Babe's Bucket List Challenge #7 - Show Best Friend the World

 

Welcome to Babe's Bucket List Challenge, where I'm tackling twelve of the thirty things on my bucket list and writing about the experiences...won't you join me?

Remember my dad (from the Word of the Year post)?  Dad's joie de vivre was unmatched -- he loved life!  Music, surfing, engineering, strong coffee, and family were part of his core.  He loved tinkering with ideas and often worked with his grandsons on projects such as building a siege tower, designing and building a chicken coop, and designing and shooting off rockets...plus going fishing.  He lived life with an engineer's precision, a surfer's spirit, and a drummer's soul.  Even as his health declined, his spirit, sense of humor, and love for ice cream never wavered.

In his honor, this year I have created a bucket list - a compliation of dreams and aspirations - to work from.  My husband (who grew up in our town and interned with him as a teen) has also written down a bucket list, and we're going for it!  You can download your own Bucket List template at the Word of the Year post.

Y'all!  I know that these bucket list challenges are all about doing things you want to accomplish in your life, but giving to others is an important piece of life for me...and this one was about exactly that.  My bestie is...let's say a woman of a certain age...and had never seen the ocean.  She has talked about it for years, and wanted to go forever, and I was ecstatically happy to be able to fulfill this wish for her!

I will never forget her expression and reaction the first time she saw the beach.  She was overwhelmed by the extent of it....saying, "it reminds you just how big God really is."  We spent the whole first day just hanging out in the sand and surf.  Now, typically I would have encouraged her to really go in and experience the water, but the ocean was super-angry and not at all safe.  As it was, having grown up swimming in the waves since toddler-hood, I was being repeatedly knocked over and even dragged under at times.  I wanted to enjoy the beach with her....not kill her with it!

The second day, we got up very early (have I ever mentioned that I am NOT a morning person?  honestly, not a night owl either.  more of a noon-1pm kinda person 😆).  We walked the mile down to the nearest coffee shop and watched the sunrise...spending a few hours on the sand while the kiddos slept.  Then we headed to NASA for the day...

I'm not sure whether she enjoyed the ocean or NASA better....both of them were a source of wonderment and it was worth every cent of the entry fee to witness her experience it all.  If her husband is reading this...buckle up, because I think soul-sister has plans for y'all to come back after retirement next year!

There's a children's play area at NASA that we enjoyed thoroughly.  We're both small adults, not much taller than your average ten year old, so fitting into the space was easy.  She snapped a photo of me that matches one of my son taken thirteen years ago so we'd have a matching set on the wall.  And then...we discovered the slides.  The slides!  The kiddos were both amused and embarrassed at how many times we kept running around to go back down the slides together.  I'm pretty sure we were the kids that day...

As we headed back toward the house, this beautiful rainbow came out.  You have to understand that on the morning my dad passed, "Rainbow" (Kacey Musgraves) came on the radio, right out of the blue.  Like, it literally interrupted the song I was listening to and started...and the lyrics sent a message straight to my heart.  He had battled dementia for so long, and it was him telling us that the storm was finally over.  When this rainbow came out, it felt like he was saying hello and giving both of us a big hug.