I'm taking a short break from painting my bathroom. Painting is very therapeutic for me. I really love it and it gives me time to think. Tonight as Kate was leaving to go to the gym, I was thinking that she is really growing up. I mean, I've known that for a while at least since she's been driving, it has felt like she is really growing up but we've recently been talking about colleges and she's taken the ACT a couple of times and is getting ready to take the big prep class for the ACT. She's not a northerner at all. She would never consider going to school up north even though we do have family there. She needs her mom and her dad even though she would not admit that to anyone. If she went farther than 3 hours, she really wouldn't be able to come home except for the big breaks, Thanksgiving and Christmas. She's always wanted to go to Ole Miss in Oxford, MS. We visited there this fall, we both loved it and it was exactly 3 hours from our front door and it was an easy breezy drive. She could totally do that. She has never really entertained Alabama even though, that would make me very happy as I know I went there in a previous life! She says its just too much like Hoover and she would like to get a little farther away. Okay, I get that. She doesn't like Auburns campus and so she doesn't want to go there. For a while she was thinking about SCAD in Savannah but when she was researching it she decided it was just too far. She said, "Mommy, I really just want to be close enough so I can come home and see the boys go to their dances and I want to be there when they take pictures." She knows that is so important and  she is so blessed to have a big sister to be able to come for prom this year and see her get ready for the dance. Hearing Kate say that made me think, Wow! okay then, we've done something right. We've given her roots and she will have wings, but thankfully, her wings will not carry her too far out of our sight.