Callaway Gardens

Today we drove two hours southwest to Pine Mountain, Georgia, to go to Callaway Gardens. Elyse has been every interested in butterflies lately, and she was very excited about visiting the Day Butterfly Center, and there are lots of other good things to see there too.

Here's Elyse, dreaming about butterflies before we went into the butterfly environment:

The girls, watching the butterfly video:

Elyse, waiting for a butterfly to land on her:

A macro shot of butterflies eating an apple:

(Gross, I know.)

A macro shot of Elyse:

Mommy and Jessica:

A barred owl (or was it a barn owl?) during the Birds of Prey show:

A red-shouldered hawk in the Birds of Prey show:

Relaxing outside the Discovery Center:

Inside the Horticultural Center:

Callaway Gardens is a great place to visit, and only about 110 miles away from us--closer than Rock City! We'll be going back again soon.

Sharon, Christmas 2008

The last few days I've been organizing and archiving the thousands of pictures I have spread across several hard drives and flash drives. Among the many files, I found this picture, from December 27, 2008, of my cousin Sharon, who left us five months ago today.

Finding this picture made me feel at once very happy and terribly sad.

Stone Mountain Lasershow

Tonight we went to the Lasershow at Stone Mountain (or, to be exact, the "Lasershow Spectacular in Mountainvision"), which Jessica and Mommy had never seen.

If she has her way, Jessica will never see it again. It was very loud and there were lots of people, and the fireworks really freaked her out. After about ten minutes she and I walked back to the parking lot, she with her hands over her ears the whole way, and sat in the car until it was over. She kept asking, "Are there going to be more fireworks? Tell me before there's more fireworks."

But at least we had a good time before the show:

Family Reunion

Yesterday, shortly after Jessica's Girl Scouts meeting, we drove down to Covington to my mother's cousin's house to attend the Perry-East-Taylor family reunion.

There were somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 people there, representing (as best I can tell) about four generations of various parts of my family. It was really good to be there with them all, even if I didn't get to talk to everyone. Some of them I haven't seen in three or four decades; some of them I'd never even met (and in some cases still haven't).

Here are some pictures of the goings-on at the reunion:

Jessica Becomes a Brownie

This morning, Jessica's Girl Scouts troop had their bridging ceremony to mark the girls' transition from Daisies to Brownies. It was a little hard for Jessica--she had to stand up at the front with the other girls, which makes her very anxious--but she survived it, and now she's a Brownie!

Elyse Before Gabe's Party

Today Elyse went to a birthday party for one her St. Matthew's preschool classmates, Gabe. She wanted to get dressed up for the party, and then she wanted me to take pictures of her. I was, of course, happy to oblige.

Jessica Gardening

Jessica has been working on a garden in the backyard:

Our First Date!

Fifteen years ago today, Anna and I went on our first date!

We met for supper at the Marco Polo Chinese restaurant in Roswell. I'm not sure she realized it was a date, since her main objective was getting me to come speak to her fourth grade class, but I thought of it as a date.

It was also, coincidentally, the same day that I bought my first digital camera (a Kodak DC210 Plus, which I still have). I used it to take a couple of pictures of us that night, though not together:

I was only 32 in the picture above, and Anna was only 23 in this one:

We went out again the following Saturday (August 14, and it was clearly a date--I made sure of that when I asked her to go), this time to the zoo. Here's a picture I took that day of Anna and her cats:

Happy Anniversary, Annie! I'm so happy to have you!

A Trip to the Zoo with Elyse

Today Elyse and I went to the zoo! She starts school the week after next, so we don't have too many days left to go on these adventures.

We rode the carousel and the train! (But I didn't take any pictures of the train.)

Jessica's First Day of Second Grade

Today was Jessica's first day of second grade!

She's in Ms. Ward's class this year, up on the second floor of the building. She was nervous this morning, but also excited.

Elyse spent the night at Granny and Pa's house last night so Jessica and Anna and I could watch a movie the night before the first day of school and have an evening focused on Jessica, and so I could walk Jessica in this morning.

My Family, Circa 1980

This is my new favorite picture:

I believe it's from around 1980. I know for sure it was taken at my grandmother's house in Tucker; that's her chair my dad's sitting in.

What I love so much about seeing these old pictures, apart from seeing myself and my brother and parents from so many years ago (Dad was only about 35 in this picture, twelve years younger than I am now!), is seeing the surroundings that at the time I took for granted but which now I look back on with great nostalgia. The built-in bookcases on the left of the picture; the stacking containers on the shelf just to the left of Dad; the skeins of yarn on the shelf in the background, just to the left of my head; the basket with more yarn on the floor, to the right of Mom; those thin, homemade books stacked on the shelf just behind Jeff, which I know contained my grandmother's poems and stories; the pole lamp with those elaborate globes; the small grandfather clock behind me; the oil lamp on the top shelf, and the pictures of Delores and Wayne beside it; the wood paneling of the room; the green linoleum floor...

I miss it all so much. The people in the pictures are most important, of course, but it all matters, every bit of it. Each skein of yarn is precious, now, more than three decades later.

Stone Mountain Lasershow with Elyse

Tonight Elyse and I went to the Stone Mountain Lasershow. She was very excited about it, mostly, I think, because she was expecting a lot of fireworks. There were some fireworks, but also some periods during songs while there were only laser-made cartoons cavorting on the mountain, and Elyse would lean back against me and say, "This is boring." However, they did include part of "Let it Go" from Frozen in the playlist, and that was pretty exciting to her. Also, she seemed to think that Stone Mountain is a kind of giant TV; I tried to explain to her that they were drawing those things on the mountain with lasers, kind of like the laser pointer we use to play with the cats sometimes. I think she understood.

The lawn was only half full, probably because it's a Sunday night and also because it has been raining off and on a lot of the day. It didn't rain at all during the show, but the ground was already soaked by the time we got there, and it didn't take long before our bottoms were too.

Elyse was a little scared of the dark as we were leaving, and also of the cat we saw slinking around Memorial Hall. She wasn't scared at first; she wanted to pet it, but I said, "Be careful, that's probably a wild cat." After that she was afraid of the cat and asked several times, "Why are there round cats?" (Apparently she doesn't know the world "wild" very well.)

She fell asleep around 11:00 on the way home and I got her into bed a few minutes ago without waking her up. Hopefully she'll sleep a good long time.

And by the way, tomorrow is Mommy's first day back at work for the 2014-2015 school year!

Jessica's Art Camp

Jessica's been in an art camp all week (from 9:00 until 12:00, anyway) at Masterpiece Mixers in Snellville, and today was their art show! Mommy and Daddy went, of course, but so did Granny and Pa. (Elyse couldn't go because she was in Super Hero Camp at St. Matthew's.) Here are some pictures from the big event:

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

This afternoon we went to Stone Mountain with the intention of going up to the top so the girls could fly kites. These pictures make it look like our plan actually worked out:

Unfortunately, however, these few pictures show just about every minute the kites were actually in the air. Perhaps because it was so hot (about 95 degrees), and maybe because of the clouds (I don't know, I'm not a meteorologist), it was unusually warm at the top of the mountain, with very little breeze. Sporadically the wind would pick up and we could get the kites going, but mostly they just flopped around on the granite.

After half an hour or so we gave up and rode the skylift back down. We had a snack at the bottom, and then went to Northlake Mall to buy towels. Not quite what we'd intended when we set out from home this afternoon, but we had an okay time at the mall anyway.