Acceptance - I don't always like it.

How does that prayer go? God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

This morning started out as a fun, beautiful fall morning.  I took my boys out to take their fall pictures, and my sister-in-law was bringing her kids out so I could take their pictures, too.  The oldest one is a senior this year, and asked me to do his senior portraits, so I was excited.  We took many pictures of everyone, then I came home and started really looking at the pictures while playing around with different editing software.  I was dangerously close to tears by the time I was done.

Did you see what the problem was?  It wasn't this picture of the little boy I once knew who will be graduating in the spring,

it wasn't this picture of the adorable little guy who was barely big enough to hold his baseball bat a few years ago,

It wasn't even this picture that proves that my little man is trying to turn into just that - a man,

or my first born who, with his goofy smile, is only 2 short months shy of hitting the double digits.

Nope.  What almost brought me to tears was this:

My oldest sister-in-law's youngest child.  The only granddaughter, the only niece on my husband's side of the family.  She's only a 14-year-old girl, but today she looked like a young woman ready to conquer the world.