Sixteen

Last Saturday, my beautiful daughter turned 16 years old. It's been such a joy to watch this girl blossom. She is wise beyond her years. She's smart as a whip, quick-witted, and oh so talented. She puts me to shame when it comes to art. Almost every free moment she has is devoted to sketching, painting, playing the piano, or strumming the ukulele (her new obsession). On a side note, she received the ukulele for Christmas, and by sunset, she was strumming out familiar tunes. She'd never played a string instrument before. It's kind of annoying how she makes us all look talentless. ;)

Audrie loves words and word play and continues to challenge me almost daily with some sort of game involving rhymes, or haikus, or synonyms, or riddles. And I love every minute of it. She is super sweet, and good big sister (most of the time), and just a delight to be around. I don't like to think about how in two and a half years, she'll be leaving this nest. I'm not ready for our family dynamic to change. So, until then, I'm going to cherish this time we have while our nest is full, and continue to remind her of all of the great colleges we have just right down the street.

Happy birthday, sweet girl.

I love you so.

xo

Mom

Hello 2017!

I love beginnings. There's so much promise held in beginnings... the excitement of a budding relationship, the first day of a much anticipated vacation, a crisp clean sheet of paper that greets you in a new sketchbook, or the first line of a book that draws you in and begs you to read more. And the beginning of a new year is no different. It's a jumping off point to set our goals, map out a plan, and work towards achieving our dreams. Just like a sprinter coming out of the blocks, we all like a good start. 

But as much as I love beginnings, I hate late starts. Ten days into 2017, and I haven't even written my goals yet, much less mapped them out. I feel this sense of anxiety looming as each day passes and I haven't taken the time to even write down a goal. I have some vague ideas of smaller goals like sketching everyday, or blogging more, or writing a couple of new stories every week, but I've already balked at accomplishing these. If I were a sprinter, I would have been disqualified from this year's race. 

I don't know why it's so hard to recover and start again without that shiny new, first day of the year beginning, but it is. January 1st holds the promise of everything you hope to achieve as you set sail into the year, while January 11th feels like you missed the boat. But I have to remind myself that everyday I wake up is a new beginning. Every day holds promise to accomplish great things. So instead of staring forlornly at the January 1st boat quickly disappearing over the horizon, I'm going to bid it farewell.  I'm opting to step onto this January 11th boat. It may not seem as clean and fresh as that first day of the new year boat, but hey, it's right in front of me, and I can't wait to see where it takes me. In fact, we're already off to a good start:

-Write a New Years blog post.

-Make a sketch for this post

-Use tired analogies about boats and races in one post.

Okay, so maybe I just now added that last goal, but it feels so satisfying to mark things off a list, who wouldn't want to keep riding that gravy train?

I apologize.

Here's to making things happen. Happy January 11th, 2017!

xo

nessa dee