Saturday, August 27, 2016

Saturday, August 27, 2016


Tonight's picture was taken in August of 2004. It is one of my favorite photos of Mattie that I took! We were visiting my parents in Los Angles and in typical Mattie fashion..... he decided to be a character! He found my sandals, put them on, and was parading around the house. Check out his smile, he was clearly proud of himself.










Quote of the day: Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ~ Anonymous

What have we been doing for the last several hours? The answer is we have been standing outside my parents house dealing with a major accident. A teenager was driving too fast, WHILE the sun was still up, and took the corner by my parent's home too fast. He lost control of the car, almost hit a kid, and came flying onto the front lawn. Thanks to the pear tree...... it stopped the car before hitting the house and potentially killing the driver.

I have never met my parents neighbors before, but I met ALL of them including the kids. One kid who is 8 years old, was fascinated by what was going on as well as interacting with the police. So this fellow was with us most of the evening. The police did an OUTSTANDING job and managed the incident beautifully. But who expects this to happen? The scary part is my mom and I were backing out of our driveway, when we heard a car speeding and skidding out of control. So my mom stopped the car. If she was further out of the driveway, this car would have hit definitely hit me and most likely would have seriously injured me. So it does put this all into perspective.

Today, we went out to lunch in Calabasas, which is about 45 minutes West of where my parents live. The outdoor mall that we went to, is like NO mall I know of. The area is filled with ducks, fountains, turtles, birds of all kinds, and is simply a wonderful escape.

While at lunch, we had these gals waddling over to greet us. They were looking for a hand out and many people obliged the ducks!

At the other end of the outdoor shopping complex is a beautiful fountain with bronze sculptures and turtles! A ton of turtles to be exact!

I truly believe Mattie would have enjoyed this sight today! He was into any sort of water element and of course turtles!

Is this not an adorable turtle fountain?

A frog fountain! Not sure which one I like more.... the turtle or the frog.

This is an overview of the entire fountain. Which looks very pond like, doesn't it? It has statues of kids... two are in the water, one is on land trying to pull in the row boat, and one little boy is in the row boat. It is the boy in the boat that always reminds me of Mattie.

I entitle this Turtle Beach! Don't you just love the turtle line up!

I actually had to research what this turtle is doing! My mom and I watched this big turtle climb on top of the other one. Bascially what I found out was that this turtle was competing for the best basking site and this is what turtles do both in captivity and in the wild.

This is the other end of the fountain! To me just coming to see the water, the turtles, and the ducks make it worth the drive!