{my life is...awesome}

I am right on the verge of beginning of one of the busiest weeks of my year...Festival of Trees. I am on the Executive Board this year and will be very literally LIVING at Festival starting tomorrow morning, Saturday the 26th, until Sunday afternoon, December 4th. I should be in bed resting up. However, I cannot get caught up in Festival without first blogging about yesterday and today....very likely two of the most wonderful, peaceful and memorable days of my life. And so, I won't rest tonight...until that's done.

This year, all of the Dahlquist girls were scheduled to be HOME with Mom and Dad for Thanksgiving, which was scheduled to be celebrated up at Dad's Cabin. Happy day!!! (As you can see in the picture above, the Dahlquist Girls, aka "Charlie's Angels" have GROWN in number, quite significantly!! :-)) My best friend Jeff picked me and my babies up bright and early yesterday morning to drive up to the cabin. I am sure many of you are wondering about Jeff, since I haven't mentioned him here before. Some of you might recognize Jeff from a photo shoot I did of him a few months ago. (Little did I know then...just how much he would mean to me.) I mentioned a while back that I have been dating...but that I wouldn't be very open with details. Oddly enough, as OPEN as I am about SO MUCH...I am VERY private about my private life...and will continue to be. It's something special, even sacred...and well, PRIVATE. When it's something that is a miracle in my life...I want to protect it. That being said, I fully plan on sharing more about Jeff here on my blog in the near future (truthfully, it is not for your sake...but for mine. I need to write about him.). However, I won't go into that now....because a few simple lines about this man in my life would never do him justice. It wouldn't even come close. So until I am able to try and somehow put Jeff into words...just hang tight and be cool with knowing this alone...that he is my best friend.

So anyway, the four of us headed up to the cabin and arrived with PLENTY of time before the Ping-Pong Tournament for all of the guys in the fam. So, while the little cousins played, I warmed Jeff up for the tournament by showing him my mad ping-pong skills. We Dahlquist girls grew UP playing ping-pong. But to be honest, it has been probably 15 years since I'd really played...so I wasn't sure if I still had it. FYI. I still do. :-) In fact, it's probably a good thing that the tournament was only for the guys...or I would have cleaned house. :-) Needless to say, we had a blast warming up. I think I surprised Jeff a little bit with my skills. I'm not your "average" girl. LOL!

My sweet niece McKaylee sat downstairs and watched us play and we talked and giggled until my stomach hurt. Among millions of things....Jeff makes me laugh. I love that. We had so much fun coming up with fun "distractions" Jeff could use to "throw off his opponents" in the tournament - from things as simple as spinning his paddle in his hand, to suddenly breaking out in Irish dance in the middle of a game. LOL! After we warmed up, it was time for the guys to play. Unfortunately, this year, it was only for the boys 12 and older....so Kaden and his cousin Bubba (Alex) had fun playing other games. (That will be different next time around....so that they too can participate. I wasn't a fan of that rule. No bueno. :-) However, it was so fun to have two new guys join us for the tournament and for Thanksgiving this year...my Jeff, and my brother-in-law Jordan's little brother Blake. So fun having them both with us.



What a blast to watch our guys play, cheer each other on and "talk smack." Guys are awesome...but ESPECIALLY the ones in OUR fam! :-) And in the end, my nephew TAYLOR won the championship match against Opa (my Dad)..and won a trophy filled with bright colored ping-pong balls. YAY!!! What a great way to start out our fun day at the cabin.

By tradition (mainly because it's simply more practical to take pictures BEFORE we eat and possibly get messy...and because it is easier to wrangle up my babies at the beginning, than after they get busy playing with their cousins), I gathered my little ones and had Jeff take a few pictures of us. I couldn't decide which I liked best...so I am putting them ALL in this entry. Oh my heart....I can't even put into words how much I love these little angels. Plain and simple - they...are....my....life. Love these pictures that Jeff took of us!!



Since there was still a little time before we were planning to eat, I also had my niece Whitney shoot a few pics of me and Jeff. My very FAVORITE shot of us is the one that I posted above at the beginning of this entry. But here are a few other favorites...



Jeff looked so sharp...he always does. He is such a classy dresser and loves his French cuffs, tailored shirts and cufflinks. Love that. Yesterday, he wore the pair of monogrammed cufflinks that I gave him for our three month anniversary. I loved them when I picked them out....but loved them even more when I saw how awesome they looked when he was wearing them. :-)

Jeff was so great to help me by putting out my little love notes that I had made to go at the top of each place setting, while I took a few more group/family pictures of my family. As you can see, he was PRETTY EXCITED about it. LOL!

