cousins + mountains + 4th of July = GOOD TIMES

NYR 7-3-11 - early Independence Day

For hot dogs and potato chips and baked beans...

In the beautiful western NC mountains...

With my aunts and uncles and grandmother and cousin and sister and mother and all our assorted children and spouses (except for Jimmy :-( )...

To celebrate the independence of a great nation...

I am truly thankful.

NYR 7-2-11 - playing in the creek

For cousins reunited and playing for hours in a mountain creek, I am truly thankful.

(Pictures will one day be forthcoming once I figure out how to connect my laptop to my mom's internet. In the likely event that never happens, you'll see pictures in late August.)

5-20-11 - aye matey!

Tonight the three of us went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. That's part 4 of this series in case you haven't been counting.

We promised Mac we'd go see it on opening night, but unfortunately I never got to the theater earlier this week to buy the tickets ahead of time. I've learned time and time again that failure to buy ahead of time is a big mistake here in Bogota (for "big deal movies" or even average cultural events), but I never remember the lesson.

So when I finally rolled up at the theater around 2pm yesterday, there were about 9 seats left, all in the first three rows.

That means we watched 2 hours of Captain Jack Sparrow.

In 3D.

From the 3rd row.

That's a lot of Captain Jack Sparrow.

Sounds like heaven, right?

I dozed for a few minutes in the beginning, but overall, the Story family's movie review is a solid two thumbs up.

Johnny Depp is his usual fabulous self, Penelope Cruz makes a great pirate, and Geoffrey Rush is always wonderful in anything. And the mermaids? Well, if you haven't seen the movie yet, these are you not your average Little Mermaids. It might be a Disney movie, but these sirens of the sea could not hang out with Mickey Mouse at the Castle. YIKES!

Great movie, great outing with my boys, and for that, I'm truly thankful.

NYR 5-14-11 - a day of family

Last weekend was pretty hectic - a lot of fun but fairly nonstop. So this weekend we made a conscious decision to lay low and just hang out together. Today was the epitome of a "lay low and hang out together" kind of day. We started the morning with 2 hours of tennis classes, shared between Jimmy, Mac and me. Then we ate lunch at Burger King. Then we went shopping to buy the most fabulous fire pit EVER for our terrace. Then we came home and hung out until Jimmy cooked us chicken wings. We watched one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and went to bed.

For perfect days from start to finish with my peeps, I'm truly thankful.

NYR 3-7-11 - on the occasion of our 13th wedding anniversary

Some days, I'm pretty sure I stepped into my mother's grown-up life.

How can I be almost 40 with an 8 year-old, celebrating my 13th wedding anniversary today when I still feel like a 20-something year-old?

Sometimes I feel like I have no idea how that happened, but I can tell you that it's gone by in the blink of an eye.

13 years?

POOF!

And it's been bigger and better and more fun than anything I could have ever imagined for my life.

For the charmed life that I live with my love and my son, I am so eternally and truly and profoundly grateful. Happy Anniversary, Babe!

NYR 3-1-11

For a mother who taught me how to cook and gave me confidence to try new recipes, I am truly thankful.

NYR 2-6-11 - a reflection on my dad

This morning while perusing the New York Times online, I read the "quotation of the day" which was by a guy named Colin Archipley, a Marine Corps infantry sergeant turned organic farmer: "In the military, grunts are the guys who get dirty, do the work and are generally underappreciated. I think farmers are the same."

My dad - a farmer for his entire life - has now been dead for a few years, but he remains larger than life in my mind and in my life. He got dirty, did the hard work and may have been underappreciated for his life's work as a farmer, but he was certainly not underappreciated as a person, husband or father.

He was a good person and a great man - patient, tolerant, sympathetic, understated, inspirational, funny and a friend to many. He was a calm presence when things weren't always calm. He suffered from so many health problems but never once complained or stopped going when it must have required some pretty amazing supernatural powers just to get out of bed. As his preacher said during his funeral service, he loved God, his family, and his farm in that order.

For a father who still motivates me, inspires me and whose presence I feel daily, I am most truly and profoundly grateful.

Look at these sweet faces:



These boys are my adorable, precious nephews, and today they were in a serious car accident with their babysitter on the way to their preschool. The boys, thank God, are fine thanks to God's grace and good carseats. Those poor babies had to be transported in an ambulance by themselves because the police wouldn't let my brother and sister-in-law through the roadblock to get to the accident site before the ambulance left. My mom was the first one to get to the hospital and as soon as they saw her, those brave little boys became hysterical, I'm sure with just the relief of seeing somebody they recognized and loved.

The babysitter did not fare as well. The airbag in her car didn't deploy and she has suffered some rather serious facial breaks and lacerations. She's scheduled for surgery at 7am in the morning. She's a young woman who's just graduated from college, her closest family is in the Northeast, and she is understandably nervous about having her face operated on with no real support network here other than my brother's family and her close college friends.

Would you remember her in a prayer as she comes to mind? I'd love for her to feel the comfort of those prayers and to feel peace and calm before she enters surgery tomorrow. She's in very capable hands at the Medical University of South Carolina, but we're also praying for steady hands and good decision-making on the part of her surgeon.

Thank you from my family to yours.

my family is full of Poohs

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh", said Piglet, at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.

-A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh