Thank you, Melissa!

I planned on having my first post entitled "Why Bliss?", but yesterday was my niece Melissa's birthday, and really want to share how she made it an awesome day for all of us. As most of you know, Melissa passed away a couple of years ago from cancer at the age of 33. She was a wonderful person and we all still miss her. But who especially misses her is her mom, Bonnie, and her sister, Rachel. Blessing #1 was that we planned a trip to Grand Forks to visit my brother, then realized we would be having fun together and busy on Melissa's birthday without even trying. She planned that out perfectly, no time for sitting around moping! We really had a fun time just being in the car and laughing and talking.

#2: The weather was AMAZING. February 13, and 45 degrees outside. Both Rachel and I that morning said, "Thank you, Melissa!"

#3: At mass, they were talking about the Catholic Appeal and showed a presentation by their bishop, using an old projector. About halfway through, the projector malfunctioned and everyone talking had only half a head. It was pretty funny, and something Melissa would have definitely giggled about.

#4 The finale: When we got back to Minneapolis, we decided to stop for dinner at Houlihan’s (Bonnie’s suggestion, but I realized just now that Houlihan’s was a favorite for me and Melissa to go!) The hostess says a 30 minute wait unless we want to sit in the bar. We tell her the bar is fine, and leads us to an awesome table in the back which fits all 6 of us and is nice and secluded. Right away we said, “Thank you, Melissa!” The food was delicious but the service was less than perfect. It was two for one drinks so we ordered 4 Bloody Marys, and a bunch of small different appetizers. One came out, then 5 minutes later another, etc. It was a little annoying but we weren’t letting it mess up our night. Finally the waitress comes over and says, “Sorry for the bad service, here is a FREE DESSERT for all of you, plus the entire meal and drinks are ENTIRELY FREE!”

It was like, TOTAL BLISS! When was the last time you had a meal for 6 totally free from the restaurant because of bad service? And the service wasn’t even that bad! We thought right away, a gift from MELISSA! And so it was. Thank you, Melissa. We know you are still here. We know you are still loving us. And we love you, too.