Sunday Selah

So it's not what I pictured for 2 of 8's senior year of dance.

For many a year now, 2 of 8 has been part of a dance company that is one of the premiere companies in our region. With a large group of incredibly talented athletes, they have enjoyed several seasons of winning everything, the sun shining, sparkles, ponies and rainbows following them all along the way.

Until this season.

2 of 8's senior year.

Injuries. Changes. Challenges. It's been a doozy.

We're deep into competition season and 2 of 8's company is finding itself having to re-choreograph, make massive changes, learn on a dime and deal with the stress and frustration that comes with those kinds of pressures.

So it's not what I envisioned.

But heavens, is it gorgeous.

These beautiful young women are stepping it up. They are doing it. Through tears and fears and change. They are hitting that stage with a story to tell, not just one of dedication and practice, but now one that tells of adversity and pressing through. The group is smaller but the story is bigger. Their hearts are raw, but the passion is deeper. And the victory is sweeter.

They are still winning. They still take away the breath of the audience and gather points from the judges.

But it's different.

Because now more than ever, they are immersed in character. The character to persevere, not for awards and accolades, but to persevere out of love.

May I learn them and dance the dance of life with similar steps.

Selah.

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Fer Realz?

I was sitting in my beloved Costco this week, noshing on pizza with 5 of 8.

Costco pizza. Heaven wrapped in cheese and grease and dough.

The good news is, you can walk off a lot of the calories in that pizza just walking to the back of the store to pick up milk. So I figure it's a win-win.

As 5 of 8 and I were finishing up our food court luncheon, a guy about my age made his way to the table next to us, chatting on his cell phone and juggling his drink and salad. He was one of those phone talkers who's a little loud, his voice carrying to everyone in a ten foot radius.

(source)
Really.

I wasn't engaging in gratuitous eavesdropping. Much.

But he was going on and on about his daughter's college plans and how he was hoping that she would get more serious about her education and how this was her shot and how he certainly was willing to put money toward her education because, you know, he really wanted her to have purpose in life and not end up as like, say, a housewife.

Wait.

What?

Did he really say that? That having purpose in life and being a housewife are diametrically opposed?

Why, yes, he did.

Fer realz, as my kids would text.

He said that. Out loud. And loud.

Here's the thing. My most important work, one of my greatest purposes in life, is the housewife thing.

And, yeah, I work from the home. I've almost always had some gig going, whether it be putting stickers on medical folders or being a voice-over artist for advertising or running a photography business or writing or teaching or speaking or running a non-profit. I love doing those things. I'm blessed I've been able to arrange to work primarily from my home office.  But even if I didn't have opportunity to do those things, it would in no way diminish my true purpose.

At the end of the day, my most important work is how well I'm serving the people who live in this house. And, yes, that does include how well I'm keeping them in clean laundry and training them in the kitchen and teaching them how to run effective lives by keeping up with the upkeep that comes with effective lives, dusty baseboards and all.  Strange perhaps to my cell-shouting friend, but I always have equated purpose with how well people feel they have been cared for and loved by me, whether family or friends or neighbors.  And that's not a gender role.  It's Mike's greatest purpose too.  And my kids.  How we care for each other and how we communicate that to our worlds, in the home, on the street, in the workplace.

So Mr. Costco Food Court Cell Phone Philosopher, I just want you to know.  It's awesome you want to encourage your daughter in her education.  I hope she takes advantage of your generosity to fund her education.  But while there are numerous amazing things that come with schooling and preparation and career direction, there's something higher education cannot provide.

Purpose.

Because purpose, my friend, is not a vocation.  It's the heartbeat of your life.  And if you desire relevance, it's going to have to involve serving people around you, regardless of the letters and degrees that come after your name.

Even if those letters are h-o-u-s-e-w-i-f-e.

The hand that rocks the cradle can shape the generations of the world.

I'm Doing Your Laundry

Well, kind of.

I do have a little laundry freebie for you. How's that? Not the same as a basket of folded whites and lights and darks, but it's something, right?

I redid my laundry room a few months ago, building IKEA cabinets around my washer and dryer, repainting and rearranging. And I even decorated a bit.

I had seen a cute painted wall hanging in a local store that had 'Laundry' painted across it. It was really tempting to stick it in my cart.

But I'm cheap.

