Baby Don't You Cry

Baking pies is something I started doing with my granddaughter when she would spend the night at Nana's house.  She is now four and we've baked three pies together, but I hope there will be many more. (By the way, this is quite the feat for me, never having enjoyed cooking/baking all that much.  Now in retirement, I'm getting into it......a little.) To create the right atmosphere, I always put in my Waitress DVD (just the last scene where she's singing this song to her little daughter) and we sing as we bake.

It has become a funny game to see how many different (or silly) ingredients we can substitute for the word "strawberry" in these lyrics.  So far we've sung it with "chocolatey", "pumpkin-y","lemony", "gummy bear",  "bubble gum", and "poop-ity" (ah, that 3 year-old bathroom humor...)  Have a listen:

Baby Don't You Cry (The Pie Song)

When the world is gray and bleak

Baby don't you cry

I will give you every bit of love that is in my heart

I will bake it up… into a simple little pie

Baby don't you cry gonna make a pie

Gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle

Baby don’t be blue

Gonna make for you

Gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle

Gonna be a pie from the heaven above

Gonna be filled with strawberry love

Baby don’t you cry

Gonna make a pie

Hold you forever in the middle of my heart.

Baby here's the sun

Baby here's the sky

Baby I’m the light and I’m your shelter

Baby you are mine

I could freeze the time

Keep you in my kitchen with me forever

Gonna be a pie from the heaven above

Gonna be filled with strawberry love

Baby don’t you cry

Gonna make a pie

Hold you forever in the middle of my heart.

Gonna bake a pie from the heaven above

Gonna be filled with butterscotch love

Gonna be a pie from the heaven above

Gonna be filled with banana cream love

Baby don’t you cry

Gonna make a pie

Hold you forever

Hold you forever in the middle of my heart

The Little Ones at Our Feet

You only get them for a few years.  Ask someone who's already watched theirs grow up and leave the nest, and you'll find out in a hurry how fast the time flies.  They're eighteen, they're twenty-five, they've got children of their own, but in the mind's eye of a mom or a dad, they should still need a phone book to sit up tall at the table.

So big.  So fast.  Kind of chokes you up just thinking about it.

So now's your chance to lay the groundwork for a child God's depending on you to mold.  No matter how busy you are with the rest of your life, no matter how unaccustomed you are to talking spiritual things in front of your family, you're being counted on to model to your little girl or boy, to be the picture they get of loving authority, to be the safe place they can turn to for an honest answer, to be living evidence that all this church talk really does carry over into everyday life.

Help them learn to submit their will to yours today, so that when they're out there on their own, they'll be able to submit to God's.  (from the One Minute Bible)

Jolee Island

Sandestin has an island.  It's a peaceful piece of land where so far, I've not encountered another soul.  I'm sure that isn't the case in high season, so I'm taking advantage of it now.

In French, one of the few words I actually remember, "jolie" means "pretty" or "nice".  I'm guessing that might be what whoever named this island was aiming for.  Although, given the way they spelled it, possibly the last name of someone.

Let me take you on a tour, starting on a sunny day when I walked past the island entrance and ending with today's cloudy photo trip (click to enlarge):

Entrance

Cross the wooden bridge over the bay

Choctawhatchee Bay

One of the walking paths on the island

Berries, foliage

Even a play area for the kids

A wooden pathway on the edge of the water circumnavigates the island

The bridge as viewed from the island

Leaving the island

There are also picnic tables and grills on the island (and "facilities") so it wouldn't be hard to spend a whole afernoon exploring, playing with the kids, cooking out, reading and listening to the birds.

Our Broken Places

One woman. One man. 3 legs. 3 arms. Astonishing beauty.

Ma Li has only one arm. Zhai Xiaowei has one leg. They dance into the holes in people's lives. In the wordlessness of their dance, libraries of the soul open and volumes of unutterable wisdom fly off the shelves. A knowing comes forward.

We all know this. We recognize the feeling of brokenness. We know what we do not have, will never have. We know that all the pieces in the world are not whole, not complete. We know that we have needed, and that we still need.

In the dance, we see aching need and see that it can be as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. We are dumbstruck by the transformative power of the human heart.

Ma Li and Zhai Xiaowei. Who are they?

Ma Li was a promising 19 year old professional ballerina when she lost her right arm in a car accident in 1996. Her handsome boy friend walked away from her. She tried to kill herself, but was saved by her parents.

Zhai Xiaowei lost his leg in a tractor accident when he was 4, and had never danced until less than two years before this video was made.




Giving credit where it is due, this is from a blog I follow:  Time's Fool.  Touching subject, beautifully expressed, don't you agree?

Is Anything Free Anymore?

Remember the free beach parking that abounds down here?  There are lots of free parking lots right along the beach and in some places, you can pull your car off the road and park right on the sand (or rather, crushed oyster shells they've transported to the sand's edge for stability). Here's where I ended up yesterday (click to enlarge):