Blooms and Berries Festival

Those of you who know me know that I really don't like strawberries. It's not so much a taste thing, more a texture sort of thing for me. I always think the squishyness in my mouth feels gross. Anyways, those of you who know Rob know that strawberries are one of his all time favorite things.

So of course, when the Blooms and Berries strawberry festival comes to town, we go. I will say that I really did want to go because I love our little town and like to support the activities they put on. Plus, it's an absolutely gorgeous summer day with not a cloud in the sky -- one of those days you have to be outside. Bonus: we walked from our house and saved gas, never a bad thing.

You know you're at a festival, particularly in the midwest, when the first two food vendors you see are fried vegetables (definitely an oxymoron there) and huge, hand breaded tenderloin sandwiches. While we didn't partake in either we did buy a lovely little pot of flowers and two quarts of strawberries for us and three quarts for my boss and his family.

Overall, a beautiful day enjoying our little town and the abundant fruits. And yes, I did eat a few strawberries, but only after they were cut up and covered in sugar. :)

Rob proudly displays our finds of the day

Our Town

This past weekend Rob and I were home for the first time in several weeks. So we set out with a list of goals to accomplish on Saturday and ran into some adventures along the way.

I'm a big fan of shopping local and supporting the "little guy" if you will. Plus, with gas hovering around $4 a gallon, there's no need to travel far away for things you can buy locally.

So we did our part this weekend to help the little guy starting with a visit to our local hardware store (an ant infestation in our kitchen and a missing trash can because of the storm prompted this stop), then the bank, the post office, a visit to our local CSA farm (check it out -- www.victoryacres.org if you live around us) to pick up our weekly supply of produce, rounded out by a visit with friends who are building a new tree house for their kids. I wanted to throw a few garage sales in there, but it was raining too hard and I figured they wouldn't be set up anyways.

But the highlight of the day was getting our new mattress. We drove by this store in the next town over from us a few weeks ago on our way to Chicago and since I am all about shopping local we decided to check it out. Plus, we figured since they were close by they could deliver for us and that was definitely something we needed.

Little did we know we were going to encounter our newest friend Vic, also known affectionately as "grandpa." Vic was a stocky, white haired fellow with a Nike basketball shirt and basketball shorts and white sneakers. He showed us all around his mattresses, touting all the benefits of each like any good salesperson would. He kept calling me "young lady" and celebrating our upcoming marriage with us. Then he'd say, "well, this is the part where grandpa leaves you kids alone and lets you make the decision," and off he'd go to some other part of his mattress fortress.

It would be hard to put Vic in a nutshell, but he was one of those sorts of people that just make you love Indiana. So friendly and jolly, the kind of people who've lived in the same place all their lives and have a love for it. He wasn't afraid to share his faith and view of the world with us, which he quickly followed up with a, "I'm not trying to preach to you guys, but you know, young people today...." and off he'd go again.

We didn't mind his soapboxes and really agreed with him on things about life and the way some things are these days. He was so endearing. He made us laugh too by showing us this little game -- a toy mallet mounted on a frame that smacked down on a quarter and a cardboard piece of cheese. The idea was to guess what it was. (I guessed it was the economy getting it's butt kicked but that wasn't right.) The correct answer Vic informed us when we gave up was a "quarter pounder with cheese." Hahaha. Maybe you had to be there to see this little riddle, but it was pretty clever I'll admit.

Later Saturday afternoon he brought our mattress to our house ($10 delivery was just what we needed) and helped us set it on our newly constructed bedframe which just so happens to take up our entire bedroom. But hey, we figured a new bed and a large bed is pretty important in marriage. :)

I think what endeared us the most to him was as he was walking out the door he stopped and said, "Now I can't do this everywhere," and just started praying. It was such a funny, unexpected, beautiful moment where this white haired man with matching sneakers who we'd met just that morning was praying in our living room. And as he headed out the door he said, "One more thing, in your marriage, you keep God first, and then each other second. Do that and you will have a good life. Now I'm not trying to preach at you...." And off he went.

Those kind of people are the people that make the world go round. The Vics of the world who have devoted themselves to one woman, one God, and one job, in Vics case selling mattresses, for their whole lives. The kind of people who don't mind a good beer with their steaks (Vic informed us he couldn't really afford a good steak anymore with the price of gas, but it was certainly a treat when he could.) and who don't mind stopping to pray with a young couple in their living room 20 days before their wedding.

Life cycles and transitions

We spent the weekend celebrating with Rob's sister Lauren as she graduated high school on Saturday and had a grad party on Sunday. Congrats Lauren!

I really enjoy graduation time and remember my own high school and college grads so clearly. It's such an interesting time of the year for everyone. It is one of those things about life that is so constant. We will always have people graduating from something. Even preschools have graduations these days! Driving around Rob's hometown this weekend there were so many signs saying "Congrats Class of 2008!" and I just found it interesting that really the only thing that changes about graduations (besides the people graduating obviously) is the year. 2003, 3004, 2005, 2006, 2007....

The speaker at Lauren's graduation was one of my favorite people, author Lauren Winner. Read her books. Seriously. Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, and Real Sex. She's great. When I found out she was the speaker I was pretty much beside myself. And I did get to meet her and talk to her afterwards which was a huge highlight. (Ask Rob how nervous I was and then of course she was soo cool and down to earth...I always seem to get myself so worked up about things like that...)

But besides just being in her presence, I was reflecting on what Lauren had to say about the reason we call graduations "commencements." The word commencement actually means to begin something or start something new. So while a graduation may seem like a finishing up, it's really the beginning of something new.

And so it is with many things in life. We begin something new and therefore go through a transition into that new thing or stage of life. Perhaps every time we start something new we don't have some big graduation ceremony, but there are moments and reasons to celebrate beginning something new.

The funny thing though I'm finding about life is that eventually, the cycle will start again and a new transition will occur and so forth and so forth. And to me that feels healthy and good. We see those types of cycles in nature with the changing of seasons. We see those types of cycles in our own bodies and in the bodies of animals and plants. It's refreshing to start a new cycle sometimes.

I'm getting married in 26 days and while I'm so excited, I know that it will be a complete change of life and time for something new. But you know, it's refreshing still to know that eventually an anniversary will come and we'll always celebrate anniversaries, and birthdays, and graduations, and weddings, and mothers day and the forth of July.............