Real cheap.

And I wondered if I might be able to somehow achieve the same kind of artwork...but for free.

I had an old print in a gold frame stored out in the garage. I borrowed some flat black paint from JT (she is incredibly handy to have right down the street for many reasons, not the least of which is her collection of spray paint...), sprayed the frame black, flipped the print over to its plain brown cardboard back and then created three Word documents with the word 'laundry' and its definition. I then printed the sheets on regular printer paper and proceeded to tear the extra paper away from the 'L', the rest of the word ('aundry') and its definitions.

Spray, tape, print, tear. Art.

Ta-da!

There was actually a piece of glass that was supposed to enclose the whole thing inside the frame. Which I managed to break.

Yea me.

But still~~free art work. Hello.

And now you can make one too, if you like! You'll find the print-outs I made below. Just download, print, tear, tape and ta-da.

And you can break your picture frame glass too, if it helps you feel like you've had the whole experience....

Laundry 1

Laundry 2

Laundry 3

Sunday Selah

Let my teaching fall like rain

and my words descend like dew,

like showers on new grass,

like abundant rain on tender plants.

Deut. 32:2

I don't know if the powers that be have declared our Central Texas drought over.

But it feels like we at least have had a respite.

It has rained over that past few days. Sprinkled, poured, soaking and steady. In our generally-sunny climes, soccer games and golf events have been cancelled, fields are flooded, creeks are running.

It's a thing of beauty.

And we are privy to a landscape changed. After months of brown, tan, dry, tired, the whole cityscape is becoming green and vibrant again.

With just a few days of rain.

It's amazing what a little water can do.

When my soul gets a bit parched, I start looking for spiritual swimming pools. I look for oceans of inspiration and cascades of creativity. I seek an oasis in the desert.

But maybe all I need is a little rain. To seek those sprinkles of His presence, those refreshing droplets that remind me He is there and that He can green up things in life with just a little shower.

Maybe one of these days our area lakes will be at capacity again. Perhaps the outlying towns who have been having to truck in water will no longer need to do so. Perhaps the water rationing schedules will cease.

But until then, this rain is blessed.

As is the rain He brings to the dusty places of the heart, even when all the answers aren't cataloged and all the issues aren't resolved.

He still brings sweet rain.

Selah.

JPEG of the Week

~Raindrops on Winter Branches~

~a beautiful sight in our drought-stricken part of the country~

~Blessed Rain~

Gush

That's 6 of 8 there on the left. She was three years old at the time and we were at a wedding. She's with my precious niece KL.

I could just gush.

It sounds a little melodramatic, I suppose, but 6 of 8's toddlerhood is a bit foggy to me. She was only 10 months old when we found that we would be leaving our cozy enclave in Oklahoma, grandparents and aunts and uncles just up the road, and moving to the island. In all the emotion and details and challenge, it's those things that stand out strongest in my memory.

But then I go through some older photos like this.

And I melt.

Maybe it was somewhat of a good thing that I was so distracted when 6 of 8 was younger. Because looking at those big ol' baby blues, I'm pretty sure I would have spoiled her completely rotten all the time if I wasn't having to oversee moving trucks and housing contracts and getting all the other kids settled.

I know she's mine. But that's one cute kid....

Home Office

Yes.

This is the scene outside my office. I had some phone calls to make. And the twins said they would be nice and quiet. And they were.

They quietly sent most of their stuffed animal and dirty laundry collection over the balcony onto the entry floor.

I've almost always had some kind of job that I've done throughout my kids' time at home. I've put stickers on medical folders, done voice-over work for advertising, sold educational books, run a professional photography business, done video production, done writing and research and speaking. I love being home with my kids, love homeschooling them, love running our crazy household.

And I love to work. I love working for the non-profit, Legacy of Hope Austin.

And I love working in women's ministry. And I love the time I spend up at our church offices, soaking in the adult conversation and the relative lack of chaos and the ability to get a lot done.

And I love coming home and navigating through Barbies and figurines to dig into a project. I'm productive in my home office, in a more fractured way.

But somehow, stuff still gets done.

Except for my kitchen floors. And baseboards. That kind of stuff doesn't ever seem to get done.

I've been reading up on and researching how other folks navigate working from home, how they structure their days, how they try to designate a line between home life and work life. I have some ideas. And I still have a lot to learn.

