He was right

Each day of the week, Emma gets dressed. And since this semester is the first time since she began college we're home together every morning, I've not had to participate in the dressing of Emma. Each morning she gets dressed is a group project for the two of us. She begins in her bedroom gathering preliminary elements of her outfit for the day, and once that's finished, my participation becomes necessary.

Sidebar, this is how I get dressed. Find some pants that match a shirt and stick my feet in some shoes. BOOM!

That's not Emma's approach. She may come in the den with some amount of clothes and ask my opinion. She may ask me if something needs ironing. When the answer is yes, that article of clothing is quickly jettisoned. We have talks about shoes and heights of shoes and colors of shoes. We discuss the sincerity of my answers. Then there's the inevitable discussion about belts and colors of belts and widths of belts. And we discuss the sincerity of my answers. After she bought new clothes in Little Rock we discussed her concern over "wasting a new outfit" on a day when not enough people could appreciate it.

It all numbs my mind.

Then the other day as we were having another clothing discussion, I remembered something Gran said about her and it made me laugh. He often said he wished he could see what she was gonna be like when she grew up, because she had "champagne tastes." Even watching her as a little girl he knew it. And he was right. I don't know what made him know it. It's not like she loved Christian Dior when she was 8 years old. But he knew. So the other day I told her I wished he were here to see that he was very right. That she's exactly who he said she'd be. We laughed and she agreed. It made me wish he was here so he could see. I'd love to see him talk with my kids.

I'd love to sit and listen to them talk together.  

He knew this......

Notice the speedy Olivia in the background.

Would become this....

He was very wise.

Happy almost 105th birthday Truly.

Wish you were here. 

Goodbye old backdoor

Well I have more bad news. I think I told people a long time ago that blogger updated their format for posting and I pretty much hated it. So when that happened, I searched online and found a back door to the old way of doing things and I've been using it for over a year. It worked all through the Florida posts and my camera phone posts and then I began my break from posting.

The other day I decided to begin working on the Labor Day stuff, and I discovered something awful. They took out my backdoor. They just took it out. Just imagine a quaint old clapboard house with the loveliest small windowed backdoor with shabby, old, yellowed paint reminding you of yesteryear. I love yesteryear. And then imagine the lovely backdoor protected by a quaint screen door to allow for maximum cool breezes on hot summer days. And each time you opened it, it squeaked perfectly, just like screen doors are supposed to.

Then imagine the homeowner deciding the old screen door was stupid and ridiculous, even though some people were still captured by its charm. And then the stupid homeowner just rips the door out of the jam and sets it on the street for trash! Now it's just trash! Well, that just happened. My lovely little backdoor was ripped from my existence. I'm so sad and highly annoyed.

A bit dramatic? Maybe. But I don't care. And now that I have to learn the new stupid way to do it, posts may be even longer coming. And look who you're missing as I have to figure this out.

Cutie pie will be in flux as I learn the new way.

Pictures are now in the middle instead of off to the side, which I might actually like better but it's still stupid.

And if I get a comment/lecture about old versus new, I will cut you.....from my followers.


Don't do it!

Later lecturers.

Reassessing, William and football

In a terrible twist of fate, the black speck that caused ME to cause the death of my iPhone camera.....is now gone. It's unbefreaking. If only I'd let it be, it's highly likely I'd still have a working camera. I took this photo this afternoon while waiting to take Caitlin to lunch to get a smoothie. It's the parking lot. If I hadn't told you, you'd never have known. Unbefreaking.

It pains me physically.

So after we got her smoothie, Caitlin told me to take the long way back to work, and I said, "Does the long way include going into (a certain neighborhood)?" And she said, "Yeah you can go there." And then I said, "Does going into that neighborhood mean going to see William and Lindsey?" And she said, "Yeah because I haven't seen him in 2 weeks."

And Willie D was all like, "Who's that come knockin at my door?"


It was Kit Kat skippin out of work.


Cuter by the day.


This picture makes him look like he has giant baby arms. His arms were not giant today, this only made them look like it.


Then I took Caitlin back to work. Then Emma and Olivia, who were also on campus, dropped the car for Caitlin and I brought them home. Then I got Owen from school and he dropped me at work and then he went home. Then Emma and Olivia picked me up from work and Caitlin brought the other car home. It's called creative car usage when you have more people than vehicles. It can be exhausting.

Since Saturday we've soaked up as much ESPN news about ULM beating Arkansas last Saturday. It's been SO MUCH FUN. After MANY years of losing seasons for our school, this has been a blast! All my girls plus Maggie went to the game in Little Rock, and what they got was an unforgettable memory of a fun and fantastic day.


So that night John and I were watching the game and near the end I got so nervous, I left the room and John was giving me play by play. I have NO IDEA why it's better that way, but it is. Then I came back in the room to bravely watch the finish, and when ULM won, I was SCREAMING in my den like a mad person. It was so exciting and almost made me cry. I don't know why sports stuff brings a tear, but it does. Then later that night I went to Melanie's and we searched her tape of the game and found our girls more than once. And of course I took still pics of them with my iPad.

