The weeks are flying by.  I usually love to watch the weeks fly by because I'm usually counting down to my next great adventure.  This time, the next great adventure is Sydney leaving for college.  And, let's face, that adventure is hers.  

One of my coping mechanisms is scrapping.  I just joined The Scrappy Kat as a Creative Team member at Gingerscraps.net.  The style is very different from what I do at Oscraps...much more like paper scrapping which is where I started many (ok...about 30) years ago.  And I find that satisfying to tell stories about my family!

Here are two layouts using her kits that went on sale this week.  

I saw something about rail travel through Banff and I decided that would be great.  I've always wanted to try rail travel and once I got just a glimpse of it in Europe, I was sold.  I told Brian this is on my bucket list...maybe next summer.  His response?  "Have fun!"  Whatever.  I think leaving the heat of Florida in July is an awesome plan.

https://gallery.gingerscraps.net/showphoto.php?photo=629827&title=my-bucket-list&cat=1199

The next layout is a photo of our family during the summer of the pandemic.  We had been here about a year and I wanted family pictures.  We found someone who would meet us at the beach at Matanzas (first time we had been there) and wear a mask when we were close (which isn't that much time when you are doing family photos).  I love this picture...it really was the four of us in our own little cocoon once Covid hit.  But we were four people tightly bonded, taking on whatever the world threw at us, even if not always gracefully.  And, for that, I am forever grateful.

https://gallery.gingerscraps.net/showphoto.php?photo=629825&title=choose-to-be-grateful&cat=1199

 Good morning friends.  The morning is very nice weather....which doesn't happen very often in July in Florida.  So I have enjoyed being a bit of time outside this weekend.  Mainly, I just wait for the fall.  But I have a few Florida moments this week.  

First, I use a watering can...to get things sufficiently watered, I need to make a lot of trips and sometimes my plants go without enough water.  Yesterday morning, I had an ah-ha moment and decided that I should hook up the hose and use that for watering...what an improvement!  Brian is out right now looking to get a reel so that we can hook the hose to the backyard faucet and use my new method for watering.

Second, I cannot see my hibiscus unless I walk to the side of the house.  On either side, I have beautiful hibiscus but I can't see them.  Yesterday, I saw a hummingbird along the side of the house, collecting nectar.  And I realized that I need to put hibiscus in the back.  Lots of hibiscus along the white privacy fence will make me happy...  

I found strawberries for 99 cents a pound.  They were beautiful.  Inflation is crazy and I can't get an ear of good sweet corn for the life of me...but I really enjoy the strawberries and I was able to mix up a batch of homemade ice cream! 

I did scrap a few layouts this week found below.  The first one is an old photo of Grandpa Chet and Grandma Ellie.  They were my great-great grandparents...my Grandma Blanche's parents.  They lived in Truro, just a few houses from Grandma Blanche.  My mom had that Bible that Grandpa Chet had in his hand for many years.  And I see a chain that I suspect was attached to his pocket watch.  Mom also had that pocket watch...both items are now long gone.  

This post is because I am in the midst of all of the feels right now.  I look at the photos of the kids on the top of this blog.  They were so young...yet I can't bring myself to put something up that is more current.  Today, I am sitting in Gainesville, FL...in the Rietz Union to be exact.  Brian and I are waiting for our next meetup with Sydney.  She is at Preview (known as Orientation back in my day).  She finished her fall schedule this morning and she is happy with it.  She has 15 hours for first semester...one class is a fluff class...the others, not so much.  Physics, Differential Equations, Intro to Biological Engineering and some type of Digital Graphics for Engineering.  

In 6 weeks, she leaves home for college.  It will never be quite the same again.  I don't know the future...maybe she will be back home next summer, maybe she will be back home after college...but whatever the future holds, it will never be quite the same.  And it has been the most awesome privilege of my life to be her mother.  

Will she still need me?  I'm sure she will because I still need my mom.  But I don't have her.  And that will happen to Syd someday as well.  And that makes me sad.  But, in the meantime, Bioengineering?  Are you kidding me?  And I think that she is going to make it Agricultural Biological Engineering.  Good grief...I'm overwhelmed.  I do not know a single female engineer.  It didn't happen in my day.  But I'm pretty excited to say that it happens today.

While sitting here in the Rietz, I scrapped the following layout.  A photo of a different angle of the Eiffel Tower from this past May's vacation.  Everything from Vicki Stegall's Just Simply Me.

 Good grief!  How can I have gone this long without updating my blog.  There has been plenty of content...we traveled to Europe and it was wonderful.  Since returning home, it seems that most of our time (and by our, I mean Sydney and me) has been spent figuring out "dorm things".  

I'm committed to doing better moving forward. 

First layout of July is this one about Uncle Paul.  He is my great-uncle and I knew him very well because he lived such a nice long life.  I've seen this photo so many times...but when I scrapped it this time, I did a little bit more thinking about what it might have been like for them.  I'm guessing that Grandma Ellie and Grandpa Chet might have been there (Uncle Paul's grandparents), but other than that, I would have known everyone that was there.  I knew them much later in life obviously but I knew these people.

 

The next layout is Summer Vibes and I have so many photos of the beach that I will go back to this kit constantly.  This is a shot of the Atlantic Ocean from a quiet beach near Palm Coast.  

This one I did as a challenge at Oscraps.   We needed to scrap this quote.  I think that I'm going make a Mixtile with this and offer it to Sydney for her room.  Which, by the way, she won't want.  LOL  So I will keep it.