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.

Tubing in Helen

Today Anna, Jessica, and I drove up to Helen, GA, so Anna and Jessica could go tubing on the Chattahoochee, something Anna has been wanting to do for a long time. The weather reports showed a threat of rain and we weren't completely sure they would be able to do it, but it turned out to be a very nice--and dry!--day.

They started out at the Helen Tubing location north of Helen:

The trip took them a couple of miles (maybe even three) down the river, all the way through Helen:

Here's a picture of Helen I took while I was walking around during their trip:

Tybee Island

Tuesday and Wednesday (July 1 and 2) we were on the beach at Tybee Island, GA, which is near Savannah. The girls wanted to go to the beach, and Tybee Island is the closest real beach (on the ocean and not a man-made lake), so on Tuesday morning a little after 8:00 we set out. It's a long drive, about 260 miles, and we made lots of stops along the way, mostly for bathroom breaks and snacks. A little after noon we stopped at Jomax Bar-B-Que in Metter for some lunch:

It was very good (for me, at least; their coleslaw mixed with the pulled pork with copious amounts of barbecue sauce and a little honey mustard was fantastic). After this, we did the rest of the drive straight through and finally arrived at our hotel at a little after 3:00, meaning we did the 260 mile drive in seven hours--about average for us.

The girls, all three of them, were anxious to get to the beach, so we spent the rest of the afternoon Tuesday there, and all of the morning Wednesday:

(You can tell this is Wednesday because Elyse is wearing a different bathing suit than in the pictures above, from Tuesday.)

It probably looks like we had the beach pretty much to ourselves, and we nearly did for a couple of hours Wednesday morning. But, as you can see in these pictures from the pier, by noon, lots of people had arrived:

At about 11:30 we left the beach and changed clothes in the pavilion's bathrooms, getting as dry and sand-free as we could manage, and walked along the pier, and then headed out...sort of. It took us a couple of hours to really leave, since we had to stop at the Ci Ci's in Savannah for lunch and then go to the Barnes & Noble for a while. We finally set out for real at about 4:00, and by 9:30 we were home.