All My Days

Now I see clearly
It's you I'm looking for
All of my days..

And even breathing feels all right
Yes, even breathing feels all right

-Alexi Murdoch

I am still on a high from the wedding of one of my very best friends in the world that happened this weekend in Portland. It was amazing. All the events were full of good conversation and a feeling of joy and love was all around. Both of the them looked gorgeous beyond belief, the ceremony officiator did an incredible job inviting love and openness into the ceremony, their vows were heartfelt and honest, the food was fantastic, the dancing fun, and the company some of the best on this planet. I feel honored to have been apart of it.

We were able to stay on site in the houses they had there at Still Meadow. Rush and Sarah did a bang up job with the details. I feel like it is a wedding that would be showcased on Etsy. Just one detail of note: they had found mismatched plates from the thrift store for the dinner and had wild flowers in Bell Jars with little figurines adorning the table. Lovely.

These are just a few of my favorites...

 pictures by Scott

I was really emotional all weekend - and I can't blame pregnancy. This was my friend who believed she would be alone her whole life and here we were in a magical space where her real life story was better than the one she had written for herself. It was powerful for me to witness. It goes to show you that you just never know where your story is going to lead.


Here is the toast I gave at the wedding dinner. I'll paste it below too. Please note that it is a bit lengthier than my normal blog post - but come on, how often does a bestie have a day like this? Humor me.

This song was playing at the ceremony. Love it. You can use it as the soundtrack if you read on...

Written in the Stars

I believe that some friendships were written in the stars.

Lucky for us - Rush and I are counted among these few friendship,

and therefore, were destined to be friends from the beginning of time.

Travel back in your mind’s eye with me if you will to my 15 year old self.

It is the spring of 1995.

My parents and I are house hunting for our big move from Salt Lake City to Seattle.

I am bitter and angry as I will, of course, never make friends again and am doomed for loneliness my entire high school years.

We view a home, I walk upstairs and enter a room of a girl that seems to be around my age.

I walk around checking out her stuff, look at all the pictures of her friends, all the funky art she has on the wall, and see a picture of her and wonder who this person might be. Maybe she is a bit like me...

Little did I know that this girl staring back at me in the picture was going to be one of most influential persons in my life. We walked out of the house and Rushie and I didn’t cross paths - or should I say cross eyes again until a year later.

Here is where you fast-forward to the last day of Sophomore year. We talked for the first time and she informed me I needed to call her over the summer at 489-RUSH. That was really her number. 489-RUSH. Does it surprise anyone that Rush had a customized phone number at age 16? The Queen of marketing.

I didn’t call.

Our third encounter was the first day of our Junior year when we figured out we had honors English together and she offered me a red vine as we walked to class together.  It was friendship love at first licorice bite. We tease that we became friends over a vine of sugary goodness.

This is the foundational year of our friendship. Over highly sophisticated debates and discussions in English class, and marathon long phone calls that only happen in junior high and high school, we started to see that we might be the perfect intellectual and emotional friendship match for each other.

And that is where our journey began to get interesting. Here are just some of the highlights:

{If my toast was a movie this is where the magically edited montage with perfectly planned music would go.}

 - I was invited to her house and realized I had in fact been in this house before. Too Freaky. It was Rushie staring at me in that picture and she in fact was a lot like me.

- We talked at length and related to Holden Caulfield in the painfulness of growing up and loss of innocence.

- I picked up the frazzled Rush when she got in her first car accident. “Aimee, come pick me up!”

- Many times she “picked me up” and held up the metaphorical mirror so I could see clearly in some dark times when I forgot I could possibly be loved.

- We would stay up late into the night by the Coughran fire and discussed the human condition and co-existence - all the normal topics 17 years old engage in.

- I would give her hugs even though she would awkwardly receive them. (Her hugging has much improved over the years!)

- We exchanged plenty of mixed tapes.

- We took dates to Hooters for dinner dressed in hawaiian shirts and grass shirts.

- We took pictures of Rushie in her chicken suit for her senior picture and I had to fiercely talk the yearbook advisor into letting the picture be included amongst the other “proper” senior pictures.

- I was standing next to Rushie as she was crowed as Prom Queen. It was the eve of her 18th birthday.

- She lightened my mood on the bus to our graduation as I anxiously stewed over the speech I was to give.

- And then we did it - we had made it through high school alive.

Off to college we went where Rushie rushed, eventually upgraded her chicken suit to the husky dog suit and I went to live with the hippies in Bellingham. Distance did not divide us as we made many new friends but realized there was something worth holding onto in our friendship and we were going to evolve together past the high school years.

A few years passed, and the next we knew I was half way around the world in Japan on my Mormon mission answering a very welcomed illegal call from Rushie who had convinced my mom that an emergency heart-to-heart was needed for both of us to get through the day as healthy, emotionally balanced individuals. In the pivotal conversation we decided that LIVING IN THE QUESTION of where life was going to lead us, was the best plan of attack to eventually find the answers to happiness.

Through first loves, heart aches, and heart breaks, joys, disappointments, graduations, moves, long distance road trips, different hair colors, meeting greater loves than the firsts, and redefinition of self, Rushie and I were there for each other to see it all unfold and watch ourselves evolve through the process.

And then one day that whole growing up process we had talked about when we were 16 years old had happened. We turned 30 for heavens sake. We have both found truly great loves and we both have come to love the other partners dearly and I think we have managed to become pretty good humans along the way.

Rushie is truly one the best humans in my life. She is one of my few “anchor people” - the people who can turn to when you need a little reality and someone to give you a big picture look at the world. I have been so blessed to have her as my best friend and feel honored to celebrate her and Sarah tonight.

Sarah, we have loved you from the beginning. Your energy and optimistic, happy attitude is a pleasure in this ever increasing world of cynics. Your passion for living life fiercely and intentional is one of my favorite things about you. I feel lucky that Rush has chosen you so we also can grow old together because, well, I sort of come with the package.  I know you know this but you are so lucky to have my anchor persons as your wife. I know you will love each other like crazy.

So here is my toast:

I give blessings to your love and wish for you that on this day - your wedding day - you will look back on it as the day that you loved each other the least because your love is only going to get better from here, baby! Cheers.