An inky surprise (times two)

Jamie and Lori

Leave it to my daring daughter-in-law and fashionable wife to render me speechless...in a good way.

Jamie had a couple of days off last week while Jordan, our son, was out in the field with the Army so she came down to spend some time with us. She and Lori went out and did the usual things -- walked the dogs, had lunch out, indulged in a little bit of shopping. Still, it was a surprise when I met them after work Thursday at a Thai restaurant that's become one of Jamie's favorite restaurants in Portland.

"Guess what we did today?" she asked, grinning from ear to ear.
"Um...shopped?"
"Yep. Want to see what we got?"
"Sure."

I'm expecting them to pull out a shopping bag or two. Instead, Jamie gets up, sits next to me, whips out her phone and shows me a photo of an eagle feather tattooed on her right hip. Whoa!! This is the conservative country girl who I would have thought would have been one of the last two people on Earth (me being the other one) to get a tattoo?? Evidently, she'd been thinking about it for a while. And the eagle has special meaning because it one was flying overhead when Jordan proposed to her in the great outdoors of Southern Oregon.

I'm trying to process this when I notice Lori is still smiling. Sure enough, she got another tattoo -- not a tattoo, but another tattoo.

She already has one on her lower back. This one is on her left forearm. In bold script it reads: mi la famiglia. (My family.) Could there be a better representation of what my wife considers most important in her life?

***

The following day, Nathan came over for a brief visit and got the news. He was equally surprised at Jamie's tat and totally impressed at Lori's. So much so that he went down to the computer and fired off a Facebook post declaring "My mom's cooler than yours."

Can't argue with that.