are supposed to kiss your spouse.  I totally missed kissing Kyle the first time by giving him my cheek to kiss instead, resulting in both of us and our guests to burst out into laughter.  Three, we cut the wrong part of the cake at the reception (the top tier instead of the bottom).  Four, I was so dehydrated that I didn’t have one sip of alcohol (minus the toast)- I just chugged water.  Five, Kyle almost passed out several times because he hardly ate or drank anything the whole night.  Six, when we got back to the hotel, all we cared about was eating.  We had Wendy’s at 12:30 a.m. with my sister and brother-in-law.  Overall, it was an incredible day with silly little mishaps that just make me love it even more.  I hope you enjoy these pictures!

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• 6/4/17-6/10/17 Honeymooned in Myrtle: Our honeymoon in Myrtle was amazing.  We stayed at the Myrtle Beach Five Season Resort in the south Myrtle.  We went mini-golfing (I’m undefeated against Kyle for 4 years now), swimming in the ocean, running on the beach, exploring the boardwalk, adventuring at a water park, etc.  We saw Wonder Woman at a movie theater that allowed us to bring Coldstone in.  But there’s so much that we still want to do!  We already booked our anniversary trip for next year and we couldn’t be more excited!
  

  

  
• 6/17/17 Awesome Con: So this was never a part of our plan, but literally the weekend after we got back from our honeymoon, my sister texted me saying for her birthday they were going to Awesome Con in DC.  Kyle and I couldn’t say no, especially because David Tennant and John Barrowman were going to be there!  My sister lived in NOVA, so we drove to a metro station, hopped on a train, and got there around 10:30 a.m.  The line was outrageous and the crowds even more so once we got indoors.  Sadly, Tennant’s photo op was sold out and we got into the venue too late so we missed his panel.  But we did get a picture with John Barrowman (I only bought one photo this time!) and that was incredible.  Towards the end of the day, however, we did get to see David Tennant from afar, and Kyle got to meet some of the voice actors for Dragon Ball Super and My Hero Academia.  Despite the lines and the crowds, it was a great day.  (Side note: I don’t think I’d survive at San Diego.)
• 7/8/17 Wedding in Bethany: Bethany, West Virginia holds such a wonderful place in my heart.  Bethany College is my alma mater, and it’s also where I met Kyle.  We got to travel back only a month after our wedding to celebrate with friends of ours at their wedding.  Bethany weather has such a big reputation for being strange (i.e. hailed at my graduation in 2014, thunder-stormed at Kyle’s in 2015), and this day was no exception.  It was gloomy all morning and eventually started drizzling just prior to the ceremony.  By the end of the ceremony, the temperature rose at least 10 degrees and the sun was beating down on all of us.  It was definitely nice catching up with our friends, as well as the other guests sitting at our assigned table who we had never met/don’t get to talk to that often.
• 8/11/17-8/13/17 Delaware Beach Trip: Kyle’s aunt lives in Delaware, so we attempt to make a beach trip, even just for a weekend, each summer to visit her and her partner.  This trip was more fun than past year’s trips because Kyle’s mom was finally able to come along.  We celebrated both Kyle’s Aunt Marty’s birthday, as well as his mom Nancy’s birthdays while we were down there.  One evening, we went to the boardwalk and played in an arcade for probably almost an hour.  We didn’t realize so many quarters equaled so many turns in skeeball and before you knew it, we were playing skeeball for at least 20 minutes.  Kyle, Kyle’s brother Alex and I all walked away with small nerf guns as prizes after trading in our tickets.  One thing you should know about Kyle and Alex is that they love playing jokes on people.  Kyle had the brilliant idea to use the nerf guns against Marty once we got home from the boardwalk, and that’s just what we did.  The next morning, Kyle woke his mom up by saying there was a fire, woke Marty up by holding a stool over her head jokingly, and I woke up Alex by running and jumping on him.  It was a great time.
• 9/2/17-9/3/17 Moving Alex to college: Kyle’s little brother is finally in college!  He is attending Pace University in New York City for theater set design and he absolutely loves it so far.  Moving him up to college was a challenge, though.  1. Kyle and I drove up separately from his mom, dad, and brother.  We drove up Friday night right after work and we got into the city with no problems just after 9:00 p.m.  By the time we got to the hotel, it was 45 minutes and an anxiety attack later.  I hate driving in big cities, but New York is on another level.  We almost got hit by a taxi and it was impossible to turn left onto the street with the hotel because of a fire blocking off three roads.  In short, it was a mess, but we somehow, finally, made it there.  2. Alex and his mom were at a Broadway show when we arrived, so we just hung out in the hotel room until they got back.  Alex talked our ears off about the show and then said he was leaving but he’d be back later.  Fast forward to 45 minutes later when I woke up in a panic and Alex wasn’t back yet.  I texted him asking him where he was, in which he responded Times Square by himself.  I yelled at him through the messages saying that he was never allowed to go there by himself in the middle of the night (by this point it was close to 1:00 a.m.) just to find out he was in his mom’s room all along.  I told you Kyle and Alex like to play jokes.  Anyway, I told my in-laws and Kyle that I’m never having kids because Alex stressed me out too much.  The rest of the weekend went smoothly.  We all ate breakfast together before helping Alex move into his dorm, and after lunch, we grabbed our car from a parking garage and headed home.
• 9/15/17-9/17/17 Birthday Celebrations: I turned 25 this year, and boy do I feel like it.  I have aches and pains like I’m 25 going on 80.  However, the weekend of my birthday was so much fun.  I ate dinner at a restaurant called Black N Bleu, where I had the firehouse pasta that was to die for.  I received Kyle’s gift that night, too.  So, you all know the trending facebook videos of the people in the t-rex costumes doing ridiculous things?  I am now the proud owner of one!  I told Kyle I want to go running around the neighborhood around Halloween with it on to see everyone’s reactions.  The following day, we went for a morning hike with some friends, following Kyle accidentally hitting a curb and popping his tire.  After hiking, he went and got that fixed and we relaxed all afternoon until dinner with family at Chili’s (their chips and salsa, in my opinion, is out of this world).  Later, we met up with friends at a local winery and had a few drinks and chatted about life and Game of Thrones, which we marathoned on Sunday.
• 9/23/17-9/24/17 Love Celebrations: My brother and his fiance got engaged back in May, and this weekend we celebrated with them.  Kyle is one of my brother’s groomsmen and he and the rest of the groomsmen went to a place called “Top Golf” which is essentially a driving range but you get points each time you hit a golf ball.  The girls, my sister included, hung out at his fiance’s house as we drank good wine and talked everything wedding.  It ended with the guys meeting up with the girls at my future sister-in-law’s place and we ended the night playing Jenga.

