Her Senior Prom

One more event on the road to graduation has come and gone.
Annie's Senior prom.

Before I tell you about Annie's night, let me do a quick flashback to the
evening of my Senior prom.

You see, I didn't go to my prom.  It was tradition in our school for high school friends to rent camps near the lake the week before graduation.  One of my friends family owned a little camp (cottage) so a bunch of us girls stayed there together.  We were the nerdy group who had fun no matter what we were doing.  On prom night, we had some friends over to our camp and had a "party" - soda, chips, music.
This is a picture of my friends Charlene, Kae, and me pretending to booze it up!  I am on the right.  Don't ask me why we had orange life jackets on. I also wore my flannel nightgown (nights in VT were still cool) and knee socks, a shawl, sunglasses and my graduation cap.

Let's jump from 1977 to 2013.

Annie looked quite different on her prom night!

She was also getting together with her friends.

And family!

The BEST thing about prom night in our town is how all the kids gather together on the town green before prom with their families, friends and teachers so everyone can see the kids and take pictures.

Past graduates come back to visit.

It's really nice that teachers come and take pictures with the students

Even the principal is a part of the excitement!


Kerry met up with her high school friends too.

When they got into the limo and drove away, the excitement was over for us, but just beginning for them.  There was a sleepover after the prom followed by a whole day at the beach.  When we saw her again the next night she was exhausted, but she had a lot of fun!

Keeping it Real

 Reality, if rightly interpreted, is grander than fiction.    Carlyle, Thomas 

You can tell a lot about someone by their choice of what they watch on TV.  Whenever I'm on Facebook and see a status with a comment on a TV show, I feel a small bond with that person.  My reasoning - if he/she is entertained by the same thing, we must be alike in some way.

If you were to stop by our house at any point in time,  there would most likely be a  "reality" type of show playing on our TV.

 Swamp People is about alligator hunting season in the bayou.  I've seen hundreds of alligators killed and lifted onto boats over the past few seasons.  Of course there is always the suspense when the boat is stuck and someone has to stick his hand into the dark, murky water to free it up - where just seconds before a gator was seen lurking.

I'll never understand how these characters on Moonshiners can be making illegal moonshine, show their faces on TV, and never get caught!

Deadliest Catch is about fishing for crabs in the rough seas off the coast of Alaska.  Big waves and boats do not agree with me, but I am impressed by the tenacity of these men.

Alaska, the Last Frontier has been new to our TV this year.  It is about the hardships of living in the wilds of Alaska.  Most of the time, they are preparing for winter and worried they are not going to have enough firewood!

Yukon Men is similar  - ditto!

I actually like Combat Rescue - it is a documentary series following U.S. Air Force pararescue men as they work to save lives of wounded soldiers in Afghanistan.



 Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.    Dick, Philip K. 

The Diner, Drive-Ins and Dives host travels the country in search of good food.  The thing that bothers me is how greasy, fatty and disgusting much of the food is - and how much people enjoy eating it!
For example...

  

Undercover Boss truly is heartwarming and I love watching it!  The heads of companies don disguises and work in the trenches for a week doing the lowest of the low jobs in the company.  Their eyes are opened to the real lives of the people that work for them, and the troubles and burdens they bear.

We've watched Survivor since it began so many seasons ago and it never fails to entertain and provide insight into the personalities of the people around us.

I have discovered so many places I want to visit by watching the Amazing Race!  As teams race around the world, you also get to witness how two people work together under many situations - fatigue, pain, stress  - and much more.  It's another show (like Survivor) that brings out their true personalities!

New to the line-up in this household is Wicked Tuna.  It's basically about tuna fishermen in Gloucester, Massachusetts - they catch tuna, bring them in to get weighed and find out how much per pound each tuna will bring in.  

Now we're getting to a reality show that's not like reality at all - the Bachelor and the Bachelorette.

Reality TV.  Hmmm. 
Sure, it's not fiction, but is it real? 
Producers only show us what they want us to see - so they are in their way trying to shape our thoughts and opinions.  And being in front of a camera changes who people are also.  They are probably not their "true" selves.

Sometimes it is thought that Reality is the truth - that there is only one Reality. 

But isn't it true that given the exact same "real"  situation, each of us sees it in our own unique way.
We each have our own filter through which we see the world.


 People see the world not as it is, but as they are.    Lee, Al 

A Doubly Nice Day

Mother's Day 2013.  When I awoke I lay in bed and remembered my own mother who passed away almost exactly 6 years ago.   She was my role model for motherhood.  Here I am at a young age learning how to be a mother to my doll.

   Mother's Day 2013 happened to coincide with my 54th birthday, so today was doubly special.  I asked my daughter, Annie, to document this day for me and handed over my camera to her.

I got online during breakfast to check emails and look at Facebook.

 

 The first thing I saw was a note from my sister, Lori along with an old picture of the two of us.

My eyes flooded with tears.

As I got dressed for church, I wore one of my mother's bracelets to remind me of her.

Then I went downstairs to go through old photo albums to find a picture of me and my mom for Facebook.  It made me sad to realize that I don't have very many pictures of the two of us. I made a mental note to take more pictures with my kids.

Off to church.  On Mother's Day in our church, it is tradition for all children to give a flower to their moms, and Annie picked a yellow carnation for me.  During a quiet moment of the service, I heard a familiar sound that again reminded me of my mom - the sound of someone breathing with an oxygen machine.

  When we got home, Vance took pictures of Annie and me on the front step.

 When we went inside, Kerry was awake and she gave me a big hug!  

 I put my flower in water.

Then I was wished a Happy Mother's Day by the dogs...

 and one of the cats. (Momo doesn't get friendly until the evening)

 My good friend and neighbor, Linda stopped by to chat for a few minutes.

 My neighbor, Cindy, gave Kerry a bunch of her old scrubs and Kerry tried them on for us!

Then we went outside to take some pictures on my new red bench that Vance got me for Mother's Day. 

Then we were off in the car to DSW to look for prom shoes for Annie.

Before we left, Kerry posed for this lovely photo with her face pressed against the car window!

At DSW, she had to try on a pair of sandals she would never buy and pretend to model them.

If you want to see the entire show, you can watch this short clip:

As Vance was getting dinner ready, Adam called and asked us to Skype.

His exams begin this week and he couldn't make it home.

I opened my cards and gifts so he could be there with us.

My mother-in-law came over for dinner (lasagna) and we had my favorite cake for dessert - angel food cake with whipped cream and raspberries.

Alice's birthday is two days after mine, so we celebrated it all!

After dinner, my sister, Lori called and I settled on the couch for what I knew would be a long phone call.  (Kerry likes to imitate her mother!)

I put the phone on speaker so everyone could join in the conversation. 

Then Momo got into her nightly position on my lap and wished me a Happy Mother's Day too!

It was a really nice day!