Fabric flowers on the shirt I wore today.

I know I promised stories from Disney, but I woke up this morning thinking about how today is the one year anniversary of me meeting Angelina, Juliana and Olivia and I decided that I didn’t want to let this day pass without writing about it.

A year ago today, I was hosting a dinner party at my house for my cousin’s birthday. Israel is Aviean’s father and, even though we don’t see eye-to-eye on everything, I wanted him to have a party.  His sister, Marisa, helped me put everything together and our family came in from all over to be there to celebrate his 29th birthday.

Israel was living with me at the time and, the night before the party, he told me that he had a friend whose birthday was the same day.  He said his friend didn’t have family in town and, before he could finish the sentence, I demanded that he call this friend and put me on the phone with him.  When the guy answered, I explained that I was Israel’s cousin and asked if he had plans for his birthday.  He didn’t and so I informed him that he’d be celebrating with us.  I remember the hesitation in his voice when he said “Well, I’d have to bring my three daughters with me if that’s okay.”  I told him to bring them on and, as I hung up the phone, wondered what his little girls were like.

I spent the next day calling to have the name on the birthday cake changed to two names, racing around trying to buy some small birthday gifts for a guy I didn’t know and attempting to get my house clean enough for all of the people who were coming over.  I still remember exactly where I was standing when Ryan walked in with those three little girls.  They came through my door and stood together in a little huddle, taking in all the new faces in front of them.  I remember laying down the dish in my hand, walking across the room and bending down so I’d be on their level.  I said “Hello, I’m Amy Beth” and watched the middle child turn her head to the side, look at me quizzically and say “Amy Beff?”

That was 365 days ago.  It’s been 365 days of overwhelming love, jarring fear and, at times, deep disappointment.  One of the students in my religion class last semester wrote a line in a paper that has stuck with me all this time:

“… I asked the Lord a year and a half ago to teach me how to love. [...] and since then, I’ve experienced nothing but heartbreak.”

There have been many, many moments of unbridled joy during these last 365 days of loving those three little girls.  There have been moments when I have genuinely thought that it would be impossible to love something as much as I have loved their little selves.  I have learned a new way to love that I didn’t know I was capable of until those girls show up.

But as wonderful as it has been, I would never want to gloss over the fact that sometimes when you want to love something, you experience heartbreak.  We are all broken people and broken people tend to break things, including hearts.  I don’t write about the bad moments that come with loving the girls because that wouldn’t be wise.  But there are some moments when I feel absolutely paralyzed with fear.  It isn’t normal to wonder as you dress a three year old in the morning if that will be the last day you ever get her ready for daycare yet, because of the lack of stability of the situation I find myself in, that is the reality I have to endure.  I never know if there will be another Saturday morning of waffles, another bedtime story read on Thursday night or another pink outfit pulled from the closet before the girls wake up in the morning.  I just never know.

But I do know this.  If I knew everything I know now 365 days ago, I’d still put that man’s name on the birthday cake.  I’d hesitate, thinking about how rough the last three weeks have been, but I’d still put his name on the cake, even if I had to grit my teeth while doing it.  Just because your heart breaks doesn’t mean you stop loving.

Setting out chips and salsa for my college girls…

Can you guess

why Cousin Cate

is wearing a full poncho suit?

Hint: it involves me “volunteering” Cate

for a wee bit of fun at Hollywood Studios.

I’ll tell you more tomorrow after I’ve had time to

work a full day

unpack my suitcases

figure out what to feed my college girls tonight

actually feed and entertain my college girls

play with Snuggles y Cuddles

contemplate the meaning of life

sort through the Disney gifts for the little girls

and, you know, maybe find time to write a blog post

about how bad Cousin Cate wanted to hurt me

after I volunteered her to have 1,000 gallons of water

dumped on her pretty little head.

Home, attacked by cuddles from Cuddles the puppy.

We’re wrapping up a fun vacation in Orlando this morning and heading back towards Tennessee so I can be back in the office tomorrow morning.  Later this week I’ll definitely tell you some funny stories from our weekend of all things Disney.  There were definitely moments when I wanted to cry because I was thinking about what could have been if the little girls had of been with us, but I can honestly say that I really got to enjoy myself on this trip.  We’ve had a blast and I’m looking forward to being trapped in the car with Cate for a good nine hours today as we head home, as long as she doesn’t make me eat at a cafeteria again.