So let's hear it...do you work from home? How do you make it work? Or would you like to work at home and are trying to figure out venues for doing that? Or are you quite happy to keep your office life off site? Ask and discuss!

Sunday Selah

The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

Mark 11:12-14

We bring a lot of filter to how we view Jesus. For some of us, He is soft, gentle, quiet. For others, He seems to be a good teacher, a man of compassion, but maybe not divine. Still others see Him as an agent of social change, stern toward 'The Man' but easy on the rest of us.

I bring my own filters to my portrait of Him.

This may sound odd, but I actually have a tough time with movies and film portrayals of Him. I just know how my mind works. Once I see an actor playing the role of Christ, once I see a painting or a drawing, my mind gravitates to that image. I fill in the blanks~~kindness in His eyes, determination in the set of His mouth, hard work represented in the callouses of His hands.

Except it's not Him.

It's how we've chosen to represent Him.

I've been spending a lot of time in the Gospels again, looking over His resume, watching His career highs, His quotable quotes, His moments of happy and His moments of discouragement. And taken in large portions, the Gospels show me again that Jesus is far more complex, far more layered, far more other than our human representations and small verbal portraits can encapsulate.

What strikes me most in my present studying is the hard sayings of Jesus. The tough stuff. The things that resonate with the tang of discipline and sacrifice and change. We like to think that those things were reserved for the Pharisees. But I think we sometimes miss that Jesus was speaking to the devoted church-goers of His day, the folks who were showing up for every conference and lectureship, the guys who sat on the boards of their local synagogue, the ones on the planning committees.

You know.

Us.

And He wasn't winking at the ones He healed and to whom He extended forgiveness of sins. He didn't tell them to keep sitting in their brokenness and sin. He told them to get up. And to stop sinning.

There was a passage in Mark this week that kept drawing me back, kept me scratching my head. Jesus has just entered Jerusalem. He has just ridden through the streets in the fulfillment of Scripture, the crowds shouting 'Hosanna'. And He passes a fig tree. A fig tree minding its own business. But Jesus is hungry. He approaches the tree, hoping to find some fruit. But there is none. And Mark lets us know that figs weren't even in season.

See? A fig tree minding its own business, just going about the cycle of the calendar. No harm, no foul, right?

But Jesus, the One we like to see as cashmere to the roughness of life, curses the fig tree. Lets it have it. Verbal wales on it. And then moves on to drive the money-changers out of the Temple.

Hm.

I was puzzled. And a little bothered. Because it just doesn't seem fair to curse a fig tree.

I ran through my commentaries, looking for some insight, some explanation that would allow me to continue to see Jesus as the snuggly purveyor of grace I prefer Him to be. Various commentators had all manner of clarification. The fig tree showed signs that it had never yielded fruit and never would. There's this one genus of fig trees that doesn't bloom when it should or is somewhat deceptive in its blossoms or was anemic in what it was producing.

Blah, blah, blah. You would think that Mark would have mentioned those factors if it was germane to the story.

We just can't let Jesus perplex us, can we? We just can't let Him push His foot over the line of our comfort.

He came as a revolutionary, a true patriot of the Eternal Kingdom.

He came to bring a sword.

And left us with the Holy Spirit to give comfort and counsel.

Ultimately, as I turned this passage over in my heart, I felt that I got to see a closer glimpse of this warrior Savior. He is into grace, but not excuses. He is into transparency but not apathy. He is into surrender but not fruitlessness.

That fig tree. It's potentially us. We'll be fruitful when....we'll produce for the Kingdom when....we'll show signs of life when....

And all the while there's a Carpenter striding across the hills of our hearts who has called us to more than the confines of our natures and bents and genetics. He calls us to be in fruit in every season of our lives. Bearing fruit. Always. Not just when conditions are right and the season is calibrated.

Always.

Always ripe.

A big expectation on His part in a world that segments and excuses and justifies.

I'm getting to know Him a little better.

And He is fascinating.

Selah.

JPEG of the Week

~5 of 8 and author/speaker Lysa TerKeurst~

~5 of 8 has quite an affection for women's ministry gals~

~(it might have something to do with his mama's work)~

~and he also likes pretty women~

~so Lysa was a win-win for him~

The Waiting Game

Have you ever noticed?

