Milestones

At the beginning of the summer, I told Anna she could get her ears pierced before school started. As usual, I listened to weeks and weeks of reminding from her and then waited until the last week of summer to actually get it done.

I made arrangements for the other hoodlums, I mean children and planned to spend the whole day with Anna.

We got off to a late start so when we headed for Abilene, it was close to lunchtime. I asked her where she wanted to go for lunch and without hesitation she said, "Harvest Moon!!!" So we had some grown up girl bonding time over chinese food and it was precious. She's so grown up!

Here's a picture of us at the restaurant. Now, before your eyes start to water I'll tell you that I had our waitress take more than one picture of us trying to get it focused. In the end, I think that's just probably the way she saw us. I don't remember if she had glasses on or not, but she was no spring chicken.


Even though she's a big girl and we're doing big girl stuff, she still wanted to ride the coin operated bull. She made that face before the thing actually came on. Her next expression is much less exciting.

Here we are at Claire's. They're clipping her hair back so they can see her ears.

Tada! All done. Boy that was fast. Just kidding. That's just her with her hair pulled back and her ears marked.

She started to get a little nervous right about now. There's a girl on each ear so she doesn't have to go through it twice and they gave her a teddy bear with earrings to squeeze for comfort.

All done! I don't know if you can see it in the picture, but her eyes are a little misty. She was so brave. I could tell that she was struggling to keep the tears in.

They gave her a bag that says, "Just got my ears pierced!" It's about 150 degrees in the mall parking lot, just in case it looks hot to you.


I'm so proud of my big girl. She's growing up fast!


Of course, we had to go by the church and show them off to Brenda.


And get a hug. You can't tell here, but she really does love hugs!

Then we had to go by the studio to show daddy!



And anytime we're at the studio, she just has to play the drums!


Another milestone. Sniff, sniff. Don't worry, I'll be alright. I get to do it two more times!