Remember Mr. Serious?

Remember Mr. Serious ? I chased this little guy around last fall. His mama asked if I would snap some pictures of him again on this very very special day: his 2nd birthday. (Actually he's a leap year baby so they are celebrating it today!) A photo shoot with a two year old is basically just a game of chase, because frankly, what two year old boy wants to stop and look at a camera?? He's got waaaaaay more important things to do, like shoot some hoops and go explore. It was good exercise this morning and I loved being with him.

Check out those mad vertical skills at the hoop. Look out NBA!

Ummm, look at those curls! And he just got a hair cut!

A little time on the bocci ball court...

Blue jeans, blue striped socks, blue shoes. Blue blue blue.

Penny for your thoughts?

What a special little boy...a soon to be heart breaker with those crazy curls and blue eyes.

Happy birthday big two year old!

other-worldly

My kids often ask me what it will be like in heaven: will we have our own bodies, what age will we be, will we have our XBox, tv, blankies, you know, the important stuff.  I always answer with the, "I do not know" line because I simply do. not. know. But it is fun to talk about what might possibly be: no fighting with your brother/sister, perfect bodies, free passes to Disneyland, no more loss, disease, pain, tears, discontent...

Before I deleted this blurred, mishap photo of my daughter running towards me I paused. I wound up staring at it for some time because it twanged some deep emotional string inside of me. It looked other-worldly, angelic, eerie. (Is it just me?) Anyway, it sent me into this moment of deep reflection of spiritual matters (too heavy to outline here). In a nut shell, it caused me to ponder on what I was really made of: not bones, water, blood...but something more. You know, eternal and purposeful. Then it reminded me of the truth that in the final moment of my life I will not care about how much money I did (more like did not) make, or where I lived, what I owned, how organized I was, or if I was cute and hip and trendy enough. And if it will not matter in the end, then how much should it matter now? How I long to get busy living for the more, rather than painfully discovering too late that I forfeited the opportunity.  Make sense?

Anyhoo, deep Saturday morning thoughts. Now on to help the hubby clean the garage, organize and toss. (Which actually could create more deep Saturday thoughts, but probably not appropriate to share here if I'd like to save my marriage.)


p.s. When Scott saw this picture he was tripping out. He thought that her shadow looked like a wolf.   Totally. Way too deep though for my Saturday.

Friday solo drive

One of the things I love most about where I live is that in just a few short minutes you can escape town and go sit by a lake, drive through green, horse-dotted fields, or make your way up into the mountains to walk through the redwood groves. Our city has a strict slow-growth policy and so many people live on acres, own horses and vineyards and basically live a slower, quieter life. It is one I envy.

So this morning I headed out in my car (new car, hallelujah) and traveled up behind a local reservoir. I was partially eager to get out of the house and away from work because the light was just so amazing.

It was the kind of light that comes as storm clouds are moving in: the bright sun filtered by clouds filling up with rain, and every thing lit with a subtle glow.

Here I am parked along side the road. After many attempts with the timer, these are the best shots...

 

 

While attempting to wrangle the timer into doing what I wanted it to do, it fired off a couple of completely random overexposed, blurry pictures. (Not sure why since I controlled the settings.)

I kept this one as I kinda liked it. A morning painted in pixels and textures. I'll call it, "Morning by the lake".

As I was leaving the wind kicked up and it began to sprinkle. 

As I write it is raining buckets.

Happy Friday Friends.

xoxo

A moment after riding lessons

Fresh off of riding Ruby and Indy these girls left their saddles and ran off to run through the grass maze that Zach had made for them. (More pix from that later.) 

They stopped briefly to climb the fence at the edge of the property.

 

The sun was so bright and hazy it spawned a rare headache for me. It took a drive home and a few Advil to curb it. (For me to pop Advil for a headache is saying something.)

I love this next picture. I think it reminds me of a JCrew shot. 

Something about Sophie looking over at me and Bean looking down, contemplating.

And one in color...because these girls are just so beautiful.

Then it was off to run through the grass...and for me to stop aiming my lens into the sun.
Dang that headache was a whopper. I can still feel the memory of it.

Our own lemonade style...

Childhood story...

