Here she is, getting to know her “Paparazzi” (a fitting nickname for Tricia, the camera bug):

Is Damien under her spell, too?  Oh, it’s much worse than I thought.  He’s got to be the world’s proudest papa:

Natalya has blossomed into a fabulous mother.  Is this the same young woman I met five years ago?

A study in contrasts:  Here’s Audrina with the spectacular quilt her mama made for her, next to the Ugly Doll picked out by Aunt Sally:

Natalya found a cute little number for Audrina to wear on her maiden voyage to Hawaii!  This little world traveler is ready for the beach!

Saying Aloha to Audrina was bittersweet, yet the circle of life warmly envelops me.  I proudly wear the banner of grandparent.  Getting older has a way of bringing you closer to the heart of the matter, and it is indeed a beautiful place to be.

I am quite susceptible to her charms.  Meet Audrina Mae, born March 30th to Damien and Natalya!  Just call me Granny!

The little songbird looked so much like Natalya when she was first born!  Having given birth myself, I’m a bit predisposed to thinking all children should look like their mothers.  Here she is in her first picture, giving Mama a little wink:

I see the Bianco in that face!

She’s only a few weeks old, and already looking more like her dad!  I feel that I am looking at my son, and remember the very best of times holding him in my arms during those late night feedings.  Like all moms, the “sea change” occurred when I held my baby for the first time.  My heart was a seed sprouting in the sun for the very first time.   When that old nostalgia rushes in, I am reminded of a great quote by Gretchen Rubin, “The days are long, but the years are short.”

Now my baby is a newly minted dad.  To see him so happy with his daughter is profoundly moving.  I have a new level of love and respect for Natalya, having made it through a difficult labor and delivery like a champ!  I am in awe of her.

I can’t wait to hold this little miracle and sing Down in the Meadow to her.   This is what it’s all about folks!

Twelve years ago I baked a carrot cake for my niece Lynell’s birthday.  She was one of the few “youngsters” who acquired a taste for it.  Instead of scrambling over to the kids table for storebought cookie cake, she was always first in line for my carrot (and pineapple and coconut and walnut) cake.  Twelve years later, with a gorgeous emerald cut diamond engagement ring on her dainty hand, she asks me to make her wedding cake.

Breathe in, breathe out…

And the wedding is … in August!  Oh … WOW!

After I recovered from my shock that Lynell had entrusted such an honor to me, I bought Martha Stewart’s Wedding Cakes, Wedding Cakes You Can Make by Dede Wilson, took a few trips to Michael’s to peruse cake decorating accoutrements, and said yes.  She had faith in me, and I have always wanted to learn how to decorate a cake, I had many months before the wedding to learn, so why not?  I also had Sucre or Maurice’s in the back of my mind in case my merry little adventure turned into a Titanic.

I read all about buttercream vs. fondant, Swiss vs. Italian vs. American buttercream, rolled vs. poured fondant.  Lynell chose an elegant design that buttercream could do justice:

The adventures in buttercream began.  I was on the hunt for a version that would hold up during transport – so those big beautiful rose swirls won’t slide off the sides.  Lynell’s mother was the recipient of practice cake number 1.  This was the first time I ever wielded a pastry bag, using shortening to experiment piping with before making the actual cake.  I realize now that shortening is a lot firmer than buttercream.  (If you should try this at home, either warm the shortening or just make a batch of buttercream to experiment with.  Unless you don’t mind getting a cramp in your hand.)  Here is the result of my first practice cake

The top 6″ tier consisted of a vanilla bean white cake with lemon buttercream filling; bottom tier was white almond cake (I actually forgot to add the almond extract to the cake, so I added it to the moistening syrup.  I know – LOL) with chocolate covered cherry buttercream filling.  Martha Stewart’s Vanilla Bean Buttercream covered it all.  That buttercream was pretty good, but I am used to the super-sweet American buttercream made with powdered sugar and butter.

My next practice cake was for my friend who I call Diamond Debbie.  I scoured Michael’s for edible diamonds, and found instead some huge sparkly rhinestones to top her cake with.  We couldn’t eat them but they sure were pretty, in a gaudy-cheeky kind of way.  I am so glad I tried the poured fondant, which I now know works great for petit fours in a refrigerated environment.  Poured fondant is not for wedding cakes in the summer.  I made the cake with almond paste this time, and it was delicious!  The Italian buttercream experiment yielded my favorite buttercream so far.  It tasted magnificent and was a dream to work with.  Debbie’s cake project was my first crack at those swirl roses that Lynell likes:

The next cake adventure involved beets.  When I volunteered to make a red velvet cake for a friend’s teenage daughter, my friend begged me to not use red dye.  No problem!  I researched for days and settled on a recipe that looked promising, and sounded, well, healthy.  I got up early that Saturday morning, eager to try this new recipe.  I also planned to frost it in varying shades of purple, her favorite colour.  (For that I used just a drop of gel food colour.  Red velvet cake recipes usually call for 1 to 2 ounces of red dye.)   Red velvet cake is also my sister’s favorite, so I could see surprising her with my new find as well the next time she came for a visit.  That morning, everything seemed promising since the batter was not only a beautiful shade of red, but it tasted like regular red velvet cake.  It wasn’t until after it was baked, assembled and crumb coated that I noticed a problem.  The two layers looked like one.  I took a beat, then decided to make another cake, sandwiching the red velvet layers in vanilla layers.  No one would be the wiser!  By 4PM, I had my towering cake in shades of purple.  It really was pretty.

