My dear and wonderful hub's has got a big milestone birthday coming up tomorrow, not that he wants to acknowledge it. He honestly didn't believe that he would live to see his fortieth birthday, let alone his 60th. He grew up on the streets of San Francisco, was career military as a Recon Scout, and was injured during the Gulf War, partially paralyzed after four back surgeries, and learned to walk again. His life has been anything but easy, but you will never ever hear him complain.
All of those things happened before we met, yet here we are almost twenty-four years of marriage later and it's my hub's 60th year spent on this spinning rock. I happen to think this is an awesome thing and worthy of being celebrated. The hubs, well, he's not so much thrilled about the celebrating part.
So of course we are having a party.
A luau to be exact, as my husband is a Native Hawaiian and in his culture you celebrate special things with a luau, so as of right now I have thirty-five pounds of kalua pork roasting. You know, cause reasons.
Because he is such a wonderful person. As a 100% service-connected disabled veteran he could totally just hang around and exist, but he doesn't. Instead most of the time he coaches a nationally ranked youth rifle team that he resurrected because it had fallen to the wayside. He also leads 4-H shooting sports and coaches skeet and trap. I find myself continually awed with him, the quiet, stoic, sometimes crotchety pineapple of a man that he is.
Which is why tomorrow we are celebrating his birth. The kids and I have all sorts of special surprises for him, I got him a super excellent sasquatch Hawaiian shirt to wear as the guest of honor, tons of our friends and family are showing up, and the spread of food is on point to be just magnificent!
However, it is also a lot of work. And it was after I ran up the hill to town to get a watermelon to go with the other watermelons for the fruit bar at the luau that I found myself plopping on the deck with a glass of ice water in need of a bit of a breather. As I took a sip of my refreshing beverage my eyes lit on the cute little wooden pig planter that my friend's dad crafted for me, and there, on the marigolds that I started from seed and nurtured through our crusty summer, sat a beautiful little treat for my moment of rest, a glorious butterfly.
I sat there, out of space and time for a minute, and rested while I watched the fanciful insect flit from one bloom to the next. The whole scene was strangely restorative and gave me a bit of a existential joy energy boost for the second half of my day.
Because there's a celebratory luau afoot on my homestead and I intend to get caught up in the fun of it, well, once I get all this party preparations squared away that is!
And on that note, I am off, hope you all are having a most glorious weekend!!!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's currently pollen-free iPhone.