A few more pictures that we took prior to eating our delicious Thanksgiving feast, starting with a fun pic of ALL of the Dahlquist cousins with their Aunt Kimbo..and then by themselves. SO love all of these beautiful Dahlquist babies!!!



Oh my heart...love these beautiful girls SO MUCH!!!! What a blessing it is to be their Aunt!!!!



Kaden had grown out of the white shirt that I have for him (he doesn't wear it very often) and I was in a slight panic, until I remembered that we still had the white shirt and tie that his Daddy loaned us for his DRACULA costume (still need to blog about that....stay tuned...). Happy day! Kaden and Bubba were so excited to see that THEY HAD MATCHING TIES! Love it. Such cute kids. Love these awesome boy cousins SO MUCH!!!


Oh my cute Mama. Bless her sweet heart. So much of what I love about myself comes from this amazing woman. She never does ANYTHING half way. As always, the table was decorated to perfection and the meal (thanks to her planning, and the many many many hands that prepared it) was out of this world. Love this picture that Jeff took of me and cute little Mama (I obviously had to squat about 8" for this picture. LOL!)...definitely one of my favorites of us. So love her...and greatly appreciate all she and my wonderful dad do for our family.

My food assignments for this year were the same as they've been for a while now. LOL! I brought Pretzel Jell-O Salad  (looking slightly different this year, since EVERY store I went to was out of frozen raspberries and I had to resort to using frozen MIXED berries...which STILL was delish) and (by tradition) Aunt Jan's Sweet Potatoes. Heavenly.

Dinner was amazing and was prefaced by a beautiful blessing by Dad and then our traditional singing of "WE'RE ALL TOGETHER AGAIN" and the "DAHLQUIST FAMILY CHEER." If you've never heard us sing that...it's pretty impressive....and possibly even a little overwhelming the first time. LOL! After we finished, my brother-in-law Brady was laughing and said, "We should ALWAYS videotape the newcomers' reactions while we sing that. So awesome to see their faces." I am fairly certain that Blake and Jeff have never seen/heard anything quite like that. *sigh* I love us. And as is tradition, all of our guys (except cute Blake, who I am sure wasn't aware of the "dress code") were "Dressed Up From The Table Up" (Shirt and tie on the top and jeans on the bottom) - a tradition that Dad started with the missionaries when we lived in Hamburg.

The entire day was pure heaven. After we ate, we sat around the table and reminisced, visited and laughed together as a family....with my babies close by and my best friend by my side.


While everyone visited, Hank (Pulse and Boo's dog) snuggled right up next to Jeff. Jeff loved it...and started craving a puppy. LOL! Bless his heart. ;-) Love Hank in his cute little sweater...

Somehow, while Jeff was in the middle of a conversation, I was able to catch this photo of him....and I love it. Such a great shot. :-)

While the cousins were all playing, Jeff and I decided to go up to the loft for a little bit to relax. It was SO heavenly to hear all of the family chatting below, the kids giggling and running around everywhere and to be snuggling up to my best friend for a few moments of alone time, while Jeff read jokes from a book called "5001 of the Best Jokes"...which Jeff and I are fairly certain were actually 5001 of the LAMEST jokes ever. LOL! They were so bad...we couldn't HELP but laugh. After a little time for us, we headed back downstairs and sat and visited with everyone.


After our meal was all cleaned up, Oma and Opa had a fun surprise for us....a KIORA STICKS performance (rhythmic tossing of these red/brown sticks. Tried to find a YOUTUBE video or even a Wikipedia definition and couldn't find anything to link you to. Sorry.)! :-) My goodness...what crazy awesome memories of our childhood. Mom and Dad taught us how to "play" these when we were little...and surprised us with a SET OF KIORA STICKS and the music on a CD, for EACH family.






There is SO MUCH that I love about my family...SO MUCH. But one of the things that I love the most, is that we are a family of MANY traditions and a family that spent a LOT of time PLAYING together growing up. We didn't even have a TV...it was all....US. Love that! And this activity was one of the things that we would do together as a family. I love my Mom and Dad so much for doing SO MANY things with us when we were growing up..and love them NOW for passing on these fun traditions to OUR little families. So awesome!! Love this picture of Dad below....ready and waiting for everyone to gather for our family picture. LOL! This is such a classic "Dad pose." Love him so much!!!!