Some of the best parenting techniques show up when you're least expecting it.

Case in point....

The twins have rarely had to wait on much in their lives. They were born into a household with lots and lots of arms to hold them, older sisters who have been like mamas to them, older brothers who have wagged them around like favorite uncles. Because they've had so many people in the house, they've not really known what it is to wait for a bottle or a sippy cup, wait to have a story read to them, wait for a snack.

Heck, they don't even know how to wait for Dora the Explorer to come on television. Because they were born into an age of DVRs and on-demand technology.

As a result, they don't wait well.

At all.

Back in the days when my oldest kids were young, Mike was often gone building a business and there was just me. My older kids knew how to take turns, knew how to be patient while I tended to one of their siblings. They had to. They might have outnumbered me, but I was the only person who could reach the top shelf of the pantry where the Goldfish crackers were kept.

Not so for the younger set. They are well aware that there are any number of people who can reach all manner of snack items and can do so with immediacy.

And then there's this...my tolerance level for whining and wailing has dropped as my age has increased. I'm willing to placate like an indulgent grandma just to keep the noise level in the house somewhere below 'piercing shriek'. And if that means we older members of the household have become the personal assistants to the preschool population, then so be it.

Except....

The preschoolers aren't having to use their patience muscle. They don't know this crazy word 'wait'.

Admittedly, I need to work on it with them. Except I just tremble at the fit throwing that I know will ensue.

Here's where the unintended parenting technique came into play yesterday.

I was running some errands yesterday and returning some phone calls. While I was out, cell phone glued to my ear, I picked up Valentine's candy to give to the kids next week when we hit the heart holiday. I made my way home, ready to unload groceries and supplies and the Valentine's candy, fully intending to secret the said candy away from kid eyes until next week.

But...

I was in the midst of an important portion of a phone conversation as I came in the door to the house. I focused on the conversation at hand, absently pulling Target bags in the door with me, draping them across the dining room table and entryway. I was intently listening, schlepping shopping bags, giving the majority of my attention to the person on the other end of the line.

And behind my distracted back, Target bags were being pillaged. And surprises were being discovered. Early. Days before Valentine's Day.

The twins emerged from the Target bag forest victorious. You would have thought they'd found rare truffles on the forest floor. They came running up to me, jumping up and down in glee, Valentine's candy boxes in their hands, begging to open the boxes, begging to eat the candy, begging, begging, begging.

What's a distracted mom to do? That's what I get for planning ahead...and multi-tasking.

Ultimately, I decided upon a little social experiment. I told them that the heart-shaped boxes were not to be opened until Valentine's Day....but...

...they could hold them and look at them and carry them around as much as they liked...as long as they did not open the boxes or eat any of the candy.

Guess what?

So far, so good.

They've stepped up. They visit their boxes. They decided their boxes should live under my desk in my office. They crawl under my feet, skirting the various wires and plugs of my computer equipment. They hold their boxes. They talk about how excited they are to get to open the boxes in a few days.

And then they move on.

Accidental parenting. It can be a good thing.

Particularly when one is learning the rules of the waiting game.

Twice the Cute, Twice the Whine

Here's another thing I've learned about twins.

When they're cute, they're cute.

And when they whine, it's usually together, in tandem, one after the other, often.

Yes. It's been one of those days.

Even after almost twenty-two years of mothering, these tail-end twins still surprise me. It's double, double, double. The giggly, happy days are twice as fun.

And the difficult, whiny days are twice as tough.

And I'm twice the age I was when I started this mothering journey.

With half the patience...and energy.

And I still need to keep some patience in reserve for dealing with the teenagers in my house.

You see how the math plays out.

Back to today.

It began with a throw-down over toothbrushes and toothpaste application. It's wrapping up with a hissy fit over which cup milk has been served in.

Here's the beauty in the thing.

These are the days that absolutely remind me that, no matter how much experience, no matter how many parenting tricks and tips, no matter the number of kids I've babied and raised and bathed and fed, I still need all the help I can get from the Ultimate Parent. I still need all the wisdom the Spirit can provide.

And a nice cup of chamomile tea wouldn't hurt either. Maybe a double, in the whole twin analogy thing....

The Why Moment

There was this moment Friday night.

A moment that you sometimes dream about. But you don't always get.

