A moment like this

Today didn't go at all as I'd planned. I'd nearly chalked it up to an epic fail, until something happened that made it even better than the original plan.

The background: Avery didn't get to go to Girl Scout camp today. It was mostly my fault, and I've done my share of shedding tears and beating myself up over it. But in my attempt to make it up to her, I promised her an afternoon of Scrapbook Camp. She's been asking me for a "scrapbook class" for months now and I've always said "Yes, we will do that...someday." It's not that I didn't want to, but there was always something else that I was doing that I thought was more important.

So today, in my cloud of guilt and self-loathing, I said "Hey, I know. Let's have that scrapbook class you wanted me to teach. We'll call it Scrapbook Camp." And she agreed...happily.

She made an awesome little mini book from an old kit I had lying around. We used the Big Shot and the Bind-It-All, and it was really coming together. Then I threw her a curve. I asked her if she wanted to learn what made a page beautiful, and of course, she said yes. So I started trying to explain the "visual triangle." Admittedly, she's 7 and I don't expect her to be Ali Edwards, but she's pretty bright and she knows what a triangle is. At first, she kind of nodded and rolled her eyes. I left her to her work and turned around to check my email. A few minutes later, she said "Look Mommy, I made a triangle" and she showed me this page:


The flower in the photo, the bow (that she painstakingly tied), the button for a pop of color. She totally got it.

But that's not the best part of the story. The rest goes something like this:

Avery: Do you make triangles on your pages?

Me: Yes, would you like to see some?

Avery: Sure.

I pull out a page I made the weekend before and show her the triangles. Then I pull out this page that was on top of my "unfiled" stack because it just came back from the publisher:

I'm pointing out the brads and the butterflies and trying to show her the visual triangles, and she starts reading the journaling:

"I've learned...
...what you have is not nearly as important as who you're sharing it with
...it's okay to make mistakes, but you'd better be willing to fix them
...if you don't pursue your passion, you'll never know how great you could've been
...the smartest people spend more time listening than talking
...it's better to sing off-key than to not sing at all
...you don't have to be Superwoman to be a super woman"

Avery: I think you're Superwoman.

Me: (tears rolling down my face) Then that's all that matters.

Though I wrote those words well over a year ago, I really needed to hear them again today.

My daughter rocks.

(Even though she's going to be a much better scrapbooker than I am.)