{Pretty, Happy, Funny,Real}

{Pretty}

I love these pictures of my one and only daughter.  She is not only pretty on the outside, but is also pretty and lovely on the inside.  Over the years she has had to tackle a lot....she has had to work harder at school than her brothers in high school and diligently did so.  Her hard work paid off and she managed to come home from college with a 4.0.  She has had to be the only girl in a bevy of boys...it has been lonely for her but she took all the lessons learned and is now blissfully free of all the romantic misconceptions girls have about the mystery of guys. Thanks to her brothers guys are more goof than mystery!   She is faithful in her prayer life, apologizes quickly when she needs to (a rare gift these days, I am finding), and makes sure everyone is happy in the house.  She loves France, strong coffee, French Bistro music, and Broadway.  She is an accomplished actress and revels in Russian novels. She wore duct tape to her senior prom and pulled it off with penache!  She has a very funny streak and can imitate voices quite well.   I gladly and lovingly dub her Pretty in every sense of the word.  She might kill me though for this post.......shhh.

{Happy}

Active Child is a man of few words.  He is all action!  So, when he does talk, I listen with great interest.  He is mostly a sporty child who loves computers, games, and music.  And he is definitely a city mouse like the rest of us.  But this year on Mother's Day we went for a long walk through a Tree Arboratum and about half way through the walk he just said so simply as it had just occurred to him when he stopped jumping out of trees or running down paths:  "Ya know, Mom,  this is really pretty out here.  These trees look like the one that Jesus sat under in our Bible book.  That's cool!"  Those simple words made me so happy.  This child runs deep and is highly sensitive under the bravado, the neon shoes and shirts, the "too cool" hair. He is the one who sees hawks, frogs, and snakes on our hikes and spots random owls in the tree outside our kitchen.  He is the one who is kind to old people and laughs at their jokes.  He is the one so gentle with little kids and includes them all in the older kid games. Yep, I'd say Happy.

Creative Child took this one while I covered my eyes in fear.

Contemplating a jump

His GQ face.

{Funny}

And did I also mention that he's funny?

This left me..... speechless.

{Real}
My very un weeded garden, alas!

Actually, this petunia came from a seed that flew off my porch last summer somehow and it grew in the crack of my front porch steps.  So, something good came from lots of rain, lots of sun, and no time to weed!