Today is a NEW day

Our dear neighbor and friend, Roy, passed away on Tuesday morning after two days on life support at 5:30 in the morning. We miss him, we love him, and we are grateful for the thirteen years that we got to spend as neighbors. I will forever cherish the memories of Andres and I playing basketball in our driveway with our dads for hours, dribbling the soccer ball in Roy's backyard, spending hours imitating his Spanish accent, and just having a friendly neighbor to wave "Hello" to and chat mornings and afternoons. He was a truly unique and wonderful person.

Death can have a weird effect on people and for me, the past few days have been really strange. It has been absolutely beautiful here in Minnesota. The weather is turning hot but it is a warm welcome after a couple of weeks of cold rain. The sun honestly makes me feel better. Luckily, I also spend my days with an adorable little girl who giggles for absolutely no reason and in the process, warms my heart.

GRACIE!

 

Dusty sometimes stops over at the house after work and recently shaved his head. We had some "playtime" today giving Grace the chance to feel his fresh buzz and she was LOVING it! I think the texture was very different from anything she's ever felt and she would just GIGGLE anytime he rubbed his head against her palm. It was pretty adorable.

Carefully inspecting the strange phenomenon of a fresh haircut.

We also celebrated my little brother Beau's 16th birthday today. I can not wrap my head around the fact that my BABY bro is 16! I feel like I was just there myself yesterday. Where does the time go?

Beau went from this....

To this...

And somehow jumped to THIS...

He has a deep voice, curly hair, a love for Italian food (as evidenced by the picture above) and of course... he is taller than me. Slow down, would ya? I'm not ready for you to drive, or outgrow me, or (struggling to say it) take an interest in WOMEN... (Sometimes when he doesn't know it, I catch Beau texting a girl or two, I think he is getting quite popular with the ladies)

I have been trying to stay busy and it hasn't been hard to do so. I addressed 200 wedding invitations in less than a day and now am just waiting on our invitations to get back from the printer so we can ship those babies out to friends and family! I am also gearing up for what I'm sure will be an insane weekend. It goes as follows:

Friday:

8-11 am: Work

11-3 pm: Funeral

3-5 pm: NAP

5-9 pm: West Side Story production at Mounds View High School (Dusty's cousin has a bit part)

9-Midnight: Try to go to bed.

Saturday:

9-Noon: My first bridal shower at church!

Noon-3 pm: Buy wedding gift and get ready

3 pm-End of night: Friend Andrea is getting married to PETER (Fun fact: I was Peter's first kiss back when I was 16... DON'T GET ANY IDEAS BEAU! Anyway, I'm sure it won't be hard to watch him whisk away his bride at the end of the night considering I am content and happy with the guy I'm marrying)

Sunday:

9-11 am: Church

11 am-2pm: Best Friend Jackie's Bridal Shower

230 pm-5 pm: Grandpa and Grandma's 90th Birthday Bash!
5 pm-End of Night: R-E-L-A-X

Too much packed into just three days. Sometimes it is good to be busy when you have a lot on your mind and a hard situation to deal with. I'm sure everything will turn out fine. Thank you for reading and thank you to those who said a prayer for Roy. The prayers were answered in a different way than what we wanted, but I happen to know a couple of people in Heaven my age that are waiting to start up a game of 2 on 2 with Andres's dad. That kind of makes my heart a little bit happy.