Later that evening, I told Jeff that this Thanksgiving Day had been a PERFECT sample of who my family is, if he wanted to know what we were really like. We sing, we laugh, we cry, we chat, we play, we are firm in the faith...and we LOVE on each other like there is no tomorrow!!

After hours of relaxing and spending time together, we packed up all of our babies and headed home. I had planned to do some Black Friday shopping this morning, so Jeff and I dropped my sweet babies off to spend an evening with their Daddy on our way home from the cabin. After we dropped them off, we ran a few errands and then went to Jeff's home to just "be" for a while. We snuggled up, relaxed and talked and talked and talked (oh my heart, how we can talk).... We talked over Hamburger Helper and V8 Splash about what an awesome day it had been. I honestly can't remember a more memorable Thanksgiving Day and a Thanksgiving night where I knew that there was no where else I wanted to be...and no one else I wanted to be with. The past few holiday seasons have been a little challenging for me (simply due to the changes in my life situation), and in contrast, this holiday was nothing less than Divine. Believe it or not...I am at a loss for words. Nothing I could possibly write could come close to describing how my heart felt yesterday..and still feels today. After so much heartache.....my heart feels so complete.

As I sit here tonight and think upon all of the happenings of yesterday, I am overcome with emotion..and feel so overwhelmingly blessed. This year has been challenging...but FULL of miracles....SO COMPLETELY FULL of God's tender mercies. And yesterday, in one room, I was surrounded by my very greatest...and most beautiful blessings. I was there in the midst of my wonderful family...ALL of us there together. Not a single one of us missing. And my babies....I was there with my babies. My sweet and beautiful angels.....my life. And at my side, my hand in his, a man that I can't even start to write about without my heart burning and my eyes completely filling with tears. At my side, was my best friend. And for however long God has planned for him to be my "traveling companion" on my journey....I am overwhelmed with gratitude. Yesterday and today, I received a very powerful taste of what HEAVEN MUST be like. It took my breath away....

The blessings of yesterday flowed into today with my best friend.  No point in sleeping last night, when Black Friday shopping actually started late last night (Thursday) this year! What the deuce?! A long night and a long morning of Black Friday shopping (with only a little rest in the middle), a relaxing lunch at Zupas and more shopping this afternoon. Thousands of people out shopping and yet somehow, I didn't notice anyone else was around. :-) We make each other smile...and can't seem to stop. It is nothing short of AWESOME. And when I drove home with my little ones after helping Jeff move in some new furniture for his new home, I looked down to see if I needed to get gas.....to find that Jeff had completely filled my gas tank when we had swapped cars for me to go and get my kids. I cried. He blamed it on the "leprechauns" in my car. LOL. *sigh* Love him.)

You know, I've noticed that I tend to throw around the word "awesome" a lot...so decided to look it up online really quick. Love this..."awesome: to inspire awe - an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like." It's no wonder I use the word so often. Yesterday was AWESOME. Last night was AWESOME. Today was AWESOME. My family is AWESOME. My babies are so PURELY and PERFECTLY AWESOME. Jeff (and the way he makes my heart feel) is AWESOME. My angel friends are AWESOME. My own personal Savior Jesus Christ and my great and loving and merciful God....are AWESOME. In short, my LIFE....raging storms and all....is AWESOME.

Comments

[Lynn]

YOU are AWESOME Heather! ; D Love that life is going so well for you. Truly I am. You are always in my prayers. Happy Happy American Thanksgiving to you.

[creole wisdom]

Heather you are glowing! Seriously! I cannot wait to hear more about Jeff, he is handsome and sounds wonderful.

[Yvonne]

Yes, your life is awesome, Heather! Glad I stopped to read your entry today!

[Lynette Tucker]

Heather, I have been fighting so hard to find that happiness and want you to know. I think you are so very special. I have followed your blog for so many years and I am so very greatful that you still put yourself out there, even though you know how mean others can be. Thank you for being the sweet person you are.

[Raquel]

Your dad is one of my favorite people EVER! I just love him!

[Julianne]

This post makes me want to be a part of your family!! I just love the way you can write your feelings and though I haven't seen you in a lot of years, I can feel your personality exploding out of the things you say!! You are AWESOME!! You are such an inspiration to me... I hope you know that!