Inspired

:: by the quote my friend Amy shared recently, something she saw on a sign in the half-marathon she ran recently that went:  "There will come a day when you can no longer do this.  Today is not that day."  I wish I could give a hearty cheer for Week Two of my own half-marathon training, but all I can do after Friday morning's seven-miler is stretch my left calf muscle and hope for better things this weekend.  And keep on running, being grateful that today I can still do this.

:: by the website Tastespotting, both to cook more and to push up the timeline for getting myself a dSLR camera, so that I, too, can take food photos like those someday.

:: by our impromptu family day at the beach on Friday, the one where we had planned to spend the day re-stocking at Costco and paying bills and running errands and washing the cars and mowing the lawn, but where we looked at the weather forecast and decided instead to pack up the wagon and head to Holland, where the water was 75, the air was 85, and we ate lunch and played tag and did underwater handstands and took long walks right up until we decided it was time to go out to dinner.  Which we did, with wet spots showing through our cover-ups and sand crusted to our ankles, at an outside table at New Holland Brewery, happy that our foursome can be together this way, Ichabod and Shirley Temples, burgers and cheese plate, pickles and olives, sunshine on our damp hair.

:: by this quote from Kelle Hampton's blog (are you reading her?  You should be reading her.):

"My mom says she has this dream every once in a while. She dreams that we're little again, and she's back in the days of rocking us, reading stories, holding our hands as we walk across streets to parks and picnics and little adventures. She says that when she wakes up, for one second she thinks we're still little and in her house, and that when she realizes we're not, there is a moment of heartache--this paralyzing reminder that those days are gone, and we have moved on. 

I think about this a lot. 

I know my mom is happy--that she has supported our independence and explorations away from home. I know that I will be happy, supporting their independence and explorations from home. But I also know that what I have right now--two little people who comfortably remain in the security of this sliver of time where they are ours--is fleeting. During adventures like yesterday where one is slung to my hip and one is holding my hand, guiding me toward where she wants to go, and little friends and friends' mamas are circled around us, I think to myself, "I'm going to miss this."