Everyone was excited when they saw the cake, and the Birthday Girl was eager to try it.  How gracious she was as she tried to eat the red velvet part, which was more like a molten beet cake.  The white cake and the purple frosting were as delicious as the red cake was awful.  I think of it now as my Good Cake/Bad Cake cake.  So I am again on the hunt for a delicious red velvet cake that doesn’t use red dye or beets.

I still have four months.  Let the baking adventure continue!

We drove up in style to Damien’s ultra cool office to begin our tour.

My son is an executive!  The name of his company is top secret – we’ll call it The Matrix to protect the innocent.

We were all famished, so we went directly to what is probably the very best pizza place in the States, Antico Pizza Napoletana (www.anticopizza.it/).  Everything there is imported from Italy, including the brick ovens!  Wow!

We took a tour of the Atlanta Temple, which will be dedicated this weekend.  Tricia had lots of questions as we walked through the beautiful rooms (ldschurchtemples.com/atlanta/).

A gorgeous display of unusual flowers and plants are found at The Atlanta Botanical Garden (atlantabotanicalgarden.org).

We enjoyed goofing off when we weren’t marveling at everything!

We even found a great addition to Eden’s Airstream:

All that walking made us hungry!  Next on the itinerary was a humane burger joint called Farm Burger in Decatur (www.farmburger.net).  I had a delicious veggie quinoa burger.

To refuel the next morning, we treated ourselves to The Flying Biscuit Cafe (flyingbiscuit.com).  They do have the best biscuits!

We realized that Tricia and Damien wore the exact same outfit that day.  Twinsies!

We went car shopping at Lenox Square Mall.

Natalya showed some of her fancy bellydance moves!

To cap off the night, they took us to Stone Mountain to see the spectacular laser show!  It was fantastic!

On Easter Sunday, we met cousin Emily for coffee and heard about her travels to Korea and Taiwan.

Natalya made a delicious dinner for us in their beautiful apartment.  It’s always a treat when someone cooks for us!  She’s such a great cook, too!

To earn our dinner, we took a great stroll in Chastain Park.

Before we knew it, it was time to leave.  Before we left, we got to see the terrific quilt shop where Natalya helps quilters with their projects.  It sounds like a really cool place to hang out, too.  Just bring your sewing machine!

So our first excursion to Atlanta was over.  I look forward to more adventures there!

The details of her final act were delivered before I could defend myself from the evil of hearing it.  Now I can’t get those images out of my head.  Alcohol is the only explanation for why she did what she did, and the way she did it.  The Robin I knew loved too much, had too much compassion, to inflict that kind of damage – on herself or the person who discovered her body.  I know another discoverer of a similar fate, and her pain is a dark gift that keeps on giving.

Is it really THAT Robin who’s gone?  The Robin who held my hands during my first exercise at Journey School?  The Robin who talked to me all night when I couldn’t sleep because the metal beds at Journey School reminded me of being a 4 year old at Juvenile Hall?  The Robin whose stories about water skiing stunts and Gulf of Mexico excursions had us all laughing so loudly that we emptied the restaurant?  I can see her brown eyes sparkling with tears from laughing so hard herself.  The Robin who, with her sister Wendy, pretty much ran the small Cajun town they grew up in – drinking the men under the table and kicking their asses while doing it.  The Robin who represented the Fire element at our wedding.  When she asked if our love would survive the harsh fires of change, I didn’t realize that she wouldn’t be able to.

THAT Robin is gone.  Her suffering was so great that she took her own life.  I couldn’t scale her walls since Katrina, and now it’s too late.  Is that really it?  Come on!

At a birthday party before Katrina, someone was moaning about getting older.  Robin’s response was, “I reject that!  That’s bullshit!”  (Actually, she said in her Cajun drawl – “That’s boo-sheet!”)  She meant that you are as young, or old, as you let yourself be.   She was fire – full of life and passionate about everything.  When we meet again, I’m going to tell her “I reject that, Robin!  I reject this exit you’ve made.  I selfishly want you to come back so we can hash this out.  This is bullshit.”

This tragedy – this billy club – reminds me that life is precious and fragile, and so are our loved ones.  For those moments with Robin that suspended time and space, I am humbled and grateful.

I don’t believe it’s all for nothin’.

It’s not just written in the sand.

Sometimes I thought you felt too much.

You crossed into the shadowland.

In my dreams

the pipes were playing.

In my dreams

I lost a friend.

Come down Gabriel and blow your horn

’cause someday we will meet again.

Robbie Robertson – “Fallen Angel”

On the other side!

