Little Turtle

These pics were taken today. Chad found a little turtle on the trail when he was running and brought it back for the girls to see. They were very taken with every aspect of this little turtle. : )

Little Miss Personality

She reminds me of Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 doing "the thriller." : )

Glam-

-or-

-ous

Painting on a Lazy Afternoon

Sharing the easel

Watercolors

Ava painted lots of "pots" (spots), "tars" (stars), and "moooon" (moon).

Sweet Ava

Fall Days

My Jules

My Ava on a big swing! She loves it and swings like this for ten, fifteen or more minutes at a time.

Best Buds

Walking on the trail to feed the fish.

A Hansel & Gretel moment.

"Ooo. Ish. Eat it. Num-num ish."

75 degrees baby!

"Sitting" on the dock of the pond, "wastin' time."

Little Red Boots

Ava loves her latest consignment store purchase!

Lucy and Ethel in the ATL

Girls Weekend!

Art imitating life? Or...

Life imitating art?...

The High Museum where we saw the "History Remixed" exhibit, which is a compilation of photography documenting the Civil Rights Movement.

Me and Monique

Botanical Gardens with city view

Isn't this just a lovely plant?

She's always been one of those deep thinker types : )

There was this really cool art piece right in the middle of the gardens. It was made of what appeared to be a marble table-top with large ceramic balls rolling about the top. The fencing around the perimeter was made from some type of elastic material and caused the balls to bounce off the sides. The cool part was this...when the balls stopped moving viewers were asked to clap loudly in order to start the balls moving again. So we stood for a moment and contemplated just how this whole thing worked. Very interesting. : )

My girls would have died over these turtles. So cute!

The Anthropologie window display...pretty cool, huh?

Pottery Barn, in person, ahhhh.

I probably spent at least two hours walking and retracing my footsteps in Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn. It was a living magazine for me. Loved it!

I didn't have to work very hard to envision this dining table back at my place. Unfortunately, it was too hard to block out the vision of a giant hole in my checking account. Alas... : )

Back in 2000 I worked with a woman, BG, whose husband had been in the Marines for twenty-eight years. Chad and I had only been married a year and we were living in D.C. while he went to The Basic School. BG was a wealth of knowledge and taught me a lot about the Marine Corps through a wife's eyes. She told me I would meet some great friends along the way, but I would meet one friend who would be a friend for life. A Lucy and Ethel type. Someone who was a kindred spirit.

Monique and I met at a Marine Corps party because our husbands worked together. There were many things that struck me about Monique: she was fabulously witty, confident and yet humble, could hold her own with the guy talk (and there's a lot of that in the Marine Corps), super smart, polite yet throws in some shock and awe for good measure, and well, just all together terrific. I liked her instantly. The four of us became good friends over the next years.

Today, both of our husbands are out of the Marine Corps and we live hundreds of miles from each other. We try to write and talk as often as we can. Recently we were able to spend a weekend together in Atlanta where we took in some culture, some botanical gardens, some terrific Greek tappas, a lovely glass of white wine, politics talk, theology talk, "Christmas morning breakfast", and window shopping. Oh. It did the soul good. : )

I have an "open door policy"

Yesterday, I received this nice email from my friend Dallas.

"ok, jenn, because you opened the door...to your spelling gaffes, i did notice another one. in the "about me" section on your blog, you wrote "breath" when you meant "breathe." i did notice the "kudzu" mistake before, but i didn't want to say anything because people can get quite offended if you point out spelling errors. ;-) "

Let me first point out, I never knew what great editors I had in my friends. : ) I mean, if I ever draft a book I will publish it here first because I think you guys would do a TERRIFIC job. : )

Dallas was right about a couple things. The first one being the "e" in breathe. The second one being how offended people get if you point out spelling errors, or any error for that matter. A spelling error is a spelling error, if you ask me. It's not an indictment. And even though I make a zillion spelling and grammatical errors each year, alas, I still wake up breathing. There are bigger fish to fry.

As I read her email, I pondered this thought: It seems so often we are embarrassed for things we shouldn't be. Like being caught without make-up (gasp) or having someone stop by when your house isn't clean (ah!) or forgetting to make something for the pot-luck (insolent fool)or wearing the same dress as another mom! (The horror. The complete and utter horror.)

Then, there's all the stuff that should completely unnerve us, but it doesn't. Like:

• Like paying $698 for one of these. Or...
• Gossiping about our friends and family and people we care about most. Or...
• Taking our children to the park and talking on the cell phone the entire time we're there. Or...
• Using the word "retarded." Or...
• Four hours on facebook. Or...
• Getting drunk...(or more specifically the things one does and says when drunk) Or...
• Being Pro-Choice and never directly supporting the choice "to have a child." Or...
• Being Pro-Life and never directly supporting a woman who is choosing "to have a child." Or...
• Putting down the stay-at-home-mom for "going-crazy" at home and "not reaching for her full potential" and "throwing her college education down the toilet" Or...
• Putting down the working mom for "putting herself first" or "not caring about her kids" Or...
• Putting down the homeschooling mother for "raising weird kids" or "being too overprotective" Or...
• Putting down mothers who send their kids to "the evil public school system" Or...
• Not letting the other mother with a screaming kid get in front of you at the grocery store because, hey, you were there first. Or...
• Listening to Jessica Simpson. ; ) Or...
• When you are running for President and your grandma poses for a photo holding a chicken. (Forgive me, I couldn't help myself. And besides, I never promised you a bi-partisan blog. ; )

I mean, if I'm going to go through that icky stomach feeling, possible hives, light-headedness...you know, true symptoms of embarrassment. Please let it be for something worthy.

Going forward. Please feel free to correct my misspellings, the spinach in my front teeth, and if I use the words "foie gras" when I mean "faux pas." No worries. More importantly though, help me live an honorable life by not letting me really embarrass myself. Don't let me be a hypocrite to my code of beliefs. It's my spirit that wants to be refined, much more than my vocabulary. Do this with your kind and direct words. And do this with your actions. Let your actions remind me that we're in this together as women and mothers. So at the end of the day our only worries can be the extra "t" in bitten and my flagrant abuse of ellipses. ; )