Friday night, at Immerse Austin, we had one of our ballerinas from the 2dance2dream program of Legacy of Hope Austin perform. She was dressed in a pink leotard and a hot pink tutu, a pink rose in her hair. She wheeled out onto stage with her lime green walker and she and 2 of 8 moved through their routine, showing the crowd the positions of ballet and a few counts of choreography.

The place erupted.

Women cheered for our precious ballerina. They wiped tears from their cheeks. They clapped. They roared.

Our ballerina beamed.

And as the tumult continued, I found myself scanning the crowd. For me, it almost became silent. And then in my heart, I heard, "This is why."

It's been a 'why' eleven years in the making.

It was eleven years ago this month that we discovered 4 of 8's hearing loss. It was four years ago this month that Mike and I began to have some conversations about the concerns we had about 7 of 8's motor development.

Hearing loss for 4 of 8.

A stroke for 7 of 8.

Waiting rooms. Tests. Therapies. Co-pays. Expenses. Neurologists, audiologists, speech pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists. Hearing aids. Orthopedic braces. Tears. Questions. Decisions. Sitting alongside broken-hearted parents facing far more difficult challenges than the ones we have faced.

And all the while, trying to quiet a resounding question of 'why?'.

Friday night, as the crowd cheered, that stage for me became holy ground. I realized I was standing in a place where we don't always get to stand, in the center of the Why.

But there I was.

And there was His voice.

We raised an amazing sum Friday night to continue the work of Legacy of Hope Austin. We will be able to grow and expand our programs, allowing more children with special needs to participate in the arts, allowing more children to receive specialized tutoring, allowing more moms and dads to go on date night with their children professionally cared for. I am humbled and grateful.  It is a need I would not have known about, a dream I would not have had, a mission I would have missed, an experience for our family that would not have materialized if....

the diagnosis of eleven years ago....

and the diagnosis of four years ago...

had not come across our threshold.

Why.

Our ballerina's dance ended. I needed to speak to the audience again. I wrestled through impending tears. I steadied my voice. It was only after I left the stage that I wept and trembled at the mystery and preciousness of being allowed to see the hem of a bigger plan.

It's not too often we get to hear the 'why'.

But.

Sometimes.

We do.

And it is holy ground.

Sunday Selah

"Get the word out. Teach all these things. .. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity....

 Cultivate these things. Immerse yourself in them."

I Tim 4:11-15 (MSG)

I've been up to my eyeballs in Immerse.

Immerse Austin, the women's event we held Friday night.

And immerse the word, looking at the various meanings and connotations and uses of that word.

Immerse means a lot of things~~'to plunge into', 'to involve deeply', 'to baptize', 'to embed'.

And I think beyond the dictionary definitions lies something so important.

We seem to have become a culture of half-commitment, a generation of toe dippers. We make sure that contracts have optional outs. We look for loopholes, chinks in the armor, soft spots that allow us to wriggle through.

We're toe dippers, testing the waters against our preferences and schedules and whims.

And it plays that way in our spiritual lives. We want a sprinkle of the Spirit, but nothing too radical, nothing that would require constancy and discipline. We desire instant mashed potato flake miracles, a splash of water whipped into the froth of our lives, a softened starch, fluffy mounds of feelings making for the contours.

But to be immersed, well, that's something altogether different.

When I was a kid, we would spend a week each summer camping in Yosemite. We would pitch our Coleman harvest gold color five person tent by the Merced River, inhaling the scent of pine and campfire. We would spend the days hiking and exploring, riding bikes and visiting with other families from our community who would camp the same week.

There was a certain rite of passage in those Yosemite days.

Spanning the Merced River was a bridge, constructed of stone and steel. In retrospect, it probably wasn't all that high. But it certainly seemed so when seen through my eleven year old eyes.

I wanted to claim a jump from that bridge, join the club of those who had gone before. In previous years, my dad would check the water levels of the river in comparison with the height of the bridge, making his calculations of safety and ratio. And this year, he determined the ratios were correct for a safe jump. And so I readied myself.

Peering over the edge of that bridge, looking into the frigid green waters below, I was so scared, so uncertain. The pressure was there, other friends making ready for the jump, other campers cheering them on. I didn't want to disappoint my dad. I didn't want to jump. I did want to jump. No and yes, yes and no.

