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This winter has been unbelievably mild.  Granted, it’s not like we have harsh winters here anyway, but even by our standards, we’ve had unseasonably warm weather.  Right now, I’m sitting on the couch with the doors open and the sun streaming through the windows.  We’ve had a day or two of sub-sixty degree weather, but for the most part, the temp has hovered around seventy.  The girls seem to find peace and comfort at the beach just like I do, so we’ve spent a lot of time walking the shore and playing in the water over the last couple of months.  (They play in the water a  lot more than I do…even with seventy degree weather, the water still feels chilly to me!)

 

After piano lessons a couple of weeks ago, we headed down to the pass and played on the rocks.  This is one of their favorite places to go.  I enjoy it……the beach feels massive here because there’s water on both sides.  It makes me feel really small and insignificant which I firmly believe is good for your soul.  Because if you feel small and insignificant, how can your problems be anything but small?  This time of year, the beach is pretty much deserted, a true secret paradise.

Enough talking…here are the pictures form our outing…I think we’ll be heading out again very soon!

 

 

 

 

 

Looking west across the pass…

 

 

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It’s a dreary first day of February here…the rain has been steadily tap, tap, tapping on the roof for hours.  It’s not cold; it’s not hot; it’s just miserable.  But, there’s a pot of curried pumpkin soup on the stove (yum) and Valentine’s Puppy Chow cooling on sheets of wax paper in the kitchen.  Abigail and I are taking a sick day from church tonight (she’s running a slight fever and I’ve pulled my back out yet again).  As gray as the day is though, I am so glad that it’s February.  I am glad to say goodbye to January.

The month certainly wasn’t without its high points.  We took our first trip to Disney with the added bonus of going with my sister and her family.  Gracie celebrated her 8th birthday in grand style.  We celebrated Chinese New Year and Gracie brought home a good report card.  We went to the beach several times and had a wonderful dinner at my favorite restaurant with some dear friends.  Not much to complain about.

Still, as delightful as parts of January were, there were still parts that tried my very patience.  Like Monday morning. I woke up and, as I always do, booted up my server so I could do some database work.  Or at least I tried to boot the server.  Two seconds after I pushed the power button, a message flashed on the black screen:  “No boot device available.”  Sigh.  Unfortunately, missing boot drives are bad news.  Fortunately, we live in an amazing time, particularly for wannabe computer repair techs with access to Google.  I found a cool little universal drive adapter that lets you pull out a hard drive and hook it up to a USB port.  I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived on Tuesday.  I pulled both drives out of the dead server and tested them.  Luckily, one of the drives was just fine.  Unfortunately, the other one still wasn’t recognized.  I am not the best at backing up my data.  I know, I know, believe me I know.  Most of my data is backed up in different locations, but it’s not exactly systematic and there was information on that drive that I really would have liked to have back, mostly pictures of the girls.  So, yesterday, I went on a quest and after tons of on-line searching and talking with Seagate (the manufacturer of the drive), I was able to restore the partition on the drive and get the data back.  Yay! Was it worth all that trouble?  I’d say definitely.  I found a slew of pictures that I’d forgotten all about.  Looking through the folders on the drive last night was taking a wonderful walk through my memories of the last few years.  Sometimes, losing things is the best way to find them again.

 

This picture is Gracie a couple of weeks before she started kindergarten.  I remember the simplicity of that summer…months without a schedule…the time before school and all its scheduling started, the summer before my father got sick.  It was a blissful time and it felt good last night to pull this picture up and remember it and to remind myself that life is not always as hectic as it feels now.

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I am pretty sure I am the only person in the entire history of the universe who dreads going to Disney World.  I know I am an abomination, but I just can’t help it.

We’d been planning a trip to Orlando with my sister and her family for almost two years.  One thing or another kept getting in the way, but finally, finally, we all got our acts together and made the trek down to the Mecca of commercialism in January.

I was thrilled to be taking a vacation and over the moon about getting to spend some time with my sister and her family.  But, honestly, I was not excited about Disney.  I’m not even sure I can tell you why.

Part of me despises the whole “Oh, you have to take your children to Disney because it is the most magical, beautiful place on Earth.”  People, I’ve watched the sun come up over the Irish countryside and I’ve climbed to the top of El Castillo at Chichen Itza.  I have felt the mist from the English Channel brush my face on the ferry between Dover and Calais.  You can’t convince me that the slightly freakish It’s A Small World puppets can compete with any of that.

Then there’s the silly argument that went on in my head debating the idea of taking Gracie, who hates crowds, loud noises, feeling out of control to a place full of tons of people, lot of strange noises where she’s at the mercy of snaking lines (albeit beautifully designed snaking lines).

Honestly, though, I think what I was dreading most was failing.  Something about a trip to Disney just sets you up with so many expectations.  And I just knew that the trip couldn’t possibly live up to everyone’s expectations.  Steve, who was looking forward to having fun with his girls and relaxing and enjoying family time.  Abigail who was so excited about going to Cinderella’s castle that she could not contain herself for a month before we left.  Gracie who wanted to visit every single country at Epcot.  And me.  I ‘m not sure what I expected.  I think mostly I expected to be let down.  Turns out, not a single one of our expectations were met.  Steve didn’t get to spend much time relaxing at all.  Gracie didn’t visit a single country and Epcot.  Abigail didn’t get to go inside Cinderella’s castle because she was sick and by the time she felt well enough to visit the Magic Kingdom, the castle was closed.  And, me, well I wasn’t let down.  Steve may not have relaxed, but he did ride the teacups with his girls and laughed until he could barely talk.  Gracie didn’t visit any country in Epcot, but she got over her fear and rode the Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom at least ten times.  Abigail didn’t see the castle but she discovered a passion for saving endangered animals after rescuing a baby elephant from poachers on the Safari trip.

