Life's Recent Gifts (Tara Taylor Quinn)

I sit here this morning feeling so blessed. You asked for pictures from my recent wedding and boy do I have pictures. 1300 of them. I won't ask you to look at all of them, but I want to share a few of them with you! I've looked at them so many times over the past week and always with a resurgence of the magic that surrounds my life. I cannot believe, even now, that it is possible to share a life like this on this earth. My husband is not a perfect man. I am not a perfect woman. And yet we fit. We've both loved before. We've both made mistakes. We've both been hurt beyond what we thought we could endure. And here we are:

Getting it right. Sealing a lifetime. Finally.

Life is happy from the inside out. Life delivers everything it promises. And when life is hard, as it often is, and is for us in particular due to the complicated circumstances bred by the choices we've made during our time apart, there is still Tim. Still holding on to me. Watching out for me. As I watch out for him. I might keep to myself a lot. I might avoid phone calls because they make me uncomfortable. But for this man I will walk into the thick of the fire and burn with him until I can pull him out. As he does for me. This is life's greatest recent gift to me.

And another gift - We just bought a house!!!! We have a home of our own and what a home. It's my little girl storybook dream house. Set up on a hill, on almost two acres of beautifully landscaped grounds and woods, is our little, 1940's Victorian cottage. The living room is huge, solid wood floors, a stone fireplace that encompasses the entire room, and two walls of solid windows overlooking the grounds, front and back. The kitchen was recently modernized and has white, cottage cupboards as well as all of today's conveniences. And behind the kitchen, complete with a wet bar is the sun room I've been wanting since I was a little girl napping on my grandmother's screened in porch. My office is upstairs - the length of half the house, decorated with roses on the walls, a turret with cubbies and wood floors and windows that look out over the yard.

But the best part of this story is my new love's reaction to the whole process. He'd been after me to look at houses all summer, but I'd warned him. When I go to buy a house I look at the Multiple Listing Service myself. I choose five or so homes. Call a realtor. Choose a house and purchase it. I don't think he quite believed me. But he went along for the ride. Eager to get started on the onerous process of finding just the right place. Prepared to walk through and evaluate a million of them, or at least twenty-five, before making any kind of decision. Two days later he was saying to my mother who was staying with us: "My wife buys houses quicker than I buy a pair of pants." He was laughing. And so did she. But I did buy a house faster than he buys slacks. Literally. (I've been with this man to buy a pair of pants.) Our cottage was the fifth of my five choices that one evening we went out. The minute we walked in I knew it was The place. And Tim did, too. The crowning moment was when, after we'd been there an hour, mentally moving in, we were standing together in the foyer, looking at the grand living room, both silent, and turned to each other. I said, "The Christmas tree" and he nodded and pointed as I finished, "will look great there." He was pointing to where I'd been going to point if he hadn't done it for me. He'd been thinking about the tree, too. And neither of had mentioned Christmas in that house. I wasn't surprised, though. That's how we work.

Another gift - as if I needed anymore - was the phone call from my editor this past week. We've been talking for several weeks about possible projects and it is now official. I just contracted a total of SIX more books. Five on a Harlequin contract, and another thriller/suspense with MIRA. And one of the five is the story of Tim and I. We're bringing back Shelter Valley as I announced earlier. And first, I'll be writing Ryan's story - the sequel to my July release, Sara's Son. The contract couldn't have come at a better time, giving us a nice blessing on our future plans.

And, oh, just one more wedding picture. My absolute favorite, (other than all the ones of my beloved and I of course!). My family has been incredible to me during this sometimes incredibly difficult transition in my life and they, aside from Tim, are my deepest and best blessing (and this includes my daughter.) I'd love to show you all of them, to show you the hundreds of pictures the photographer took of my nieces and cousins and new step-daughters (both of whom are beautiful, one with a killer smile and the other who has a particular affinity with cameras!). And the ones of my mother and brother and sister-in-law and aunt. But I had to choose only one and so this had to be it. This is my most precious little Bubby, the heart of my heart, the little guy who has been a blessing since the moment he was conceived. He is my special love, and you can see here, that the feeling is mutual. That's what I love about this picture. The love. So I leave you with Bubby (wearing his Aunt Tia's garter on his head) in a moment I will never forget...