(due to technical difficulties, this didn’t get posted yesterday… apologies)

happy father’s day to dad, raul, carl-the-mailman, ben v. and all my friends in the states… hope you had a wonderful day, and we love you lots.

jen and jon

thank you all for your kind thoughts on j’s grandpa. unfortunately, he won’t be able to get home for the memorial service, given the time constraints and the difficulties of organising travel from where we are right now. he plans to visit as soon as possible after we get back to pay his respects. he thanks you for all your prayers and offers of help – they mean a whole lot.

j’s oupa (grandpa) johnny passed away wednesday evening in johannesburg, south africa. please send a good thought for him and his family.

i know he wants to be with his family. not sure what the plan is yet. will update when i know more.

j’s known you both forever, but i am still amazed at how quickly you’ve become so important in my life. it meant the world to me to have you at our wedding – because even if my immediate family couldn’t make it, my “other” family was there. and i would give anything to be able to be there to witness your happiness today.

it shouldn’t be such a big deal, because, as you’ll soon learn, in the grand scheme of a marriage, a wedding is really just another day – it’s just verbally cementing everything you already know in your heart to be true. everything you already knew the first time you realised you were in love, or that you didn’t want to live your lives without each other. those were far more important days than today. a wedding day can’t possibly reflect everything that makes a relationship real, and the million different ways you already reaffirm that, day in and day out. it can’t possibly demonstrate the same kind of commitment that happens every morning you wake up next to each other and decide to try to be good to one another, to work through the differences during each day, and to end every evening kissing goodnight – that’s far more important than any silly ceremony. it’s an inevitably ineffectual attempt to put to words all the small things that make a couple who they are together which makes them better people than they are individually, a feeble try at quantifying the certainty of a future, a paltry effort to describe the emotions which run deeper than any language. it’s a fancy way to try to announce to the world that all your love and dreams and hopes are wrapped up in the other person, and that you put your whole soul into that investment. and somehow expecting the words “i do” to encapsulate all that.

when you’re already sure of all of everything else, then a wedding is just another day. it shouldn’t matter because it really changes nothing… yet somehow it changes everything.

and it sure as hell is fun.

happy wedding day.

with all my loving wishes for a lifetime of happily ever after,
jen

to mum. i miss you lots and love you even more. thinking of you today…

jen

to all the mother’s (and mother figures) we’ve known and loved. mum, mom, kate, cat, lee-ann, carey, and catie.

hope you all have a wonderful day!

you knew i couldn’t go a whole six months without checking in on my beloved red sox. who whipped the aces of the hated yanks last night 7-3, hooray! and a big welcome back to our favourite knuckleball catcher, doug mirabelli. we love ya’.