Caitlin isn't wearing a weird hat, there was a lady shaking a pom pom behind her head.


Emma sat down and therefore wasn't easily seen.


Then the celebration began, that's Emma and Maggie.


Because the final score was this.


So then much later that night Lucy and Ethel, also known as Melanie and Lisa drove out to the campus (in our pj's) to see the football boys drive in on the buses. And once again, it brought a tear. I have no pictures but instead I have video that I can't make work on here. So just imagine, lots of people, police escorts and 3 huge buses coming in to the cheers of the crowd. It was awesome. So happy for them and for the little university that could.

And since I started this post waaaaay earlier in the night and just now finished it, I'm exhausted and going to bed. Because even though the post time says 7:26, it's really exactly 2:00am, because it's when you start the post that's recorded and not when you finish. And that's just another thing that makes me crazy when doing this. Because I like the posting time to be accurate, because I'm talking about today being Monday when I wrote this and not today being Tuesday when it was posted. If you don't understand don't worry about it. Just know it drives me nuts.

I'm out like a tree that leaves.

GO WARHAWKS!!

The saga of my phone camera

I have some really bad news for myself. My phone camera is dead. Well, it's not really dead, but it's as doomed as anything ever was. It all began two weeks ago when I took this picture of Caitlin sitting in a chair like any normal 23 year old. At the time, I didn't notice anything because of the dark green chair hiding the problem.


So then a little later that same day as I was waiting in line for the bathroom in my own house, I looked down and saw Milo inside my bedroom trying to get me.


And then I went into my bedroom and Milo tried to get me again.

And that's when I noticed the black speck in the photo, and I became concerned. So I took some more pictures and confirmed what I already feared. I had a black speck inside my camera lens.

So when I showed it to John, he offered to try to get the speck out, and since he's pretty handy, I agreed. Well, he used some canned air to try to blow it out and when that didn't work, he asked permission to open the back and see if he could get it from the inside. Now this isn't a blame John for my phone camera being ruined, however it is an indictment on two idiots agreeing to open an Apple device and go "digging around" inside. So after the failed attempt at getting the speck out from the inside, he put it back together. And when I took a picture, not only did I have more black specks, there was an added bonus of a thin, highly annoying green line across the screen. UGH. So let's assess shall we? I started out with one black speck on my screen and after the "fix it" attempt I had MULTI specks and a green line. Soooooo annoyed.

Now, fast forward to being in Texas when I decided to open my phone camera with the hope that Jesus had fixed it for me rather than an Apple tech telling me there was nothing they could do. Much to my dismay I discovered not only did I still have multi black specks and a green line, I now had added multi lines as well as the loss of all color, as seen below.


So lets reassess shall we? I started out with one black speck, then added more black specks a green line, PLUS multi lines and colorless everything. It was a terribly disturbing progression.

Because of these developments, photo documentation of my every day life that always includes weird events has come to a screeching halt. If I'm at home and I see something weird or interesting, I can take a photo with my iPad. But if I'm on the go, I got nothing. Whipping out an iPad in Wal Mart to sneak a photo of something or someone would be ridiculous. If my daughters are near by, I can try to commandeer one of their phones and take a pic, but then I have to send it to myself, and then download it onto my computer, and it's just the worst first world problem. So now I'm in desperate need for Apple to announce the release of the iPhone 5 at a reasonable price so I can get back to the business of documenting life as I see it.

And even though the black speck's in this photo, here's an example of life at my house. A couple months ago John "rescued" a box turtle in the street and brought it home, and not long after the turtle came to reside here, it was seen digging a hole for the purpose of laying eggs. Then two weeks ago, Olivia found this baby in the yard.

Now that's fresh out of the egg.

After much searching, it was the only one found. And so the next question was, what to do with it. Because we have 2 cats and 2 dogs, with one of them being Addy, there was much discussion about little turtle being supper for someone. Then a brilliant plan was hatched. On our trip to Texas, we would take little turtle and release it there. Once at the farm, there was more discussion about where to release the tiny turtle. I wanted to release it on the farm so when we came back to visit, he would come up and say hey and we could reconnect. Then Lindsey callously stated, "You're just gonna have to let that dream go." Whatevs.

Finally other people decided to take it to a neighbor's property that had a stream and trees, and so when I say the turtle was taken to live in the country, I'm telling the truth and it's not a metaphor for "turtle heaven."

He traveled to Texas in a shoe box. He's so tiny.


He almost has the same affinity for a photo shoot as Emma and Mollie.


And then after picture taking, he went to live in the big open country.


At this place in Texas.


And I fear we will never see him again.

Godspeed little turtle. Godspeed.

The Texas trip will be forthcoming, but not today and probably not tomorrow, maybe not even this week.

Cause I don't want to.

Later ninja dudes.

I forgot something big!

I completely forgot to post the all inclusive well dressed family photo on the beach! I don't know how I skipped it, but I did. So here it is. I love it. Maybe one of my favorite photos ever. So just when I thought Florida was finished, it pulls me back in! And NOW I think it's done. At least I hope so.





Later beachy peeps.