Through The Years

Lyric Love: "A thrill of hope, the weary soul rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn..." - O Holy Night (Raise your hand if this is your favorite Christmas carol...)

Part of my mom's Christmas decorations involve pictures of Linnea and I at Christmas throughout the years. These pictures are taken out with the Christmas decorations and then put away with them, so it is only during the yuletide season that we have the pleasure of seeing pictures of ourselves in various stages of increasing awkwardness dressed in something Christmassy. So, for your viewing pleasure, here are the Black sisters doing Christmas: the early years. (Because, weirdly, the pictures stop after about 2001. Who knows why.)

[1991]

[1992]

 [1993]

 [1994, aka the year Caroline got glasses]

[1995]

[1997, skipping a year + a move to England]

...And that is as far as I'm going to show you. I am too ashamed of the rest. Also, on a sad note, this will be our first Christmas without Linnea, who is celebrating Stateside with her husband's fam. (Which might explain why I woke up to a Linnea-shrine of sorts this morning, with her newly-framed wedding picture sitting on the kitchen table with a lit candle by it. Or maybe that was just accidental. Point being, we miss you!)

 Can you believe tomorrow is Christmas Eve??

P.S. 14738294 bonus points to anyone who notices that this is a post repeat from last year...I am so sneaky.

Because This Only Happened 5 1/2 Weeks Ago...

Hello loves! I just took the GRE and thankfully I got the scores I needed! (Fun fact: I'm already in my grad school, aka Ed school. I know. Don't ask me why they made me take the GRE...) So driving an hour there + four hours of testing + sitting in a traffic jam for 45 minutes on the way back means it's time for me to do something a lil' brainless...such as showing y'all my sister's wedding pictures! (See, all this requires of me is clicking 'insert image' and voila!). This is just a smattering of the 500+ there were, so if you want to stalk the rest (and let's be real, who doesn't want to stalk wedding pictures all day erry day? ...oh wait, is that just me?) check 'em out here!

All photos by Elisa B Photography.

Aaand They're Married!

Hello, loves! I know I have been remiss at getting back in the game here and particularly in telling you all about the wedding…which was now over a week ago. Perhaps I could blame it on the fact that I don’t really know how to go about properly summing up something that was so all-consuming in our lives for a while -- and then happened, and is now over. Or perhaps I could blame it on the fact that I left for Washington, DC the morning after the wedding (where two grandparents, four aunts, two uncles and four cousins (aged 9 - 12) and I meandered the city for three days and it took us an hour to get ourselves anywhere on the metro) and then came back to Harry Potter at midnight and four days of work, and am now only just having a little break from it all…

Either way, it was a beautiful time, following an insane weekend. Linnea’s best friend from our high school in Ethiopia, Marcia, came with her husband from Holland, and Linnea’s best friend from her high school in Germany, Corrie, came from Arkansas, and my best friend from middle school, Danielle (who was boarding sisters with Marcia back in the Ethiopia days) all came early and we ran errands and put together programs and attended many pre-wedding events. We had adventures that included getting incredibly lost driving around Richmond in the dark and pouring rain (and paying to do so. I hate tollroads.) as we absolutely had to be at our destination BEFORE 9 o’clock. (We didn’t make it.) Then there was the internal dilemma of whether or not I should paint Beta Bridge for Linnea, as I had been planning to do for months, even though I saw people painting a birthday message to their friend Bill on it about two hours before we planned to. (We did anyway. Sorry, Bill.) 

But the day itself was wonderful and went off without a hitch*. Linnea was beautiful, the ceremony was lovely, and there were all sorts of friends and family to talk and dance with at the reception. It was especially fun to see the Hales, Kyle Davidson and Anne McClary (and Danielle and Marcia, of course!) – all friends from Ethiopia!

I can’t wait until we get the official photos taken by the talented and delightful Elisa B which I will definitely share with you (because I know everyone likes to stalk wedding pictures. No shame.), but in the meantime we’ll have to make due with a few of ours:

Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Walker!

First Dance to this song

Father-Daughter dance to this song

Ethiopia friends!

...and UVA friends :]

Now I’m actually off to Crozet to see the newlyweds, freshly returned from their honeymoon, before they head off to their new home in Rockville, Maryland. Funnily enough, I haven’t talked to Linnea since the wedding (or even hardly at all at the reception, really) so it will be interesting to hear her thoughts on everything -- and just to hang out with my sister and her husband!

[Photos 1, 2, 5 and 11 taken by the amazing Arley Arrington]

*Except that we soon discovered that the material of the bridesmaids’ dresses showed every tearstain and sweatstain…attractive. Oh, and it took FOURTEEN individual ties to bustle Linnea's dress. And I forgot my toast that I had written at the church. But these were all minor concerns, of course :]

To My Sister, A Graduate

Currently Listening To: For Emma, Forever Ago, Bon Iver. (Especially Skinny Love) (Inspired by last night's porchtime with Linnea and Leah)

Dear Linnea,

I remember when I first came to college. I was fresh off the plane from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where I had graduated in a class of eleven friends, and was suddenly at a college where there were almost more people in my dorm than my entire K-12 school. I was still having culture shock about things like free drink refills and the fact that I could buy a pair of jeans whenever I wanted.

You, however, had already been here for a year. You knew what was up, and you passed some of that knowledge on to me. I remember that we went to Ohill for lunch with our cousin Jessi on the first day of classes, and then about an hour after that I was calling you frantically because I realized I had just accidentally skipped my first college class ever. You told me it would be okay because it was a big lecture class and they were probably just figuring out enrollment stuff anyway. (You were right.)

   

You took me to the first Agape large group (where I met Liz, another MK, who just so happened to be my roommate this past year) and made me come to the root beer kegger that weekend (where I met several people I am friends with now). You would drive me places and I would cry in the car sometimes, because living in a dorm with a roommate is not always conducive to that, and you were the only familiarity I had.

After those first few months, I began to figure stuff out. But it was still nice having you around, seeing you several times a week, and especially this year when we lived a few houses down the street from each other, so if I was on my way home and you happened to be on your porch I could sit and join you. It’s also been…fun? working out how to share a car (especially when someone had a boyfriend who lived an hour away.. ;] ) but the upside of that was that we were often in constant communication...

All in all, who would of thought three years ago that we’d be sitting on your porch two nights after your graduation stuffing wedding invitations into envelopes?  You have so many exciting, wonderful things going on these days! You’re getting married, moving to Maryland with your husband where you'll be doing public health-y and grown up things!

And I’ll be sticking around here for another two years. Funnily enough, it’ll be the first time I’ve been at this school without you here, too. I’m pretty confident I can handle it, but I know that’s largely because of the way you were there for me from the very beginning. And if you ever want to come back and visit next year, you can definitely sleep on my floor.

 

Love,

Your Schwesder