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The kids and I have been in Mississippi this week visiting friends. More on that soon, although my camera battery was dead so I unfortunately don't have many pictures to share. But of course, there is always Vivian to blog about.
We stayed at the beautiful home of my good friend Cynthia. Her family has two precious Cavalier King Charles Spaniels whom Vivian adored. One of the dogs was a tricolor named Lexi who looked a lot like our next door neighbor's dog, Coco. Vivian kept calling Lexi Coco.
Will said to her, "That's not Coco, Vivian. Coco is in Dallas. That's Lexi."
Vivian walked around the house repeating, "Coco is in Dallas, Coco is in Dallas."
Shortly thereafter, Lexi ran into the room.
Vivian looked at Lexi and said, "Coco is back!"
Today Robert and I celebrate 22 years of marriage. I was 22 at the time of our wedding, so that means I've been married half my life - wow!
We are going to dinner tonight with some longtime friends who were at our wedding. I'm looking forward to that and to many more years of happy marriage.
This morning I took Hockey Boy to the airport for his flight to Jamaica. He is going on a week-long mission trip there with a group of youths from our church who will be working there in a mountain community assisting with the construction of a house.
Two years ago Hockey Boy went on this trip and his job involved hauling concrete. I suspect that unless they need any wood duck houses, he'll be doing something similar. His group will have one day of rest and relaxation at the beach, but otherwise they will be working.
Hockey Boy had a packing list for this trip, armed with which, he went to Target yesterday. He asked me where a few things were at our house, but other than that, I was completely uninvolved in his preparations.
He was supposed to be at the airport at 5:00 this morning so we left our house around 4:15 (poor Vivian had to accompany us because there was no one home to stay with her). We were about 5 minutes from the airport when I thought to ask Hockey Boy about his passport. Silence. Then, "Uh... I think I left it on my bed." Argh! This was certainly his responsibility, but I couldn't believe I'd neglected to ask him about it before we got in the car (I'll blame the early hour). We turned around and went back to our house, retrieved the passport and then returned to the airport. There was very little traffic on the road so we made it to check-in by 5:30, in plenty of time for his 7:15 flight. Not a great start to my morning, though!
I won't hear directly from Hockey Boy while he's gone, but I hope to receive some updates and pictures from the leaders. In the meantime I'm following his flight on FlightAware.com. I'm such a map junkie.
In other family travel news, Robert returns from the Grand Canyon tonight. He organized a group of 13 friends to hike the Canyon from rim to rim in one day (26.5 miles!). They completed the hike successfully in about 12 hours. Robert reported that he and his friends have had a great time and that everyone felt a sense of great accomplishment.
Robert (third from left) and part of his group on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon the evening before their big hike
Sadly for me, though, trips to the airport, albeit plentiful, are all the traveling I am doing right now.
Dots failed the eye examination at her annual physical in May, so I took her to an eye doctor last week. Lo and behold, she needed glasses! We found a pair that she liked (Juicy Couture, no less), placed an order and picked them up yesterday. I think Dots looks so cute in them. Certainly a far cry from my first pair of glasses!
Me in my sixth grade class picture. In addition to my groovy octogon-shaped glasses, I was wearing a shirt that my mother embellished with eyelet and rickrack. The back of the shirt featured my name spelled in red gingham with a frog or some such animal appliqued below it. Ah, the 70's...
I remember many an afternoon on childhood visits to South Georgia sitting by my grandmother on her bed as she played solitaire. Above her bed hung a copy of the painting Las Meninas by Spanish painter Diego Velázquez.
My grandmother told me that the little princess in the painting was me, that the ladies waiting on her were my aunts, and that she herself was represented by the dwarf on the right-hand side. I had no trouble envisioning myself as royalty and I had blonde hair, so her claim seemed quite reasonable to me. I'm not sure at what point I figured out that I was not Velázquez's subject, but by that time I was so enamored of the painting, that it was of little consequence.
In 2002 Robert and I were to depart from Barcelona after a Mediterranean cruise. We had several choices of cities for our connecting flight back to the States, and I selected Madrid so that I could have the opportunity to see Las Meninas in person.
In Madrid we stayed at the Hotel Palace, a fabulously elegant hotel directly across the square from the Museo del Prado where Las Meninas, is housed.
Here I am outside the Palace, looking nowhere near as effortlessly chic as the European woman behind me
Just off the hotel's lobby is a restaurant/bar area under a spectacular stained glass cupola.
This picture from the hotel web site gives a better idea of the scale of the dome - magnificent!
The morning after arriving in Madrid, Robert and I were at the Prado when its doors opened.
As the masterpiece of the Prado, Las Meninas is prominently displayed in a room of Velázquez's works. I was unprepared for how large the painting was! (I suppose I envisioned it in the much smaller version I had seen at my grandparents' house.)
I don't think photographs were allowed in the Prado because I did not get a picture showing its scale (found the one above on the Internet) and the requisite picture of me with the object of my pilgrimage (below) is really bad and must have been hurriedly and illicitly taken or I surely would have insisted that Robert retake it
Between its size and its grandeur, Las Meninas was breathtaking and well worth the pilgrimage to see in person.
An added bonus was the opportunity to acquire a copy of the painting for my own home.