The Three Musketeers

I’m anxious to see the new play from the South Park creators – The Book of Mormon.  Of course it’s irreverent, but that’s not my only interest.  I like that it touches on the humanity of two Mormon elders who are put in an environment so completely foreign to them.  (They are also a bit of an Odd Couple themselves.)  Often this is the case – the young man or woman leaves their family for 18 to 24 months to travel to places they have never been before, working with people they’ve never met before, to teach about … religion!  Contact with family and friends is limited so that the missionary can focus on their work.  This focus is so important to them that they also give up education, dating, all forms of media (no movies, TV, or surfing the net), and many other activities while on their mission.  I can only imagine how great it feels to find someone who actually wants to listen!  Reviews of the play have inspired a good friend of mine to read The Book of Mormon.  Eden will be happy to hear that!  Who knew that the South Park guys could unwittingly be part of the Mormon cause?  I’ll have to tell Damien the good news …

I’d been going about my daily routine, putting off the reality that come November, Eden will be a sister missionary for her church.  No phones, no texts, no Skype – except for Christmas  and Mother’s Day.  I can’t breathe.

The ability to talk with her, and the miraculous boon of seeing her gorgeous face and brilliant smile on my computer screen as we laugh about the latest – well, I’m not willing to give that up!  Who’s in charge here anyway?  Oh that’s right.  She is.

This weekend, she’ll be Rainbow Brite for Halloween.  The alter-ego of her childhood is still there in her laugh, her outlook, her worldview.  She takes the gloom out of the world and replaces it with rainbows.

In the Joy Luck Club, a woman is asking her mother why she is so negative about her fiance.  The fiance lavishes the daughter with love and gifts, but the mother has nothing positive to say about him.  Finally, the mother says that she likes the fiance well enough, “but, to allow him to marry such a daughter!”  Eden is a ways off from marriage, but my protective instinct is on high alert.  I have visions of my Marine sister and I taking off to where Eden is located to track down any offenders – real or imagined!  In a matter of days, she’ll become Sister Olenslager.  I tuck a prayer under my pillow that the world will greet her with open hearts and minds, that she will be treated with kindness.

She has a gift to give which cannot be confined to the four walls of my computer screen, nor the boundless paradise she occupies in my heart.  There are grey and barren valleys in this world waiting for her message of hope.

Godspeed, Sister O!

New Orleans and New York have a strong connection.  This link is reinforced by a similar accent - lower Ninth Ward and Brooklyn tongue must have nursed at the same breast - and a melting pot of food and cultures.  Both cities have the best of the best of food.  But can you really find a better bagel than a Murray’s bagel outside of New York?  Mix up all the packaged Cafe du Monde beignets you want, but you can’t recreate the Cafe’s ambience outside of the French Quarter.  This is one reason why there are so many people flying between New Orleans and New York.  Another reason for the Jet Blue streak between MSY and JFK, is that you can be exactly who you are in both cities.  No questions asked.  The only people who will stare are the tourists.   And this is exactly what we did while we were in New York recently!

For their graduation, Damien and Natalya treated themselves to a New York trip.  They invited Tricia and I along as tour guides!  It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?  College graduate couple invites parents along for New York vacation.  Oh yeah – that had to be a hallucination.   This will go on my Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are list.

To overcome our bagel deprivation, we hit Murray’s Bagels on Avenue of the Americas several times.  Be ready to order when they ask!  I would call the staff charmingly and efficiently impatient.  This popular spot is well worth the wait – for a bagel and a table.

Shopping for the latest in fashion?  Slip on you Minolo Blahniks and watch the Barbie Catwalk at FAO Schwartz.  (Did I say that my son is a very patient man?)

How about bargain hunting in St. Mark’s Place:

After a long day of shopping, relax in a bubble gum bath at Dylan’s Candy Bar:

The Apple store in Lakeside Mall is nice, but the mothership in New York is a fantasy land for techies:

The Statue of Liberty has no equal.  She is an impressive sight – this symbol of freedom for America’s melting pot:

All that sightseeing made us hungry!  Damien took us to a fantastic restaurant in Chinatown called Joe’s Shanghai – home of the soup dumpling.  Be sure to check out the online instructions on how to eat these before going – otherwise it could be very humiliating:

http://www.joeshanghairestaurants.com/

For dessert, Natalya and I were on the hunt for the perfect cupcake.  Crumbs Bake Shop torches the competition:

http://www.crumbs.com/

We did so many fun and touristy things on our trip.  The best of all was seeing New York through Damien and Natalya’s eyes.  Life IS good and miracles DO happen y’all!

Damien, Natalya and Eden proudly display their status as graduates!  Eden graduated last year from BYU Idaho.  Even though she’s almost two years Damien’s junior, she was the first to graduate from college!  Natalya was second, and although she graduated last December, she chose to walk with her husband this year at the BYU Provo ceremony.  Damien’s takes his status as “No. 3″ with good humor.  Two years on a mission in the middle of his college years, getting married, graduating from college – he’s been a busy young man!  I was moved as they became the first in their families to graduate from college.   Their progession and evolution is my greatest joy.

Here’s a link to our dance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1SQHNbAMzU