This weekend....

We had an all-over-the-place weekend:

Starting with Friday, we received a shipment of beautiful furniture Friday afternoon. Ashley’s great aunt Ardis passed away a couple months ago, and Fritz arranged for old family furniture to be shipped to us.

The drawers were filled with old wedding licenses, arrowheads from the family farm, report cards from 1908 and all sorts of other little treasures. The best part was a set of photo albums from 1954 to 1957. They were gifts from Ashley’s grandma, Bette, to Ardis for Christmas each year (Heather – reminds me of the albums you have done in the past). Ashley’s grandpa Glen worked for Kodak, and the photos are really amazing quality. It was so fun to go through these, look at what life was like in the mid 50s and think about Bette’s life as a whole.

The furniture as it landed in the family room Friday afternoon

Ashley looking at his great grandma's grade school diploma

Saturday morning, Ashley had to work, and I helped friends move. Bette passed away Saturday evening, although we didn’t get the message until Sunday a.m. We were very grateful for the timing of going through the albums and such on Friday. She was 93 and had lived on Hilton Head for almost 40 years. Ashley has such good memories visiting there growing up – I guess its strange to think no one from their family is there anymore.

Sunday then became such a busy day - we both had organized runs very early, and then we came home to prepare for hosting the neighborhood monthly dinner at our house (30+ neighbors for dinner).

A part of the neighborhood dinner group in the family room

It ended up being a weekend filled with such positive and fun things, but also big, if unsurprising, news. We're grateful for the timing of the furniture arrival and the opportunity to reflect on Bette's life the day before she passed. Such a neat gift.