Put Down the Cookie

Cookies I'm Not Eating

     One month from today I'm going on a spring break trip with my family to someplace warm and sunny where I won't be wearing bulky pullovers and I might have to sit by a pool.  This means that today was Day One of my Spring Break diet. I didn't cheat at all which meant that I was hungry and cranky and I spent a good deal of my afternoon thinking about NOT  eating a cookie.  Or four.  Earlier this afternoon, Joel was going to eat a chocolate chip cookie and I might have yelled at him - "You can't eat that cookie . . . I'm on a diet!"  There's a passage in the Bible that talks about dieting (it's in Matthew). Jesus says that when we're fasting (dieting), we shouldn't make it obvious.  We shouldn't walk around all miserable and disheveled telling everybody how hard it is that we're fasting (dieting).  We should keep it to ourselves and we'll be rewarded later. I will admit that this is good advice and dieting gracefully is something I will work on tomorrow.  Today's reward was making my husband put down a chocolate chip cookie.  He really wanted that cookie too - almost as much as I did.

Dad in Tobacco Field

My great-grandfather, Richard Ross Malone, in the tobacco field.

A photo from my grandmother's collection.

c. 1920

Thank Goodness for Cameras

 

I'm looking back through photos today

of my sweet baby girl.

This one was taken on her birth day in 2004.

This is one of my favorites of Owen and Sarah Grace.

He looks so angelic and all the while he's

reaching out to steal theWinnie-the-Pooh

that's in her bassinet.

He spent the weeks before she was

born telling me over and over

that he didn't want a baby sister.

His exact words . . . "No baby sister!"

Although he would never admit it

out loud where anybody would hear him say it,

I think she's grown on him in the last seven years.

One last bedtime as a six year old.

Tomorrow she will be seven and she'll

begin a whole new year of adventures.

I've said it over and over again this week,

but where does the time go?

I cannot believe that my Sweet Baby Grace is seven.

Thank goodness for cameras.

Beach Blues

Orange Beach

on a sunny day.

Feeling homesick for the beach today.

I am not a winter hater (I actually love cold weather

and snow) but today I keep thinking

about the beach and about how

wonderful it is when we're all there together. 

I miss the beach.