Travels

Traveling to North Carolina one weekend and Richmond the next is exhausting.  Let me tell you.  Lucky for me, in between those travels there was a birthday party, virus, iron deficiency problems, soccer, school, and lots and lots of medication.  Also, prom dress shopping, a hilarious opera at the Kennedy Center, the start of lent and penances, and some very happy news.

I was accepted into the honor's institute at Belmont Abbey!

So all my travels were worthwhile and wonderful and exhausting, but mostly wonderful.

The best part about traveling? I got some one on one time with my parents.

The trip to North Carolina was spent with my daddy and the trip to Richmond with my mom.

Also, in one weekend I got to spend some quality time with both sets of my grandparents! It is rare for me to see one set of grandparents at all, but to see both in the span of one weekend - inconceivable and purely awesome.  

But back to my one on one time with the padres.
I guess I've transitioned from this stage of thinking of my parents as authoritarians and am starting to view them more as companions? They still provide for and protect me, but there is also this (blessed) freedom during this stage in my life where I get to spread my wings a bit.  After all, I will need to be able to manage myself when I go off to college.  I feel very blessed with the parents God has given me and everything they do for me.  I tell them thank you at certain moments, but all they do and have done is really starting to sink in.
See I have a Choleric temperament and I have issues when people (*cough* parents) tell me when to do something and how I should do it.  Being a senior is hard because you are right at the cross roads.  Almost gone from the house, not wanting to listen, because we have it all figured out right? But - oh those stupid buts - we still have to remember our place and God's rules.  Yes, I'm talking about that whole fourth commandment thing.  So it was really swell that I got to spend 2 weekends just hanging out with my parents.  Sure we had itineraries and places to go, but we also got to have deep discussions and moments in the car rides (which were long) where we just enjoyed each other's company and shared common interests.
And my parents are both so different that it was really an awakening for me to notice how differently I related to my mom as opposed to my dad in such an intimate setting.

Other than travels and sending in my deposit for college (!) nothing much is going on.  Well, actually, I might have just found my roommate....so that is pretty exciting.

Personally, I find the beginning of lent to be rather dull and the end to be much more exciting...