"With your ear to a seashell/ You can hear the waves in underwater caves/ As if you actually were inside a saltwater room"

In t-minus two hours the whole family (all sixteen of us- including seven girls under the age of seven) are departing for our annual family vacation in Destin, Florida. So in honor of family, I want to jot down a quote from my oldest niece, SD, the seven year old from earlier this week:

Background information: The room that the girls play in is upstairs in my mom's house. The adults spend the majority of their time downstairs. The girls always need stuff and going up and down the stairs got really old, really fast. It started off basically as a joke but then the nieces became obsessed with it, so tied to a banister post on the second floor balcony overlooking the downstairs living room is a bucket that the girls hoist up and down to get whatever the adult places in the bucket? Lazy? Sure. But the nieces are obsessed. Like they will run upstairs to get something only to bring it back downstairs but they will still lower it down in the bucket.

Unfortunately, the bucket's path is over half of one of the couches in the living room if you don't control the bucket and purposely swing it over to the side (oh yes, there is an art to the bucket). One time my niece ME threw the bucket over and it hit me on the head while I was sitting blissfully unaware on the couch. It hurt to say the least. So that bring us to the story.

Niece SD wanted a flashlight to look at books before she went to bed last Saturday night when she was staying over. I was sitting on the couch and asked her to be careful when she lowered the bucket because ME hit me in the head on accident one time and it really hurt. And little precious SD (she is only seven mind you) said, "Aunt Annie! I would never do that. I love you too much to hurt you." Let's all say it together: Awwwwwwww. Warmed my little cold heart.

Here to wishing for good weather, sunny skies, buckets used for their actual purpose of transporting water and building sandcastles and lots of fun on the beach trip!!!!