It was a beautiful day.

Today was a great day.  It was that rare weekend when I didn't have to travel, and we had nothing on the schedule.  One of my favorite things to do on days like this is cook a big breakfast for the girls.  The whole 9 yards.  As we sit down for breakfast, here was the conversation:

Caroline :Mamaw cooks the best breakfast!
Hadley: Mamaw (she now can say Mamaw, instead of Memaw, which incidently enough was my grandmother, my mother's mother).
Reagan: Yes, Mamaw is the best chef.  She cooks everything better.
Hadley: Mamaw
Me:  Yes, if I had a restaurant, I would call it Mamaw's and it would be all the food she cooked.
Hadley: Mamaw
Caroline: Her turkey, her dumplings, her french toast.....
Hadley:Mamaw
Reagan: thats because she grew up on a farm (which is pretty much true).
Me: Thats true, and it was on that farm...I think, that Mamaw saw Santa!
Caroline: Wait....Mamaw has seen Santa?
Me:  Yes, Sport.  She swears by it to this day.  No one keeps the spirit of Christmas alive year round like Mamaw.

That's when I realized that this will be one of my mother's legacies to her granddaughters.  As long as they are alive, they will remember their Mamaw as a great cook, and someone who always believed.

That's sort of what I love about my mother, too.  She has always believed.  She has always kept the faith.  She has always believed in my father, she never stopped believing in Patrick and I (even when we pushed her away), she never stopped believing in the spirit of Christmas, and she has never stopped believing in her faith.  No matter what, she stays the course.  This is what her granddaughters will always remember of her.  That's pretty cool.

We then loaded up the van and headed about 40 miles north to pick apples.  This is sort of a big deal, because in Lexington we used to do this stuff all the time.  You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a farm that was growing something for you to pick.  We used to go all the time, and it is some of our greatest memories of the girls.  We did it almost this exact time last year, so we decided to head back to the same farm.  We picked 20lbs of apples, many of which we weren't supposed to pick.  We didn't want the smaller apples that were ready to pick, we wanted the big, fat, juicy apples.  So we picked those.  The owner liked the girls so much, she gave us special permission to pick her personal raspberry bushes, not open to the public.  We got two whole batches of raspberries.  When we were checking out, the lady asked Hadley if she has picked any berries, Hadley points to her open mouth and goes "yummmmmm."  I told Hadley she was telling on herself, and the lady asked Hadley if she should weigh Hadley (because she had eaten so many of the berries....and apples for that matter).  We went from there to lunch at  Red Robbin, one of the girls favorite places to eat.  It was a beautiful day.

We got home, all rested a bit, then went to their school to ride bikes. Caroline did it on her first try.  I later helped walk Mimi and Pop through setting up their new iPhones, and then had Ramen Noodles for dinner (which is what I wanted). We capped it off with movie night and SEC football.

I realized that all throughout the day, we were doing things that both sets of grandparents would be proud of, things they both would want to do with us.  Big meals, berry picking, playing at a park, riding bikes, at the school, taking pictures, and dozing off on the couch.

It was a beautiful day indeed.