There are some friends that you have your whole life through, and Whitney has been that for me. It all started in second grade when a chubby, insecure girl (that would be me) transferred from a Christian private school to public school and a confident little girl (that would be Whitney) decided to take her under her wing. A lifetime of tears and laughter and AWKWARD STAGES were to follow.
Whitney recently came to visit me here in Seattle. She is now married to a wonderful man named Cole and has a squeezable little girl named Lucy, but on this trip I got her all to myself.
Providentially, the Royal Wedding aired while Whitney was here. As girls who happened to be born in the same year as Prince William, we spent a lot of time dreaming that God was going to unite us across oceans and cultures. Why else would we be the exact same age as the future King of England? We were practicing here, for the time he would make us his wife. You can see Whitney got the crown, but I at least got some rolled hair and blue eyeshadow.
As you can see, I do not throw around the term "awkward stage" lightly.
We weren’t only obsessed with crowns for the way they associated us with the Royal family, we also held large parties each year (ok, maybe it was just the two of us on the couch with enough snacks for a large party) to watch the Miss America Pageant. There will never be another night to compare to the one when Heather Whitestone, the hearing impaired Miss Alabama, took the crown. We listened as the interviewed contestants, one after the other, said, “If I can’t win, I hope it will be Heather who wins.” Our hearts sang (and we cried) as Heather did, indeed, win. We waved back to her on the screen as though she could see us, and wondered if perhaps our future crowning as Miss America would lead to William finally noticing us as we deserved.
This is our debutante ball in high school. I'm not sayin' I wasn't still in an awkward stage, but I'd like to note that Whitney managed to send me a REAL good picture of herself. Since I don't have a scanner, I'm at her mercy.
Life kept happening and somehow in college we still had not been crowned Miss America or the Queen of William’s heart.
With dates, at an Auburn football game. We'd come a long way, baby. And aren't you thankful I finally stopped trying to straighten my hair?
One day we decided that there was a lot more to life than William and Miss America. Who wants all the drama of the Royal Family anyway? God brought us our own Princes and some joys came along that we didn’t even know to anticipate.
This is right after I had Pace. The most shocking thing about this photo is that my fingernails look perfectly manicured. The only thing I can figure is that I must have been trying to induce labor. My fingers are NEVER "done"
Here, I am pregnant with Mary Aplin and dealing with a toddler. Again, Whitney looks fabulous and I am very pregnant. Thanks Wee.
So, last Friday morning at 2 am Whitney came and roused me from the bed where I was sleeping with my husband, “It’s about to start!” she whispered excitedly. And, just like we had done for those Miss America pageants all those years ago, we curled up on the couch in our pajamas (and ate enough snacks for a large party).
“You know what Whitney?” I said. “If it can’t be me, I’m glad it’s her.”
We both agreed, she was perfection. Picture borrowed from here.
I knew Whitney would think of Heather Whitestone and that night all those years ago. Isn’t it wonderful to have friends that can share inside jokes from twenty years back?
Lunch at Le Pichet
French onion soup, ham and gruyere quiche, and french fries.
Goat cheese and lavendar fondue before dinner. Just doing my best to enter another awkward stage.
Snacks at Golden Gardens park. Eating our way through Seattle.
In all seriousness, I wouldn’t trade a million Prince Williams for this man.
So thankful he didn't know me in those incredibly awkward years 🙂
Lord help her, because I know those awkward stages are coming.
Help me to know how to help them through it without permanent trauma to their self esteem.
I wish they could always learn how to do handstands in the grass with their Daddy, instead of worrying about boys and beauty queens.
But if they do worry about those things, help me remember that You always work things for Your good in the end.
A friend of mine helped launch “Shelter for the South,” in order to inform all of us about the different ways we could help out back home. By God’s grace, none of my personal friends or family were injured or displaced during the tragedy of last week. However, oh so many families are hurting physically and emotionally right now. Clicking the picture below will take you to the site, if you’re interested in finding out more information or how to help.
When we found out that we couldn’t go home for Christmas this year, I had a melt-down–in the middle of our bathroom, to be exact. When Jeremiah asked me if I could narrow down exactly what it was that was putting me in hysterics I said, “I just don’t know how many more Christmases we’re going to have with Grandma, Grandpa, and Mimi, and I can’t stand to go the whole Holiday season without seeing them!”
As a sweet and tender husband (who wanted his wife to continue functioning through the already-stressful Holiday season) he said, “Why don’t we fly them out here this Spring instead of getting them Christmas presents? We’ll get to spend more time with them that way anyhow (since we won’t be torn between all the normal things that home calls us to), and we’ll just figure out the money thing…”
I knew I’d married the right man 😉
I told my Dad about our plan, and he talked to the rest of our family. My Mimi (Dad’s Mom) wasn’t quite sure she could handle all the rigors of a cross-country trip…but I’m still kinda hoping she’s going to change her mind here soon. My Grandma and Grandpa were on board from the first few words, and their children (my aunts and uncles) and my Dad helped by their tickets. I felt a little bad about asking them to come and then letting everybody else pay for it, but then I decided to just accept it as God’s goodness.
