Yellow River Game Ranch

Today we went to the Yellow River Game Ranch in Lilburn. Jessica took her camera and took lots of pictures and videos. Here are several pictures she took (except the ones she's in, which Elyse took):

In the car on the way home, Elyse played with her Merida doll:

This is the first frame from a video of Elyse singing "Let It Go" from Frozen:

(You can't play the video from here, despite the little "MOVIE" icon on the bottom left corner. Sorry!)

Jessica and Daddy at Vines Gardens

This afternoon Jessica and I went to Vines Gardens for a nice long walk and to take some pictures. Jessica brought her camera, and took lots of very good pictures and also quite a bit of video.

Here are some of the pictures I took:

This is a faux-painting version of one of my pictures:

Here, Jessica takes a picture of a frog in one of the fountains (which wasn't on at the time):

Here's the frog (though this is actually a picture I took):

Jessica's Awards Ceremony

Today was the final awards ceremony at Jessica's school. She received an E/S Honor Roll Certificate, as she has throughout the year (for getting all E's and S's on her report card), and also, for the first time, the Citizenship Award!

We are very proud of our little girl!

Incredibly enough, Jessica is only two days short of being done with first grade. Where did this year go?

Elyse's Ballet Recital

Today Elyse's ballet class had their recital! She was very excited about it, and it went very well.

Ms. Brooke helps Elyse get her hair into the required ballerina bun:

Elyse makes her entrance:

And the girls dance!

Elyse with her best friend and her best friend's sister:

Christmas Day 1973, Tucker, Georgia: For Sharon

When I think about happy times and happy places, this is a perfect distillation of what I see--not just this day, but any day when all of us cousins gathered together in that red-brick house, surrounded by our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, with the swing set and playhouse in the back, and the apple trees to climb, and the metal storage building where Pa kept his riding lawn mower out back, and the train set in the attic, and running and laughing and arguing and yelling and eating, and sometimes TV, and not wanting to go home at the end of the day.

It was so wonderful to be young, and to have siblings and cousins to share it with, and an abundance of grown-ups who loved us.

I wish we could go back and do it all over again. I wouldn't change a thing.

* * *

Very early this morning my cousin Sharon, topmost in the picture above, left us after a year-long battle with a rare form of brain cancer.

I can't believe she's gone.

How can it have been forty years already since this picture was taken? How can it go by so quickly?

Goodbye, Sharon. I'm grateful we had so many times like the one shown above. I'm so sorry you had to leave so early.