Inspiration!  Allow me to (re)introduce Emily.  She is turning 22 on Wednesday.  Last year, I did a Birthday Post dedicated to her, but she deserves more press.  Especially with this theme!  Ready, brash, precocious.  She is much more than these, but she is these.  Ready to act, in many senses of the word.  Ready with her emotions, her opinions, her dreams.  Ready, often, to take on any challenge.  Brash, bold, unreserved, “larger than life”.  Precocious….oh, the stories I could tell!  When she got 2nd runner up in the Little Miss contest, they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.  “An artist…like Georgia O’Keeffe!” she replied in her 5 year old voice.  In first grade, she was given the responsibility of trotting down the hall to the third grade classroom for reading because she was far more advanced than the rest of her class.  Often, however, her teacher would find her in the nurse’s office having an extended visit, chatting, charming, helping out, telling stories.  In high school, she was invited to lunch in the teacher’s lounge by a new staff member who thought she was a teacher.  She is progressive.  She is learning, growing, changing at an incredible rate, still.  And she is someone whom I love so thoroughly and passionately that sometimes, I almost can’t bear it….the rush of oxytocin, almost losing her as an infant to meningitis, the fights we had, the pride when she performs, the fear we lived through…we are bound together and moving forward, deeper, higher all the time. 

So, now, the photos:

Guess which daughter is Emily…

She is really too fabulous for words, but “Forward” describes some of her.