Graduation, Pinning & Making Memories

I have been so busy I haven't even had a chance to talk about this past weekend when my daughter, Melissa Thompson, graduated and got her RN pin.  You know how some things you just know are going to be lifelong memories?  This was one of them.  The whole weekend was jam packed.  She graduated on Friday and had her pinning on Saturday. Here are some pictures of that joyful moment it took almost two years of hard work, sweat and tears to achieve:

 

A Mother and Her Wheels on Mother's Day

Mother's Day is here.  There's a hint of summer in the air; yet, a faint cool breeze blows by reminding you winter wasn't that long ago.  The birds are out and stealing the stray cats' food and boats whiz by through the channel out my front door reminding me that soon tourists will be filling the condos and we won't get a bit of rest.  Ah, but it's Mother's Day and the sea gulls are especially loud this morning.

I have the door to the deck open and the wind from the channel makes the wind chimes dance and create beautiful music to an extraordinarily beautiful day.

My daughter surprised me last night.  She and her father did their regular "going out to eat Chinese lunch thing on Saturday afternoon" thing and after she pulled up, she asked me to help her take the Christmas tree out of the back of the truck.  The "truck" is actually a Jeep Cherokee and the best damn vehicle they ever made on the face of this planet.  Almost 200,000 miles and with a few minor replacements, that truck is still going strong and gets me to where I need to go.  The Christmas tree was put in the back because they were repairing the heating system and they needed to get into the little room downstairs.  The little room is the only real storage  room we have here.  Once the tree came out and everything was put back in, there was no room left for the tree (in a huge box) so I decided to put it in the back of the truck until I could get back into the storage room and make room for my tree.

So I go to pull up the back hatch and she stops me.  "Will you go catch that piece of paper that's flying into the front yard?" she asks.  Before my hand could even reach the hatch, I run out front and this is what was waiting for me:

Ohhhh yeah.  Let me tell you.  This is the best damn bike on the market.  My daughter has the very same bike and I rode it all over hell and back.  The problem was that we could never ride together because I sort of claimed it or might I say rode it more than she did.  So this was a nice surprise and on top of that, there was a pot of daisies in the basket which I'm going to repot and put on my back steps by my "reading" chair when I'm trying to soak up the sun.

I thought that was so sweet of her.  Now we can go bike riding together!

I think one of the greatest joys in life is to be able to hop on a bike and fly like the wind.  I can't wait to hit the trail that goes through the woods and ends up on a deserted beach.  The locals know what I'm talking about because whenever I bring it up, they nod, smile and say, "Ohh yeah."

But I do want to say a little something about Mother's Day.  I'm not a big fan of Mother's Day simply because my mother left me when I was nineteen and I have never ever really gotten over her death.  That was such a long time ago but if a certain memory pops in my head, I'm blubbering all over the place.  You learn to live with painful memories and the best way to deal with them is to not think about them. But yesterday, I was on Facebook and everyone was posting pictures of their mama and I thought to myself, man wouldn't it be neat if I had a scanner and I could grab those few pictures of my mama and post them.  And then I had a lightbulb moment and grabbed my new camera and took pictures of them and you can hardly tell that's what I did.

So here's my beautiful mama...

And here's another one...

 Mom the left, then it's my aunt, Sissie, me, my grandmother, cousin and her mother and at the bottom, my other aunt, Junie. 

Ahh memories.  I hope everyone is having a wonderful Mother's Day!