Let me know in the comments below about any funny wedding mishaps that happened at your wedding or a wedding you attended, your birthday celebrations or really anything else you’d like to share what happened to you over the past few months.

Until next time,

Emily

The Ultimate Bucket List: 33 Fun Things To Do This Summer

We’re more than halfway through the year and it’s the summer solstice!  Even though it gets unfathomably hot outside, summer is my second favorite season.  I love the feeling of the windows down and the wind blowing my hair around, the smell of summer rains and the idea of spending as much time outside soaking up the summer sun.  As an adult, I still have a bucket list of things I want to do over the next few months.  Here are 33 fun things you can do this summer!

• Read a few books
• Go to a drive-in movie
• Watch a new movie in theaters
• Go to the beach
• Go on a bike ride
• Go hiking
• Visit a water park
• Visit an amusement park 
• Go on a road trip
• Go somewhere new
• Finish a series on Netflix
• Eat S’mores
• Watch the sunset
• Have a water balloon fight
• Go swimming
• Go on a picnic
• Attend a concert
• Go bowling
• Go mini-golfing
• Go to a park
• Visit an aquarium
• Take a day trip somewhere fun
• Go camping
• Host a barbecue
• Go fishing
• Create a blanket fort
• Have a movie marathon/lazy day
• Go white water rafting
• Run a 5K
• Try out new recipes
• Write more often
• Visit a zoo
• Try out a new local restaurant

Are you doing anything fun this summer that I didn’t include on this list, or is there something you’re looking forward to doing this summer that you want to share?  Leave it in the comments below and I’ll respond as soon as I can!  Also follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to keep up with my summer plans!

P.S.  I GOT MARRIED!!!!  Look for my post in the upcoming week that discusses wedding crafting, unexpected things that went wrong (and how you don’t even notice them and/or care), and a description of how the big day went.

Monday Lit Circle: Chapter Two of A Land More Kind than Home

Caution: There may be Spoilers below.

Wow.  That’s the best way to describe this second chapter in my opinion.  By the end of it, my jaw was on the floor.  I already knew what traumatic event was going to happen in this book because of hearing about it at the book signing Wiley Cash did at my school (granted I forgot about it until now and figured it out before the end of the chapter), but to actually read about it was incredibly difficult to do.  I could feel the pain from Jess’s (a young boy who narrates this chapter) words as he watched a horrific scene unfold in front of his eyes.

NOT ONLY THAT, but I was pulling my hair out just a few pages earlier when we find out that Jess’s mom is having an affair.  The shocking part isn’t that she’s having an affair, but who she’s having an affair with!

Good job, Dr. Cash.  I’m officially pissed off at your book and already pulling my hair out and I’m only 53 pages into the story.  I can’t wait to find out what happens next!

Who knows, maybe next week’s Monday Lit Circle will include multiple chapters instead of just one because I won’t be able to stop reading.