maddie is engaged!

You might remember one year ago when we celebrated our niece Maddie's 21st birthday. It was such a fun night and that evening she told everyone of her plans to travel to Sweden later that month and then to tour in the summer with a ministry team leading worship around the country. Little did we know then that on that tour bus she would catch the eye of the sound guy. They started dating and this year to celebrate her 22nd birthday, she got an engagement ring.

We've all known this is coming for a long time. Chase and Maddie met and I was ready for the announcement two months later. Every holiday I wondered, every time we gathered as a whole family I imagined the news being shared. The Groves family loves Chase and we have been happy for Maddie from the start. So it should have been absolutely no surprise when we got the text from Kyle, Rory's oldest brother, that Chase had popped the question.

And yet it totally surprised me. We were eating dinner and Rory read the text. I laughed so happily and we explained to the kids what it all meant. We told Elsie that Maddie was going to marry Chase and she told us flatly, "I already knew that." We laughed as we imagined Chase having cleared the whole thing with Elsie before he popped the question.

I got all slaphappy and told Rory I was going to drive to Kyle and Lisa's and crash the engagement party, that was disguised as a surprise 22nd birthday party, thrown by all of her college friends. Rory joked that I should bring morel mushrooms and frozen rhubarb (the projects I had been working all day) as my engagement gift. He said, "you can introduce yourself as the cool aunt from the country and ask where you should put the rhubarb and mushrooms." I was laughing so hard I was crying at the thought.

We explained to the kids that one day they would marry someone and Ivar said he wanted to marry daddy. Elsie said she wanted to marry mommy. And we said it had to be someone not in our family, that one day they'd meet someone special and they would join our family, just like Chase is joining Kyle and Lisa's family. And in an instant, my hysterical laughter turned into hysterical crying. Sobbing. Which made me laugh, because I was crying. Really hard. In fact, much of the time I couldn't tell if I was laughing or crying, I had crossed over into some super-emotional land of heightened hormones. I kept laughing and crying and it was so odd. Ivar asked what was the matter and I said to Rory with laughter, "I don't know what's happening right now." He said, "You don't know what is happening?!!"

And then he stood up and told us we needed to put our rain boots on and get outside. That clearly we needed to burn off some energy. I went and got the morel mushrooms from my neighbor and then we went to another neighbor's swing set to play for a while. Rory planted more of the garden between rain showers and eventually we called it a night.

Oh I don't know what all that was last night, but today when I talked to Lisa, Maddie's mom, I got the feeling I was just putting myself in her shoes, amazed at how fast all of this flies by. I cried on the phone with Lisa, and she told me that in 22 years the baby I'm carrying may very well fall in love and get married. Made me laughcry some more...