And so, one week ago, I got my Christmas wish.
There is something so shocking about seeing Preacher Sollie walking the streets of Seattle.
And watching Sister from Aimwell take in the flying fish.
The BIG bonus in the deal was that my Aunt Alice (my Mom’s sister and Latte as my chicken wings call her) and my Uncle Don (my Mom’s oldest brother who, shocking as it was to me, is a TOTAL kid magnet) brought Grandma and Grandpa and shared this adventure with us.
The first Starbucks, ever. Though I'm pretty positive Grandma and Grandpa had no idea why I thought this was such a big deal. I don't know that they've ever even tasted Starbucks coffee.
Do we all so obviously begin to morph into our parents? 🙂
The Starbucks and the Space Needle were not nearly as exciting to my grandparents as the beauty and difference of Seattle in Springtime.
Unfortunately, this became somewhat of a theme of the trip. Dapples was having a rough week doing anything in a compliant manner.
My grandparents and Latte, love to garden.
Some flowers were familiar from home.
Others were brand new.
We took a morning drive out to Snoqualmie Falls.
Are they all cut out of the same mold or what?
Where did I com from? I felt like an Amazon woman the whole time they were here.
Now, as anyone in Dothan, Alabama who has run into my Grandpa over the past few months knows, his first harbor in the US at the end of World War II was in Seattle, Washington. He was on a ship called the Bon Homme Richard, and he had two primary memories of Seattle.
Bon Homme Richard. Photo borrowed from Wikipedia.
One was of icebergs as big around as he could circle his two arms. The other was getting off the boat on good American soil and being elected by his buddies to go buy them all a round of beer at a bar near a “White-Something” park. On his way back to the boat, arms loaded down with rounds of fun, he ran into “an ‘ol boy I’d grown up with in Sweetwater.” And he, known as Little Preacher back home (because his Daddy was the Preacher), a grown man celebrating the end of a war he’d fought in, was humiliated to be caught by somebody from back home with beer in his arms. I just love that story…I think it sums up my sweet Grandpa.
Well, we packed in the car and went on a GPS-guided, Blackberry-aided wild goose chase through the greater Seattle area, searching for the port where Grandpa had returned home. Grandpa was in the front seat, instructed to look for anything familiar and highly confused by what we were doing with all our little devices. After about an hour with little luck from our high-falutin’ technology he said, “If we could find an ‘ol boy bought my age, we could just pull over and ask him where the Bon Homme Richard came in. He’ll remember it. It was a BIG ship.”
I told him if he found an ‘ol boy of that description, to holler and I’d be glad to pull over and ask just that.
After about two hours, we think we found it.
On the way to dinner afterwards, we saw this rainbow in the sky. Maybe it was a promise we'd found the right spot? I don't know, but I wanted a round of those drinks by the time the search was over 🙂
The next day we took the Victoria Clipper to…Victoria.
Grandpa was a nervous wreck about the impromptu trip on a boat. I don’t know if he thought we were putting him back on the Bon Homme Richard, or if he thought we were taking a dingy out to sea and planning to hand him a paddle, but he said “I don’t want to spend my last days on no boat.” He did not find our laughter amusing.
We made it safely 🙂 and had the awed pleasure of visiting the famous Butchart Gardens.
The Sunken Gardens. My favorite part.
It was sprinkling, but they have these little clear umbrellas that shelter you without obstructing your view...and provided great fun for the little girls.
You know you're serious about beauty, when even the trash cans are planted with flowers.
While we didn't get to experience the rose garden in bloom, our Spring visit did allow us to witness all the blooming trees.
I toured my second Fairmont Hotel in a month and have decided I'd like spend the rest of my vacationing life traveling from one Fairmont Hotel to the next 🙂
The Legislative Building was gorgeous.
We did a little self-guided tour through the interior.
And this acapella group was singing through that vaulted space. The pure beauty of their voices echoing through the floors sent chills all over my body. I was spell-bound and teary eyed.
I wasn't the only one.
The girls had had just about enough of walking and sight-seeing. At first, they looked for creative ways to entertain themselves.
But then, the melt-downs began. This is me outside a store that Mary Aplin refused to enter as she screamed "Monsters in dere! Monsters in dere!" Great for business 🙂
I am not proud to admit it, but I resorted to bribery...
...And the purest of all creature comforts.
Sweet, wonderful, happy Grandma and Grandpa on the boat ride back to Seattle--this time, unafraid of death by water.
It was a wonderful time. How many girls can say that their 80-something-year-old grandparents are healthy enough and adventurous enough to fly from Alabama to Seattle to spend the week with them? How priceless to watch my girls being loved on by the same arms that loved me throughout my childhood? How heart-filling to hear stories of my Mom from the people who knew her even better than I? I couldn’t take pictures to capture those parts…but they were the best of all.