If you have two loaves of bread sell one and buy flowers. For although the bread will nourish your body, the flowers will nourish your soul.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Meeting the President

on friday, june 29th, my son, nathan, and i had the privilege of meeting the president of the united states. nathan is a marine and ended his time of service in august. he was on the presidential squadron as a helicopter mechanic who took care of "marine one". whenever a member of this squadron ends his or her tour of duty, he is honored by being invited to the white house to personally meet and shake hands with the president. each marine can invite one family member...a parent or spouse. i got to go.
it. was. awesome!  
there were about 30 in our group. each marine in dress blues...such an impressive sight!  the lighting on this photo is terrible. my camera must have been on the wrong setting, but it's the only one i have.


we traveled into d.c. on a bus from quantico.  the security once we entered the white house grounds was impressive, too. no purses, no cameras once we left the bus. so the few pictures i have were taken with a point and shoot from a moving bus, thus the less than excellent quality.





it was during those hot, muggy, high 90's days we had this summer and involved a lot of standing and waiting outside. so by the time we got inside i was sweaty and frizzy. but it was worth it. being inside the white house surrounded by all that history was amazing. after all the waiting we were ushered into the oval office where each marine and guest was introduced to the president. he shook our hands, asked where we were from, thanked nathan for his service and said "we're very proud of you", then asked him his plans after the marines. we had our picture taken with him and were then ushered out. everything happened very quickly. after greeting everyone, marine one landed on the white house lawn and the president was off.

and i have to say...i'd never been so nervous in my life. i could just see myself stumbling over the few words i had planned to say..."it's an honor to meet you, mister president".  because no matter your politics or how you feel about the man, i very much respect the office. we met the president of the united states of america.  it was an experience i'll never forget. i was a very proud mother that day. still am.
it's now october and we have not yet received the photo taken that day. i hope to post it when we get it. 



Sunday, October 7, 2012

A Little Behind

it is more than 3 months since my last post. unbelievable. however, the main reason for my absence has at last been resolved. after a thunderstorm and resulting loss of power one evening in late june i rebooted my computer to find that i was not able to access my user side. nothing else was wrong, it just wouldn't let me on the 'debbie' account. i could use the 'gary' side, just not mine. but the problem was that all, and i mean all of my photographs were on the debbie side. it kept asking for a password that did not exist. 
i have recently enlisted the aid of my eldest daughter, erin, who is pretty good with computers. at first, it appeared that all my pictures seemed to have been lost and i was devastated. but she persisted and finally found them and saved them on an external hard drive that i had purchased a while back for the purpose of backing up my photos but had procrastinated and not done it yet.  (that'll teach me.)  my daughter, the computer genius!
now i face the daunting task of catching up on 3 1/2 months of posts. and i do have to catch up. it'll drive me crazy not to. this is my online scrapbook and i can't skip things. i've been procrastinating getting started because the task is so daunting and now i have more to catch up on. there's a lesson here to be learned, i think.
i will close this rather long explanation with a few pictures of my front porch that i had planned to post next...from june.



flowers from our garden...




i love this...a christmas gift from my sis-in-law who knows my taste perfectly.


and finally, random shots taken while playing with my zoom lens.





one of our resident bluebirds...