familybeyond

It’s official!  Pop Pop’s Popcorn will be represented in Seaside.  Each week during summer they have a play, band and a movie.  We will be there every Mon, Wed and Friday.  Logo is coming soon.  Here is a picture of the first event at the Seaside Easter Egg Hunt.  Organic popcorn with sea salt and nutritional yeast available.  Ashler drew the logo and is being tweaked to put on the sign.  Long live Pop Pop!

Last week, the O’Brien kiddos were lucky enough to attend the week long Cotillon class that Seaside school offered.  A week of good manners such as setting a table, greeting people, foxtrot and waltz,  proper grooming and how to eat properly.  The week ended with a 5 course meal and dance.  These pics are their lovely faces as they are about to go to the dinner.

Here it is…….my 2 thugs!!!

Here is the boys take on some popular products!

This summer, the kiddos, grandpa and I boarded a fishing vessel in Panama City and went on a fishing trip.   We found out real quickly that Ella gets seasick.  While she was moaning with the rocking boat, the boys were reeling them in.  We caught red snapper, white snapper and other various ones as well.  It was a fun time as we went out for five hours.

Okay, so this one is not the kids and I.  I was lucky enough to be asked my mother, aunt Susan, cousin Ryan and Pop Pop to accompany them on a cruise to Bermuda.  I was on the cruise to help my grandfather, Pop Pop, have an enjoyable time.  What an awesome opportunity as we departed from Boston on a Friday and stepped foot on the Norwegian Dawn.  The cruise was for a week and we spent two and a half days in Bermuda.  My cousin Ryan and I rented scooters while on the island and had a blast.  It was a trip I am highly grateful for as I bunked with Pop Pop and got to spend some incredible moments with him.  The trip was priceless and I am so fortunate to have been asked by my family to go.  And to top it off, I got to spend first night  after the cruise was over in Boston with my cousin Tom.  We went to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox play the Cleveland Indians.

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On February 11th, last Monday, the kids and I embarked on a journey to New Orleans to explore Mardi Gras.  An unexpected companion joined us on this journey, Nana Linda.  Both the children and I were pretty astonished at first that Nana Linda wanted to accompany us.  Nonetheless, we scooped her up and headed out that rainy Monday evening.  A little history on the festival:  Mardi Gras was brought to the US by the Le Moyne brothers as a French Catholic festival.  They arrived in the early 1700’s as the French were protecting their territory in Louisiana.  The celebration took and was formed into what it is today.  Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday is the last day before Lent begins.  Families cook all the fat in the house and get rid of all the excessive products in their homes.  Shrove which means confess is a more religious term used as the families ridded themselves of their sins before the cleansing began.

My good friend, Dana Jusselin, offered her beautiful apartment on Chartres street in the French Quarter as the base of our journey.  What a gracious hostess she was as she gathered us in her loving home and showed us the city.  As we arrived on Monday night, our restless traveling legs meandered around the city to scope out the scene for Fat Tuesday.  We ended up enjoying world famous beignets at Cafe Du Monde as Nana Linda was curious to what the fuss was about.

We arose the next morn and hightailed it to the Zulu parade where our first encounter with beads, stuffed animals and flying coconuts ensued.  A great parade it was          but everyone was getting hungry and wanted a little shelter from the drizzle.  We went to Johnny’s Po Boys which is a great and affordable local spot for some awesome NOLA cuisine.  The Kiddos and I discovered it on our previous visit to New Orleans.  After lunch we meandered thru the Quarter and met up with our hostess, Dana and her lovely friend Gloria.  After drinking some champagne at Gloria’s we descended upon the heart of Mardi Gras.  Walking, talking, beading, drumming and more we ran into an old friend of mine, Leah Smith of Rising Appalachia.  It was amazing to find her in such a crowded space.  We saw it all as incredible costumes, balconies festooned with boahs and beads.  About 7 we all were pretty pooped.

We woke up the next morning round 7 and the city was still sleeping.  The city of New Orleans had done an incredible job of cleaning up, it looked as if Mardi Gras had never happened.  Much love to my awesome friend, Dana, as without her the trip would not have been nearly as memorable.  I think we all had an amazing time along with Nana Linda who was a pleasurable travel companion.

On Friday, Feb. 8th, I took the kiddos out of school early to take a family field trip.  We loaded up the old VW and headed to Niceville.  The Tibetan monks of the Drepung Loseling Monastery were doing a weeklong mandala at the Mattie Kellie Arts Center on the campus of Northwest Florida State College.  A beautiful arts facility that I never knew existed.

We had the pleasure to go watch the monks create with drakpurs and sand a lovely piece of art.  The mandala is a sacred cosmogram that much thought and effort go behind.  The mandalas consist of three layers: the outer, inner and secret.  The outer layer stands for the world in its divine form.  The Inner layer is the ordinary human mind as it is transformed into the enlightened mind.  The secret layer depicts the primordially perfect balance of the the subtle energies of the body and the clear light dimensions of the mind.  In Tantric Buddhism, the mandalas are swept away after completed and destroyed as a metaphor for the impermanence of life.  The sand is usually dumped into a body of water so its healing properties can disperse as far reaching as the water flows.

The children had a wonderful time as they got to contribute to a mandala of their own.  The monks are on hand to work on their own mandala and answer any questions you may have.  Also taking donations and selling their wares to help maintain their existence.  I would recommend this viewing to anybody who hears of this in their town.

The battle for hair supremacy has ended.  Ella decided to get a haircut rather than endure another lengthy battle of brushing her long locks of hair.  For a couple of years now as Ella has grown her hair out, battling dreadlocks, bugs, paint, glue and whatever else you can think of, it has probably been in or has come out of her tresses.  We decided to get a haircut yesterday.

At first, she was just going to go shoulder length until we found a wonderful option that I had heard of, Locks of Love.  It is a nonprofit organization that takes donations from people lucky enough to have full heads of hair.  It provides the hair donated to financially disadvantaged children who suffer from any type of hair loss.  The most common affliction is alopecia areata.  They provide prosthetic wigs made from the donated locks to provide these children with the opportunity to have their self confidence and esteem back.  Im so proud of my girl as once she found out she wanted to cut more hair off.  The minimum is 10″ and her cut was to her chin as opposed to her shoulders.  Go Ella!