And Hello Love Birds!! Another Wednesday and I'm happy about it!

I've been M.I.A. the last two weeks and I apologize. The week before last, I took a break as it was the 3rd anniversary of Kaiya's passage to Heaven. I took the day to reflect and I didn't feel like writing something to share with the world. I still have a lot of emotions regarding Kaiya's passing to work through and I took the day (September 24th) to honor her memories with happy thoughts and to be gentle with myself.

Kaiya is more alive than ever!

As GOD reminded me through His word, HE is not the GOD of the dead but of the living.

GOD is the GOD of Abraham,

the GOD of Isaac

the GOD of Jacob

the GOD of Ivy May Taylor

And

the GOD of Kaiya J. Castillo-Smith

Luke 20:37-38

Verse 38 says "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."

And last week was the First Day of October!

I LOVE Octoberand not just because it's my birthday month lol

I love Autumn! - the cooler weather, the color change in the leaves on the trees...

It's all so wonderful!!

That's not my reason for not writing last Wednesday but it is worth noting because last Wednesday we were exactly 30 days away from our wedding day.

To be quite honest, I started writing this post last Wednesday but there was too much life to be attended to, to find the time to remain attached to my computer to finish the post.

The Number 23

So for a long while, years Danny has always told me that he sees 10.23 all the time. That's significant because my birthday is in fact October 23rd (two weeks from tomorrow yikes)! I think it was also around the time he first saw the movie 23 (with Jim Carey).

For a while I thought Danny was just running game, especially since when he started saying that we weren't living in the same state. Once I moved to Georgia and we started hanging out more and more, I realized it wasn't something he imagined, 10.23 really did follow him everywhere:

We would be watching football and the clock would stop at 10:23

Our football team is the Giants and Manning wears the number 10 and his man at his side wears 23.

We're out and we look at the clock...10:23 of course.

It's funny to me still.

Well we're in the tenth month - October.

And

In exactly 23 days - it will be our wedding day!

There goes that 10.23 again lol

I'm SO excited!!

October is an extremely busy month. Everything that has been planned up to this point now needs to be finalized.

I'm especially thankful for all the joyous plans this month holds including the Festival of Praise tour, my birthday, reuniting with all my bridesmaids for good times before the wedding, and the list goes on...

The festivities kicked off two weekends ago (in September), we were in Florida for our Pre-Wedding Reception. It was a long drive and the weekend was jam packed.

The highlights? My second dress fitting - I am in love with the dress!! Hanging out with my nieces. Girl time with my big sister. And of course the actual event.

So what is a Pre-Wedding Reception? In this case it was an opportunity for those well wishers in Florida who would not be able to attend our wedding to join in and be part of the celebration of our impending marriage.

Shout out to my momsie too as she led the planning and execution. The event went perfectly and it was better than I could have dreamed, imagined, expected. I was a ball of emotion - I wasn't even there 2 minutes and the tears started to flow. Smh lol.

The ministers from the church I grew up in had an opportunity to encourage Daniel and I and pray a prayer of blessing over our marriage.

We ate!

I got to see friends I hadn't seen in a long time, years even! We even played a couple games. It was overwhelming in the best way the outpour of love and well wishes we received.

Here are a few pics from the celebration :-)