Anniversaries

Yesterday would've been my father's 65th birthday. A few weeks ago, a party supplies catalog appeared in our mail - probably because I ordered some things from Oriental Express for Emmelia's party last year - and one of their new party "themes" was John Deere. I thought that would've been so appropriate and fun to have a John Deere themed party for my Dad's birthday. Oh well - we likely wouldn't have had a lot of time/energy/money to plan much this year anyhow.

Today is the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos - the day wherein we remember her death and from her example learn how to approach death ourselves. Happy feast! This also means it is the one year anniversary of my blog! That's really hard to believe... that I'm still here, still posting. I averaged a little over 10 posts a month in my first year, but not very many comments. You all need to work on that part. ;-) The other anniversary we celebrated recently was the 6th anniversary of the Deac's ordination on Sunday. He didn't quite feel up to serving on Sunday, but did serve his first liturgy since Pascha for the Dormition liturgy last night. It was good to hear his beautiful tenor voice singing litanies again. And so good to have him on the mend.

Yesterday Emmelia officially started Tae Kwon Do lessons. She LOVED it! This was after showing us what she had learned at her "graduation" ceremony last Saturday - and also broke a board! Though they won't always be in the same class sessions each week, she was joined yesterday by her 3 friends from school. Each girl earned her first belt by memorizing and reciting the "Little Dragon's Pledge" (the Deac said Emmelia did a terrific job reciting, too):
1. I will listen to my parents.
2. I will clean my room every day.
3. I will do my best at Tae Kwon Do.
There are really good messages already sinking in to her about honesty, integrity and what they call "life skills" that are messages she's heard from us umpteen times but really mean something now that her Tae Kwon Do teacher is saying it, too. Heh.

Today I get to be fitted for contact lenses again! My cornea seems to have healed and my vision has returned to normal. So I imagine I'll have the same prescription but with preservative-free solution. Hopefully I won't have to get the expensive contacts you throw away each day, but we'll see. I am *so* excited to have a break from these stupid glasses again! (Edited to say: they just called and moved my appointment to next week. Boo.)

Get this - over 2 months until Emmelia turns FIVE (how did THAT happen??) and we ALREADY HAVE THE PARTY SCHEDULED. Remember all my angst last year about finding a place to have her 4th birthday party? Well, NONE of that this year. She knows where she wants it and what she wants on her cake and I've reserved the time. EXCELLENT!!

Oh, I just finished a page with a new kit by my friend Christine Nash (called "Razzle Dazzle"). I had these photos of Emmelia from June that really show her personality, but weren't very good photos - kind of out-of-focus or too close-up. This was kind of a fun way to show them off in a fairly simple layout.