Illustration Friday– Launch

Welcome to the good stuff…
My bloggy friend, Ces, talks about launching her children into lives of their own, and that concept is the starting point for this week’s Illustration Friday submission.  We have been on vacation for four days now, and I am keenly aware that our family is dwelling in a pocket of time that is truly unique and may very well be short-lived.  Our kids are now 10 and 12,  ages where they are easy to please and take care of  (I’m remembering packing the car with huge canvas bags full of plastic gizmos and floaty toys, potty stops every 50 miles, and always providing a side dish of macaroni and cheese to whatever culinary concoction was being planned for vacation decadence) but yet they still like us and still want to be seen with us, have us chaperone school field trips, coach their teams and volunteer at school parties.  We don’t know yet what parenting teenagers is like, but we’ve seen a few of them and we were once teenagers ourselves, so we have some idea.   We may very well have to brace ourselves.  We’re up for it, we’re paying attention and we are doing our best to provide a suitable and stable launch pad.
In the meantime, the only launching I’m doing this week is out of my beach chair to jump waves with two certain boys who are really only mine for a little while longer.

Prepare for launch… 

Update:  Check this out, I’m infringing on my brother’s copyright here, but it is oh so cool, and also so appropriate for launch,  I’ll make him a pie or a cheesecake or something later, and maybe he’ll forgive me.  My brother is a real rocket scientist, and is currently in Baikonur doing his thing.  Among other things, he posted this photograph of a Soyuz launch on our family blog.

Illustration Friday– Swept

Living a solitary life on the windswept plains, Judson Miller often swept into the town of Scorpion Gulch to sweep out the riffraff. Soon, very soon, he planned to propose to Miss Lily Frymoyer, who no doubt would be swept off her feet.