birthdays and beach days...

We celebrated our daughter's sweet sixteen birthday last Saturday. We are so proud of her and we think she is turning out to be quite an incredible young lady.

It seems to me her interests are very different from other girls her age. She is a relatively low maintenance kind of girl. She doesn't require a name brand wardrobe, quite the opposite, if she sees that "everyone is wearing it" she wants nothing to do with it. She doesn't wear make-up. She is a very beautiful girl inside and out, yet she is completely unaware of her beauty.

She really does make decisions in accordance to what her faith teaches.

Thank you Lord, so far so good.

Oh, and about that haircut I gave her last week. She asked me to give her a layered haircut. I am not a hairdresser! We did a minimal amount of research and went at it. I took a good bit off and we were unsure of how it would turn out, but all is well, it turned out just fine. She was even able to laugh during the haircut when we weren't quite sure how it would turn out.

Curly hair is forgiving...

For her birthday she requested that the family go on a picnic for lunch. We went to a park with a duck pond and had a lovely picnic. I picked up a mini birthday cake to bring along.

That evening, we went to play miniature golf and out for ice cream.

It was a really nice day!

On Monday we left for the Cape May Marianist's Retreat House for a family retreat. I highly recommend it, most families call it the best vacation they ever had. The week was so full, I wouldn't know where to start. Although it is a retreat, everyday from after lunch until dinner we were free to do whatever we wanted. Most of the families chose to go to the beach together. The kids had a ball.

One afternoon a school of dolphins, put a show on for us, they were unusually close to the shore. This was the view for our 3rd floor bedroom, we could hear the waves crashing...
I even got to spend some time by myself down on the beach in the early morning...

On the way home yesterday afternoon , we were stopped by a terrible accident. we don't know what happened but several cars were involved and a helicopter came down just about 15 cars in front of us. We were stopped at that spot with many many others for about an hour, we shut the car off and went to the side of the road to sit in the shade. It was very disturbing, for a moment I just cried and prayed for the people involved, it was obviously serious.
It served as yet another very powerful reminder that life is precious, and nobody knows the day or the hour...
Lord, help us to live our lives well. So that when that day comes, we have no regrets.