Happy Birthday, Mallory!

Starting off my day by wishing my daughter Mallory a very happy 25th birthday! Mal is my first born and we are sorta 'connected at the hip', in a good way, of course. Nowadays, if she has trouble reaching my by phone, she refers to herself as the "orphan child" and that's after the first 4 calls of the day when she has managed to reach me.

Mallory is the mom to my two oldest grandsons, CJ and Caleb(see the archives regarding 'glitter'). She works full time at one of the 3 hospitals in our city and is going to school to become a nurse. Her goal is to get into flight nursing, but everytime she helps out in the neo-natal intensive care, it tugs at her heart strings, so we'll see. Plus our sweet Caleb spent many days there after he was born, so there is a real sense of gratitude for her.

For her 1/4 century birthday(which as the good mom that I am, I have been rubbing in all week), she and 15 friends have decided to go on a 3 day, 2 night camping trip. Now normally, in the dead of July, this would be a great adventure. But I think the main adventure is going to be enduring the unseasonably cool temperatures we are experiencing here in Illinois. If she managed to get to sleep at all last night, then she had the pleasure of waking up to a cool, crisp 50 degree morning this morning....only 1 more night to go, Mal!