While we were waiting for the bus our first day in Orlando, I spied this little bird hopping around as if he didn’t have a care in the world.  As I watched him flit from one spot of the bus stop to another, looking for whatever crumbs anyone may have dropped, I started to relax and let the joy of being with my family wash over me.  Disney may not be the most beautiful, magical place in the world, but it certainly does have a magic all its own and who was I to resist.

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Posted in Places We've Been

I love this girl. so much.  She is funny and goofy and stubborn and kind and sweet.  She is closest in age of all the cousins to Gracie and probably gets her more than anyone.  They fight light cats in a bathtub sometimes, but I’ve seen Emmie be kind to Gracie when Gracie needs it if even she doesn’t deserve kindness.  Emmie’s laugh is contagious.  And, she loves my homemade projects more than anyone else in the entire world.

I made these shirt for the girls for Christmas for our upcoming Disney trip.  Peace, Love, and Mickey Mouse just seemed like a good theme for our visit (what?  You don’t have themes for your trips?).  When Emmie opened her box she smiled and said thank you.  Even though it was obvious they all four liked their matching shirts, none of the girls were exactly dancing around the room.  They were shirts after all, not American Girl doll clothes or horse accessories.    My sister quietly said to Emmie, “Did you know that’s an Aunt Daffy shirt?”  and Emmie’s face lit up.  “You made it?” she asked and the shirt, in her mind, was instantly elevated to something else entirely.  I’ve made her t-shirts using whatever is my craft medium of the time since she was a little bitty girl. She is sometimes the reason I keep crafting, just to see that smile on her face when I give her an Aunt Daffy shirt.   Yep, I love that girl.

When the girls got dressed that morning, they looked so cute!  I loved how Emmie added her Happy Birthday pin over the peace sign on her shirt.  It looked great!  I was particularly worried that morning because Abigail’s temperature was back up really high again and she just looked very sick.  Steve decided to take her to the urgent care clinic in Orlando (her second visit in four days).  I was more than a little stressed, but I still noticed how cute the girls looked in their shirts.

It wasn’t until later in the afternoon, after Abigail returned from the doctor with a new antibiotic and a confirmation that nothing was seriously wrong, that I learned the secret of the pin over the peace sign on Emmie’s shirt.  Do you see it in the picture?  Yep!  You see it.  I put the peace sign upside down on her shirt.  Emmie’s shirt said Mercedes. Love. Mickey Mouse.  She had put the birthday pin on over the Mercedes sign because she knew I was worried about Abigail and she didn’t want me to be upset about her messed up shirt.  See?  Even my nine-year-old niece knows I have a perfectionist streak!  Once she took the pin off, I just laughed and laughed and laughed some more.  I have issues with peace signs all the time.  I can never, ever, remember if the lines point up or down.  But, really, the peace sign isn’t the important symbol on this shirt.  And neither is the mouse ear symbol.  The important symbol on all their shirts is the heart.  I am so blessed to love and be loved by all four of these girls.  Little girls who love me enough to proudly wear a Mercedes, Love, and Mickey Mouse shirt.

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Posted in Crafts,Holidays,Valentine's Day

So, I find all these awesome things on Pinterest and on craft and food blogs that I read and in magazines at the check-out line in Publix.  I don’t try all of them (really, I’d have to be ten people with five lifetimes each to be able to complete even of 1/3 of the things I’d like to try).  But, the girls and I do try new things each month.  Sometimes, they turn out wonderfully and sometimes, well not so much (see these).  I thought I’d start posting my results with our experiments, mostly so you can see what happens when real people attempt some of the crafts/recipes that are all over the web and in magazines.

Last year, the girls and I made their school Valentines.  I can’t tell you how much fun we had making them and I got the added bonus of having willing participants for a mini photo session so we could get the pictures for Gracie’s cards.

 

I found the idea for Abigail’s cards at Family Fun.  They were fairly straightforward.  The hardest part was finding the shovels.  I found them at Giant Party Store.  They turned out cute and Abigail enjoyed helping to make them.

I found the idea for Gracie’s cards here.  I showed them to Gracie and she was so excited to try them.  So, after ballet one day, I changed the girls into their heart shirts and we tried to get just the right picture at the right angle.  The trick is to make sure that your little valentine is holding her hand out far enough that you get the illusion of depth and also make sure that her hand is not in front of her face.  Luckily, we got this one:

Then, it was just a matter of printing them out at 4X6 and cutting a slit for the the sucker to go through.  We mounted them on card stock to give them a little more stability.  This was our end result.

 

Gracie was thrilled to take those cards into school.  I couldn’t have been happier with the way they turned out.  Sometimes, trying new things ends up with great results!  I’m not sure what we’re going to do this year for Valentines.  I think it will be hard to top last year’s, but I have a couple of ideas that might work!

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