Topiaries, candles and little cut ivy leaves...

The topic of how the reception tables seems to be a common topic of discussion in our house lately.

Jessica thinks she needs to cut little pieces of ivy off a larger plastic piece. She thinks it makes more sense than buying pre-cut pieces. She thinks it'll look better than letting the white tablecloth speak for itself.

And me? Well, I really could care less. But I like to razz Jess a little bet and get her worked up. I did a pretty efficient job of that Thursday when I accused her of wasting three to four hours of her life cutting ivy.

Today we asked my mom what she thought. I didn't have to ask Dad; I could tell what he thought from the way he rolled his eyes. She sided with Jess.

So tonight after we put Lissie to bed, Jess pulled out all of the pieces to the puzzle and set them up on our living room's coffee table, keeping me out of the room until she deemed it was ready.

When she finally permitted me to come into the room, it was absolutely beautiful. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Jessica had the most amazing smile on her face, so proud of how it looked. That smile and that joy are all I needed to see.

Anything that made her that happy must be worth its weight in gold, no matter what I think of the process that goes into it. (Which I still think is riduculous, but we'll agree to disagree on that one... just remember, I'm the one supervising when it's all set up in the reception hall. Mwahahahaha....)

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Ivy, Part Two:

An amusing thing happened while we were shopping for the aforementioned ivy this afternoon.

Jessica found the bushes of plastic ivy of which she sought. Lissie and I began piling them up together when we realized we needed a shopping cart. I went to retrieve one.

When I returned, Lissie did a wonderful job getting all those branches into the cart. But alas, a stray two leaves had fallen to the ground. Given our debate, I muttered to Lissie, "If she's cutting every leaf off those branches, we'd better pick up every one of them."

Jessica laughed. She's a keeper.