Happy Anniversary to my Mom and Dad! 28 years.

I have to say, I feel pretty blessed to have parents who stuck it out through good and bad...and have come out the other side smiling. All of my realistic expectations about marriage come from watching them. They done prepared me good.

I found the one whom my soul loves. Song of Solomon 3:4

This makes me happy :)

An ode to my tiniest of cousins.

Mitch and Cami. I had the best 15 minutes of my life with you yesterday. While you crawled all over me and knocked everything off of the bookcases my heart was melting. Please stay and play with me.

love, your grown up cousin, Val

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

-- e. e. cummings