It started to snow for the first time on the same day I sent out our wedding invitations. As I sat at the dining room table silently paring invites with maps with envelopes with labels with stamps, minute flakes of snow began their meandering, lackadaisical summersaults from the sky. I'm not sure what caught my eye first: the huge maple trees limbs dancing in the back yard or the flecks of white that went whirling around those limbs. Which ever it might have been, it all made me smile.

I got up from the table and left the invitations (and maps, and envelopes and labels and stamps) for a few minutes. Everything has been so hectic and topsy-turvy lately and those brief minutes standing at the back door in my parent's dining room was just what my whirling brain needed. I watched as the flakes grew larger and flew with stronger and more determined force around the yard. They never touched the ground, those wee flakes -- they whirled and danced and flew and went up and down but never landed -- landing would surely mean melting and they were not about to turn to spots of water on my parents' lawn. Oh no.

My breath steamed up a small, dissipating circle on the glass pane as I stood there, hugging my chest and looking outside. I don't know why these few moments meant so much to me, but they did. Maybe it's the tumultuousness that has surrounded our soon-to-be-here wedding. His parents, my parents, his family, my family...all the stress and all the love and all the problems and all the planning. I think for the first time since S. proposed I had a minute to myself -- completely and utterly without the stress that has been caused by our wanting to get married.

Does any of this make sense? I'm not so sure...Just needed to get it out, I suppose. Enjoy yourself...and if you are somewhere where it isn't going to snow, I feel for you. I really wish you could have been there with me yesterday.

Oh...that picture? It's actually from a few years ago...we haven't had THAT MUCH snow...yet.