One Year

Well, here I am. A year has gone by, and dispite how I doubted it at times, I am doing ok. It's still incredibly hard to believe that I lost my Dad a year ago, but I'm hanging in there, and I think, beginning to heal a little bit.

It has been a long, very hard year, but I know that was to be expected.  I'm glad this marker of time is here and as of tomorrow, will be gone.  Does that make sense? I'm pretty sure that anyone that has loved someone as dearly as I love my Dad can understand what I mean. 

I started thinking about this a couple of months ago....how I would spend this day.  I knew it would be difficult, but I also knew there would be no way to stop it's arrival.  I decided to make something positive out of the day, if that was at all possible.  I decided to get a tattoo in his honor.  I already have one for my Mom - it's a pink ribbon, in honor of her being a breast cancer survivor.  I also have another small tatto of 4 different colored hearts, one for my husband (in blue) and one for each of my children (one each of pink, green and purple) with a vine holding them all together.  I thought long an hard about what I wanted, and finally came up with a design I was happy with....

Before I went to get my tattoo, there were some other things to be done.  AJ's last day in San Diego (until he comes home for spring break) was yesterday. It started off nice...as you see here, I'm not the only one who enjoys AJ being home... 

We went out for lunch, and then did a little shopping....

We decided to go out for a special dinner to our favorite place - Morton's Steak House. It was, as always, a FANTASTIC dinner.

Yup, he was a happy camper.

In addition to our "regular" dessert of Morton's special chocolate hot lava cake, we shared a piece of Key Lime pie, my Dad's favorite.  

This morning, after dropping of AJ at the airport, we headed to the cemetery. It was so strange to see that date on his stone. Jan. 5th.

After running some other errands, it was finally time to get my long awaited ink.  Here is the pattern starting.  You can see my first tattoo, the 4 hearts and vine I mentioned earlier. 

I was surprised that Bear and her boyfriend, Barry decided to come to offer a little support.  Bear got caught up in the excitement, and before we knew it she decided to get something too. 

The design was finally right, and it was time to start mine.

I love Chris aka "Bud" from Absolute Tattoo. He is awesome.

He starts the outline...

and then Pickle decided that she too, wanted to get something in honor of GPa!

The black outline was done...time to move on to the flowers.

Each of the girls decided to get a little flower, very similar to mine.

Pickles was pink and orange, Bears was purple.

Bud starts on the green leaves.

Here you can see the pink flowers outlined in a darker pink.It's starting to really shape up.

All of the outline was done...

Hubby was there for support too, but no ink for him!

The shading in the flowers was done, and Bud was putting the finishing touches on for me.

Here are Bear and Pickle's finished products.

And here is mine! Do you like the little pink spade in there?

I know there are a lot of people out there that don't particularly care for tattoos.  That's ok, they aren't for everyone.  I love mine, and I'm very glad I got it. It has very special meaning to me, and that's all that matters.

 

'nuff said.