Tag: unitarian universalist

Dear Mike: Be Kind

My Dear Mikey –

Last year I posted a letter to you about September 11th and how Daddy and I hope that you grow up to be kind and see the good in the world. As an adult some days that is hard to do.

So many things are happening in the world right now that make my heart hurt. Some of these things are happening thousands of miles away but they are having a ripple effect and impacting our country. I hope you learn to realize that when people feel scared or threatened they don’t always make the best decisions, like remembering to be kind.

The one thing I am thankful for right now is that you are too young to ask the hard questions because I have no idea how I would answer you. I am actually asking a lot of hard questions myself and searching for the answer.

It’s times like these that Daddy and I want to remind you about the Principles of Unitarian Universalism. These are the ‘rules’ we are striving to raise you with. These principles represent what we believe and act as our moral compass.

I hope that when you are older and lose faith in the world or when everything seems confusing and chaotic, you find comfort in these principles and the strength to live these.

 

uu we believe kids

 

I’ll eat you up I love you so,

Momma xoxo

Friday Five: Wedding Edition

As of today I have been married for FIVE YEARS! That doesn’t seem long considering we started dating 10 years ago. I usually spend our anniversary reading our wedding ceremony and flipping through pictures. The best part of the wedding (I mean, aside from getting married) was our ceremony. We are Unitarians and had it pretty free and easy with the ceremony structure. It was really a FUN day because it was what we wanted. So for today’s Friday Five, in no particular order, here are my five favorite memories from September 25, 2010.

{The Ceremony} Like I mentioned, we wrote our own ceremony and I truly love each aspect of it. We mixed in a few different traditions from different cultures like stomping the glass and a wine ceremony. We spent a lot of time talking about our reading and how to pull everything that was special to us into a quick ceremony.

weddingquote

{My Girls} I decided I didn’t want to be Bridezilla – it wasn’t my style, so I didn’t want any bridemaid drama either. Lucky for me my three closest girl friends were of the ‘drama free’ mentality too. My Maid of Honor was my sister-in-law and best friend who tells it like it is. My cousin and best friend from growing up were my bridesmaids who were equally fun and organized. They really made the process not only hilarious, but relatively stress free from start to finish.

PicMonkey Collage

{Yichud} When you tell people about your upcoming wedding they tend to mention not eating. Well I like to eat and we paid a lot of money for the amazing food (pasta and fajita bar) so I was going to eat. I also wanted to spend some solo time with my new husband. Enter the tradition of the Yichud. The term “yichud” also refers to a ritual during an Ashkenazi Jewish wedding in which the newly married couple spends a period secluded in a room by themselves. We are not orthodox, but liked the idea of 15 minutes alone. Since we got married in an opera house, we used a dressing room. We had a plate of food and let our amazing photographer, Laura Dye, in to snap a few candids and then we just talked about random stuff. We hadn’t seen each other in a few days and just had this huge life altering event. This might be my favorite memory of the day.

yichud

{The Candy Bar} So this wedding fad of having a candy bar for guests? I was 110% in. Since the vibe of the wedding was ‘vintage’ my sainted Mother scoured the internet for throwback candy.  It looked AWESOME and it was a hit as a thank you for our guests.

candy

{My Brother} I have one brother who thought it was a good idea to follow in my dad’s footsteps and be a Seabee in the Navy. The Navy tends to dictate every bit of a military family’s life – even the extended family. My brother was in training and flew in at some ungodly hour the day of my wedding and flew out at some ungodly hour the morning after. Having him there meant so much to me, I couldn’t imagine him not standing up there.

brother