Complete

Watching your children grow up is bittersweet. There is that feeling of loss as your babies grow and change becoming more independent and strong. Sometimes learning the lessons of life the hard way and sometimes listening to the advice given them.

There is also that feeling of success when you watch them turning into young adults and you see them make the right choices and step up to the plate and stand for something good.

These moments together remind me of the divine nature of the Lord's plan and make me grateful that he found me worthy enough to be the mother of these four very wonderful, beautiful, funny, kind, loving and strong souls.

Not to mention that they "complete me"

Little Girl

There is that moment as a mother when you realize that your baby girl isn't your baby girl anymore. Of course in your heart she will always be your baby but in reality she will be...

someone's friend

someone's wife

someone's mother

and in the moment you hope that you are doing a good job of raising her so that she will be good at all those things. That she will make friends who won't try to persuade her to try bad things. That she will marry a man who will love her they way you hope she will be loved. That she will be a be a better mother to her children than her own mother was to her. That she may remember always how beautiful, wonderful, cherished and valiant she really is at all times.




And finally you hope that you will always remember these moments

The ones that remind you that she is always your baby girl...




and that will never change no matter how big she gets.

Movie Star

What a sweet young woman to work with. She was fun, kind and wasn't demanding at all. Although there was the caramel incident... hopefully she won't curse me for introducing her to voulez-vous sea salt caramels. Thanks guys for coming up, it was great to visit. Good luck out west.

L's Senior Pics

Graduation is in the air and seniors are so ready for high school to be over. I love this time of year because I get to spend some time with these young kids. They are full of energy, gumption and excitement to be heading out into the world and they are just generally fun to be around.

Gold Cup

Saturday May 1 was not only a big day for Kentucky... Congrats to Calvin Borel and Super Saver by the way. But I'm not here to talk about the Kentucky Derby today even though it is my favorite horse race ever. No today I want to touch on Virginia Gold Cup world famous steeplechase race and the 50,000 other folks who thought it would be a good idea to attend.

Let me start with the buses... oh the buses. They line up and go on an on. There were probably 100 buses there. Bringing 50-60 people to the races. Not to mention all of those who drove their own cars.


We were stationed in a tent on the north end of the field. Here is a view from our left down our section of the rail. People, people and yet more people. All standing around enjoying food and drink. Some a little too much.


This is the view to our right looking out over the tailgating section and in the distance the VIP/members only section. Yet again people, people and more people.


Did I mention the Don's Johns there were LOTS of them there. Some of the tented areas had a John right inside their little fenced area with all the food and drink. Yeah I thought that was kind of gross myself but who am I to judge

But that's not what we really came for. We knew there would be lots of people there and since it was in a field in the middle of nowhere you pretty much had to assume there would lots of Don's Johns. We were right!

What we really came for was the racing.


Being right on the rail was nice once the racing started.


The horses flew by in a blur.


All was going well on the first time around. The horses were moving gracefully everyone was clearing the jumps and they were clipping right along.


On the second round however things went bad. There was an accident on the other side of the field from us, about all we could see was that he fell and didn't get up and they sent the ambulance out. The race of course kept going and as they approached the jump near us this occurred...


First one horse and then...



A second went down. Fortunately no one on our end of the field was hurt but it is still a bit of a heart stopping experience to see. I haven't heard how the jockey from the first accident is doing but hopefully it wasn't too bad.

All in all it was a grand experience that I probably wouldn't pay to attend myself. But I was grateful for the invite, the new people that we meet, the good food, the great company, the beautiful horses, the colorful jockeys and the Don's Johns.