In the meantime, I thought you might want to see what the second half of my Valentine’s looked like.  As I showed you last week, I did a bunch of stuff on the actual day of Valentines but it didn’t stop there.  After having a small, intimate dinner on Valentine’s Day evening with some of my single college girls, I had a big group of them over to my house on Tuesday evening to have our weekly Life Group.  I decided to go with a Valentine’s theme because, hello, there is only one time of the year that pink and red look good together and I was not going to let that time go by unnoticed.

When I got off work on Tuesday evening, I raced home and started getting everything ready for my college girls.  I decided to go with a dessert theme and, because I love it, a dessert table!

We had pink and white iced animal crackers in a vase tied with a cute ribbon.

The vase was on top of a glass cake plate and, on the cake plate, I arranged darling red and white Valentine’s cookies.

Can you even handle the cuteness of this?!?

Also, on the dessert table, I had two cake plates with little cake dots and Oreo truffles on them.  I ordered these from a local business and they were a huge hit!  Right before Valentine’s Day, I actually had a box of them shipped to my mom to wish her a happy Valentines.  She loves these things, probably because they don’t come in bacon or sausage flavors.

To dress up the tables, I added more containers filled with red and pink candies.

Does anyone else remember these suckers from our childhoods?  You place them on your tongue and it tattoos and image of a heart right onto your tongue.   I played with these all night long so that I could relive my own third grade experience all over again.

I made some little strawberry angel food cakes, too.  Yummy!

I loved this part of the table!  Basically, I took a round circle of styrofoam and painted it silver to match my decorations.  I then took a little wooden Valentine’s decoration and hot glued it to the front of the styrofoam.  Then, I took Valentine’s-themed treats and placed them in the styrofoam on sticks.  I love how it turned out!

On my kitchen table, there were even more goodies for my college girls!

I did fruit punch in pretty glasses and decorated the tray with conversation hearts that the girls could place in their punch to sweeten it up even more.  I can’t stand the way conversation hearts taste, but they’re one of the cutest things to decorate with!

In the background of this next picture, you’ll see gift bags containing some loofah sponges and chocolate.  In the forefront of the picture, you’ll see little pink metal mailboxes that were filled with goodies, too!

In these pink “suitcases,” I put little jewelry boxes filled with candy bracelets.  What girl doesn’t want jewelry on Valentine’s Day?

About five seconds after I finished setting everything up, my college girls started arriving!

We had such a good time together!  Most of my college girls are many, many miles away from their families and I know that they need to be loved on and cared for because I needed it during college, too.  I’m purposing in my heart to love these girls as much as possible for however long they’re here for college (or jobs, as some of them are sticking around!).  You’d love them if you met them, I promise.

Okay, time to load up and head home to Tennessee.   I’m missing that Snuggles y Cuddles something fierce!

Gifts for the little girls from one

of our Disney hostesses, Kali.

(Taking on day 51 but posted late!)

Please note that we both have our hands on our hips.

From college girl Anna, who is puppy-sitting while I’m in Florida:

“I’m taking it upon myself to discipline these pups.  They’re like spoiled children who’ve never been told no.  It’s like I’m on Wife Swap.”

Today, in 12 hours, we…

rode Peter Pan’s Flight; rode It’s a Small World and saw a purse floating in the water; rode Space Mountain and survived to tell about it; rode Tomorrowland Transit Authority; rode Stitch’s Great Escape; rode Carousel of Progress much to Cate’s dismay; ate lunch; rode Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and lost to Cate by a measly 800 points; rode the Haunted Mansion; watched the Hall of Presidents; rode Pirates of the Caribbean; rode Big Thunder Railroad; rode Splash Mountain; rode Jungle Cruise; rode Peter Pan’s Flight again; rode Snow White’s Scary Adventure; ate dinner; rode Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin again and dominated Cate by about 300,000 points; watched Monsters Inc, Laugh Floor (and they picked my joke!) and, finally, watched the Wishes fireworks show.

And then we ate half of the cinnamon roll you see above.