Saturday, June 5, 2010

Dance Recital Memories

The Head of My Household and I attended our umteenth dance recital tonight. 
The Big Sisters helped the Little Sister get ready...make-up, dance bag, costume changes.

When our youngest took the stage, I had tears in my eyes.



She may be the youngest, but she's not a baby anymore.



She chin upped this afternoon when she realized that temporary beach tatoos wouldn't be terribly attractive on the dance floor :)
and allowed her middle sister to remove the "tatoos" with lotion.
She "took one for the team"

For days she has been asking about her recital and whether or not I had her costumes organized.
When we returned home from Destin, too late to attend her dress rehearsal, she became very concerned about one particular costume that needed to be picked up from her instructor.
She wasn't worried about the dress rehearsal...just that she have all of her stuff ready to go.
I drove into town once again to set her mind at ease.





Then, from the moment she opened her eyes this morning she has asked over and over again, "Is it time yet?"
She was very serious as she prepared for her big night (actually afternoon).  She seemed so much older than her 6 years. 
I didn't tear up because of how grown my youngest has become.


I teared up because
while I was watching my youngest dance, I couldn't help but think about these two:

This is my firstborn and middle child.
As you can tell by this photo, we've done this drill before.

My firstborn will be a Senior during the upcoming school year.




 
My middle child will be a Senior the following year.





Where has the time gone?

Am I sad that they have reached that milestone age where they will branch out and become more of their own individual selves than my little girls?
No.
I don't begrudge them the growing up experience.

Do I wish I could go back in time?
No.
I don't believe in that sort of thing at all. 
I'm a firm believer that if we spend all of our time looking in the rearview mirror, we will never see the road of opportunity ahead of us.

I actually haven't decided exactly what I think I am yet.
I'll let you know.











Wednesday, June 2, 2010

What Tomorrow Brings...







This is the Destin that we know and have grown to love throughout my lifetime but especially over the last 5 years.


We've spent many days and nights with our doors open, listening to the waves crash to shore, running up and down the beaches playing with seashells and crabs.  We had our first real life sighting of sharks here and discussed (while standing on the beach allowing them to swim by) that we were the trespassers in their territory and must respect their environment.  We've "swam with the fishes" for real at times...sometimes we liked it and other times we weren't so sure the fishes weren't nipping us on purpose just to laugh as we ran to the shore :)  We've learned about how to enjoy one of our world's greatest natural resources and to leave it as we found it.


Thanks to our country's over-reliance on oil, this is on its way.





According to various news sources 5,000 gallons of oil are still leaking from the site of the explosion each and every day.

Each.

and.

Every.

Day.

I don't know whose fault it is.

I don't really care right now.

I just want them to stop the leak.

Oil has already reached the Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana coastlines, killing animals, vegetation and environmental areas that will probably never recover.
The latest projections today show the Florida beaches at Pensacola are next.

I am so thankful to those people, the biologists, the environmental scientists, the veterinarians, etc. who are already on the job working night and day to try and save as much as possible. 








I know that they probably feel as helpless if not more helpless than all the rest of us do.
Although, their jobs don't shield them from the tragedy of this disaster.
While the rest of us sit at home (or in a fabulous resort) enjoying the summer.

I'm going to continue to think about the consequence of big oil in our lives.
Big companies like BP are only answering our demands with their incessant drilling off our beaches' shores.

So, is BP at fault?  Or are we?




Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Ahhhhhh....Destin


Destin.  Nuff said.

Here's my little surfer girl...riding the waves with her boogie board she happened to mention to her Memaw that she "needed."



And, here's my crew at one of our favorite places, The Baytowne Wharf...tons of shopping, eating and family fun goes on here nightly...we have similar pictures like this one of our girls over the last 5 years. 



I took full advantage of the Tradition of the Chair tonight in order to get a picture of the Head of My Household and me...we were waiting on the fireworks to begin so he didn't have much choice :)


Whenever I take pictures of my girls, I cherish all of the pictures leading up to and after the one that gets put in the frame for the family room...this was one of my favorites from tonight.

Silly, silly girls :):)

Monday, May 31, 2010

Family Vacation Part 1

After working registration on Friday and a 2 hour meeting on the Friday afternoon before the Memorial Day holiday (who's idea was that, anyway??), I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get my family ready for our vacation in Destin. 

We were scheduled to leave by noon on Saturday, and I was determined not to lose my mind before we left.  I'm notorious for freaking out a little before I leave to so somewhere...I'm a little OCD about how I like to leave my house when we're going to be gone.  Certain things like dirty laundry and dishes in the sink or dishwasher can make me nuts. 

I wanted to stake my tomato plants before I left, but my Farm and Garden was out of stakes :(  I did not have time nor was I interested in going to Wally World to buy tomato stakes, so hopefully my tomato plants will be ok when I get back. My cucumbers are growing like crazy every day...it's almost as if you can SEE them growing






Our yellow pepper plants keep getting taller and have little buds on them...I'm not sure if the buds are new branches or actually the beginnings of a pepper.

My youngest's watermelons are beginning to spread out...I'm so glad we left them plenty of room to grow.  The last watermelons we grew were very small, but much of the reason was planting them too close together.  Vines have to have room.

I can't wait to see our plants when we get back home; I can only imagine how much they will have grown after not seeing them for 7 days!