That's my daughter....in the water

 This weekend was a difficult one for me.  As I watched Danielle compete at the state swim meet, in this, her senior year of high school, I realized how much I will miss her when she goes to college next year.

When you look at this face, can you believe that she was the colicky baby who cried for hours and hours and months and months, and nigh on half a year....so much so even my mother couldn't get her to stop????

 Don't let this smiling face fool you; she can be as surly as the rest of them when the mood strikes, the moon is full, and it happens to be some random Tuesday.

Teenagers only pose for pictures like this so when we are old, we will have forgotten all of the meltdowns and fits that occurred in between photos.

Ahhh, she is just so sweet!!!






As most of you know, Danielle's passion is swimming.  As the song goes:

"That's my daughter in the water, everything she owns I bought her....

That's my daughter in the water, everything she knows I taught her....

That's my daughter in the water, every time she fell I caught her....

That's my daughter in the water, I lost every time I fought her...."

You'd lose too if you came up against that karate kick!

Watch out world!
And little brother!
And the dog (who often gets up on the tramp with us)!
And anyone else who gets in her way!








This is my girl, determined and competitive.

Little does the girl in the next lane know how serious Danielle's game face can be.  She is about to get her butt kicked in the next one minute and five seconds.

Her little brother knows that face well, for that look is often directed at him.  He could have warned the girl in purple what was about to happen.







The photo below sums up in one picture what I always wanted my daughter to be when she grew up. 

A strong confident young woman who is well on her way to taking on the world and becoming anything she wants to be.

Who is their right mind is going to mess
with those shoulders anyway????

Evening sky in the east

Does anyone ever look to the east as the sun sets in the west?

I was driving home from taking CJ to the high school football game a couple of weeks ago as the sun set in the west.  The mountains were obscured in dust and shadows in my rear view mirrors.  But the scene outside my windshield was striking.  The huge eastern sky spread out before me in three colors.  The lower 1/3 of the sky was a deep blue as the light faded and darkness was pushing to come over the horizon.  Melded into the blue was a band of grey, medium in width.  At the top and spreading over the dome above me was a blend of pink and yellow and blue in a much lighter shade.  There were no clouds on this beautiful Colorado afternoon to obscure this peculiar three color rainbow.  It was absolutely stunning. 

How many people notice the color of the sky when driving down the road doing mundane errands?

How many of us look up at the clouds while walking the dog and count the colors of the sky?

How many of us see the owl sitting on a branch in the tree just above our heads, silently watching us as we meander under?  Do we even notice it when it takes off just as we cross directly below it?  If we stop to listen, we could hear the rushing of it's wings as it moves through the air.

Who has stood in water up to their knees in a mountain river, stopped casting their fly, and listened to the steady "plop, plop, plop"  of so many fish rising that it sounds as if it is raining?

How many of us have consciously held our tongue in the exam room and not interrupted our patients twenty seconds into the conversation as a majority of physicians are prone to do? 

How many times a week do we stop everything we are doing and really look at our children when they are talking to us; focusing all of our attention on the conversation at hand?

Tonight, the sky in the west was as bright with color as the sky in the east that night a couple of weeks ago.  I couldn't see the whole thing as I was still inside at work, and my view was obscured by buildings, trees, and cars.  But the colors won; demanding my attention, and I was happy to oblige.