And then I did. Jump.

And encountered that surreal place of no turning back.

My feet hit the icy water first, the propulsion of gravity forcing the rest of my body to follow. The waters of the river quickly covered my head, exhilarating, freezing. Immersing. Soaking.

I emerged from the waters dripping, shaking, triumphant.

And left puddles of joy and courage in my wake.

What if I would jump off the bridge of faith into the Mercy River the same way? What if I would lay aside opinion and doubt and preference and conjecture and just leap already? What if I stopped testing the waters and plunged?

To be immersed is to be fully committed. To be immersed is to be soaked. To be immersed means you'll leave puddles of those mercy waters in your path, making a mess of grace everywhere you stand.

What if? Be ye immersed.

Selah.

JPEG of the Week

~An amazing evening with some amazing ladies~

~Starting at the left~

~Lysa TerKeurst, Mandisa, Anita Renfroe and yours truly~

~such a great night~

There's One!

I was able to locate a couple more pictures of 3 of 8 and his best bud RG.

Yes, while my kitchen was piled with dishes and clothes were moldering in the washing machine, I was digging through photo CDs.

But I can't be the only out there with this issue. I need you to enlighten me.

When I started my mothering journey 22 years ago, it was all 35mm film. Well, 35mm was still fairly high end, actually. I also have some pictures from 110 film and also some Polaroids. I had a system down. I had archival, acid free boxes. I had a system for storing negatives. I scrapbooked like a fiend.

And then digital came along. And my digital picture collection and my chemical film photo collection have never quite figured out how to coexist in an organized fashion. I've not printed up a lot of my digital photos. I've got a lot of them on CDs and my hard drive and my external drive and my other external drive and various flash drives. And I upload virtually everything to Flickr.

But it's not like going to the closet where I have all my photo boxes and negatives and cute albums.

And the collection of the digital and the chemical photography stuff is extensive. Big time.

So how have you created unity in your photo storage systems? How do you make your printed pics and your virtual ones have some kind of cohesion?

And do you think it's some weird, latent, usually unexpressed perfectionist in me that wants to completely redo some of my scrapbooks from the 90's so that they'll look more current? Discuss.

(And then there's this~~Immerse Austin is tomorrow night and I would love your prayers as we lead up to this event. It's been a thrill ride. Pray that women are encouraged, heartened, challenged and immersed in purpose and joy...)

Contagian

It started with this simple picture of 3 of 8 and his best buddy, RG.

3 of 8 and RG have been dear friends for many years now, even though most of that friendship has been spent several hundred miles apart. Their friendship began when we all lived in the Sooner State. But then we moved. And moved again.

Ironically, RG has grandparents in our city and all of 3 of 8's grandparents are in RG's city. So they do have opportunity to see each other and we've been so blessed to have RG come stay with us from time to time.

I snapped the above picture when RG was with us over the New Year this year. And I thought I would dig back through some picture CDs and find some shots of 3 of 8 and RG when they were younger.

I know those pictures exist somewhere.

I just can't seem to find them at the moment.

But I did find all kinds of pictures that made me all nostalgic and misty-eyed.

That's 6 of 8 on the left and 2 of 8 on the right, back when they were 6 of 6 and 2 of 6. We were living on the coast and we had friends who had this amazing ranch, complete with all kinds of amazing animals. Going out to their place was like going to a beautiful zoo.

That's 5 of 8 up there, back when he was 5 of 6. I might need to go take a nitroglycerin pill....this picture makes my heart hurt a little. He was and still is the cutest guy. But his four-year-old version of himself was all kinds of study in adorable.

What?

You need a little more convincing? Well, here you go.....

I tried to warn you. And you must view these pictures of 5 of 8 with the knowledge that he spoke, at this time, with a raspy little Elmer Fudd kind of voice. Which just pitched the cuteness factor even more over the top.

And I'm completely objective, of course.

This was a pretty typical homeschool day back then. We'd go to the beach and do math. Really. We really would.

1 of 8 now hates the beach. I learned that Algebra and the beach don't mix. Or, at least, one will always associate algebraic equations with the beach should they be combined.

So I didn't find the pictures I was looking for of 3 of 8 and RG. But I'll keep looking. And it may lead to more sicky sweet posts about random pictures that bring back so many memories.....