Throwback Thursday Stories: Graduation

Today you get two throwback pictures for the price of one :). One is from 9 years ago and the other is from 33 years ago.

So the story behind the photos: I am a second generation graduate from the United States Naval Academy. What I find amazing about these photos is that they took place 24 years apart (to the day) and that my father shook hands with and received his diploma from then Vice-President George H. W. Bush and I had the opportunity to shake hands with and receive my diploma from his son, President George W. Bush. The president, vice-president and Secretary of State rotate between the three service academies' graduations each year so not every class will have the President at their graduation.

I just remember that I had to walk across the entire stage to receive my diploma and commission from the President. Oh - a little more to the story behind the actual picture ... the official photographers were in a really terrible location to get good photos of the first 100 or so graduates. My husband found this and another photo taken by some of the yearbook photographers, so that I would have a much better photo of the occasion.

I can't believe that nine years has passed since I walked across that stage. We'll see if there are any future generations that will follow in our footsteps.

Throwback Thursday Stories

It's been a few weeks since I participated since Thursdays always seem to sneak up on me. I thought it would be appropriate to share a more recent Throwback Picture ... just going back a couple days less than a year to when my son was born since his birthday is tomorrow.

This is one of my favorite pictures of my daughter and husband with my son, James. This was the second day we were in the hospital and Caitlyn had fallen in love with her baby brother. James was about a week early, but waited for his daddy to get home from a close to two month underway to make his appearance (not long after his daddy returned). He arrived much quicker than his sister did ... about 5 hours after we arrived at the hospital. James was just eager to join the family :)

Happy Birthday (one day early) to my sweet James.

Throwback Thursday Stories: Wedding in Annapolis

It has been a couple of years since I posted. There has definitely been a lot of changes around here and the blog may take a new direction, should I become more active again. However, I did want to link up with Jessica at The Mom Creative with her new link up for Throwback Thursday Stories (#TBTStories).

Since our 8 year anniversary is next Tuesday, I decided to share one of our wedding photos for Throwback Thursday.

My husband and I met while we were midshipmen at the Naval Academy. We got married a little less than a year after graduation in April 2006. Since we were both graduates (and neither of us really claimed a hometown), we decided to get married at the Academy chapel in Annapolis. My mom did a lot of the leg work with planning the wedding since I was going to grad school at MIT and my husband was going through the nuke pipeline in Charleston, SC.

This is one of my favorite photos from that day. It was taken just as we finished passing through our sword arch. We are both laughing since we had just gotten the "welcome" tap from the end members of the sword arch (you can see the sword on the right down). For those of you that don't know the tradition, the bride (typically) will get swatted on the behind by the last sword bearer as that sword bear says "Welcome to the Navy (or which ever service)". In our case, since we were both active duty at the time, we both were swatted. My good friend from high school (a year behind us at the Academy), Dave, welcomed me to the submarine force, while Justin was welcomed to the Surface Navy by one of his friends, Rebecca.

I loved the perfect balance of our sword arch - we had 8 people total. There were 4 Marines and 4 Naval Officers as well as 4 females and 4 males (equally distributed between Marines and Navy). It was such a blessing to have them all participate in our wedding. The photo was taken by a good friend of mine from graduate school.

I look forward to sharing many more stories behind the pictures.

Christmas Project

I know that I have been very quiet on this blog. Hopefully I'll have a bit more time to post once in awhile. I haven't been doing a lot of crafting recently but have managed a few things.

So here's my big home made gift for Caitlyn this year and the big craft project that I have been working on:


I decided to make Caitlyn some counting bean bags. I used Chez Beeper Bebe's tutorial for the bean bags. I had originally gotten Sweetwater's Make Life charm pack to make bean bags but decided to use Andover's Maisey fabric instead since Caitlyn absolutely adores "Maisy Big, Maisy Small: A Book of Maisy Opposites" by Lucy Cousins. I had a lot of fun doing the hand embroidery on the numbers.

Here's a closer peek:

I think they turned out well and I can't wait to see Caitlyn's reaction when she opens them tomorrow. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas! May God bless you and your family during this season of remembering when Emmanuel (God with Us) came to earth as a baby who arrived in the little town of Bethlehem.

3rd Quarter 11 - Top 5 Photos

Well, another 3 months have gone by without me posting much. Things will probably be changing around here, when I actually get some time to spend looking at what I want to do and share. I know that there are probably few people who still come by, but that's alright. I like having the space to share and link up with various posts that I'm interested in (like this Top 5 pics of the quarter). Anyways, without further ado, here are my pictures from the last three months of our Pooh Bear. It was a bit easier to pick pictures since I had fewer to chose from (many haven't been downloaded yet). These are my favorites from the ones I had on the computer.

This one was taken in downtown Portsmouth after we went to the Children's Museum with my in laws. I love her daddy in the background.I love this picture and little one helping her daddy stir up ingredients (I don't remember what they were making). She had scrapped up her nose the day before while visiting me on the ship. I just love the apron and her intense expression.
This was one evening when we were hanging out in the backyard. She was saying "ball" as she would bring the ball back to me or her daddy. Love the colors in the evening.

This one was taken at the Children's Museum in our area. Just love the expression on her face as she tries to listen to two different headsets.

This last photo is from just a couple of weeks ago. Little one was climbing in and out of her toy box in the family room, so I wanted to snap a picture of it.

Thanks for stopping by! Hopefully I will have time to share a bit more frequently in the future.

Narnia Reading Challenge

Carrie @ Reading to Know is hosting the Narnia Reading Challenge again this month.

C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia is one of my favorite series and I plan on reading through the whole series again this month as part of the challenge. In addition, I am reading "Aslan's Call" by Mark Eddy Smith and "A Field Guide to Narnia" by Colin Duriez. I look forward to sharing more with you as the month goes on. Would you join us?

2nd Quarterly Top 5

It's been a long time since I posted ... in fact the last time I posted was last quarter. I'm definitely thinking about doing some changes to what my focus is since stitching has taken a back burner at this point in my life (still working on projects but not nearly as many at a time to talk about). So for now, here are my top 5 pictures of little one for the months of April, May and June. Click on the banner if you want to link up and participate :) Can't wait to see everyone's pictures.

Without further ado:

This first picture I just love the backlighting and the smirk on her face. This was just one day taking pictures in her room.

I decided to play with editing the color on the camera for this one ... love her looking around the shower curtain. She loves bath time.

We went to the beach for a week at the beginning of May. This is one of my all time favorite pictures from that trip. Her daddy and granddaddy are in the background fishing and she is just staring at the ocean ;)

We went strawberry picking at a nearby farm. She enjoyed picking the berries (didn't eat many though) and had a great time.

This last pictures is at the children's garden at the local botanical gardens. She has so much fun whenever she is around water. I love the water in the foreground of this picture.

It was hard to narrow it down to 5 pictures from the past three months. I hope you enjoy a small glimpse into our lives. God Bless!