When my brother and I were elementary schoolish of age my dad built a teeter totter for us in the backyard. I don't know why, we must have nagged him for one, and the prospect of creating his own must have caught his fancy. (Total goofy dad kind of stuff.)  It consisted of a football field length plank of wood attached to a make shift metal bar contraption in the center that was rooted somehow to the ground. Oh, and the handles were made of pvc piping. (Very healthy and safe--this was the 70's people.) It was a mammoth sized teeter totter:  scary, completely unsafe and...crazy fun. It would certainly not meet playground safety standards of this day and age, and there were many of us that...shall we say... had the teeter knocked out of our totters. (i.e.--busted open faces and torn limbs from flipping over the handle bars and falling the twenty feet to the ground.) Serious teetering was happening folks--it was not made for wimps. (I am totally giggling as I write this.)

When we weren't busy feeling our legs fly into the air (sometimes over our heads--seriously), or pulling  splinters from our tooshes, we would take the fallen (sometimes rotten), lemons from the backyard lemon tree, place them perfectly on the ground underneath our teeter seats, and the proceed to teeter and totter to maximum speeds so that we could come racing down upon them and feel them burst open upon contact. It was our very own brand of juicing. We created quite a mess and often left them split open and littered upon the grass for my mom to find...at which point we would then receive quite the mom scolding.

As you can imagine, the teeter did not have a very long life. My dad eventually yanked it out (geez, I don't know why?!) and we were left with a hole in the backyard, and dead patches of grass where our seats had mashed the grass into two bald spots.

We were left with the very exciting lemon tree. But that was eventually pulled out as well.

Our backyard shenanigans put to halt. 

No more teetering and tottering, killing our friends, depleting the neighborhood lemon source. 

Good memories, friends. Good memories. :)

Tuesday reality check: I have a 10 year old boy

I am taking a reality pill. It's about time. For the last few weeks I have seen the wave coming, have felt the rumble, but have finally surrendered to the fact that I have a TEN year old. A TEN year old boy, who has finally realized that he loves his family, but is sometimes embarrassed by them. Wearing the same cool outfit day after day is comfortable and safe and so bugging his mother to get them washed and dried is borderline obsessive. Practicing patience with his little baby sister who loves and pesters him much is difficult. And exercising independence is painful, sometimes. (Hello principal's office.) For the first time in my parenthood I am ready to read any book that will tell me what to do. Mainly, because I know that letting him go is the most important thing I can do, as well as being the soft home base that he will always circle back to.

Looking back over our vacation pictures today gave me this reality check.  Of the 300 pictures taken, 2% of them featured him.  Here was the typical...

 I realized that to catch him smiling, or looking at the camera without disdain, I had to do it on the sly.
Certainly a new way to love him...be less in his face with my camera.

 He is an amazing kid and I love him. Look at that face and laugh. I know that he will always be my little boy, but loving a preteen ten year old boy looks different and I am painfully aware of that. Prayers for walking that road are welcome. :)

Snapshots from the road

While traveling on the eternal stretch of highway 5 that runs through the central valley of California I pulled out my camera with an idea to capture my highway journey like so many of us have captured in our lifetimes. You know, the kind of photos that are stuck in the decades-old, sticky-paged photo albums, the ones that show faded snapshots of highway scenery, roadside signs, and your brother asleep in the back seat with drool running out of the corner of his mouth? They're the travel photos documented through the shutters of old plastic view finder cameras, the kinds we loaded with cheap film and stocked with flash cubes. Though the photos are compositionally flat and uninteresting, they are somehow nostalgic as they captured moments in time that we can never have back: the times we set out on family trips, stuffed in an old station wagon with our travel blankets, travel songs, and travel games, excited to be on our way to somewhere. (For me, it was a trip to Disneyland or camping.)

So, here are my travel snapshots from the road...

Below: My fantasy purchase. In other words...what I will buy with my future lottery winnings.

A little rain on our windshield, along with some bug splats. 

Every highway journey has some of those.

Some roadside politics. 

(Google it. It only politically frustrated me even more than I already am.)

Fuel for the journey. 

Though not my fuel, it's my hubby's. 

I am (with much pride, I must say) not a coffee drinker. 

I am (with much humility, I must say) working on accepting this traveling need of his to frequently stop for this type of fuel. It greatly agitates my need to get from point A to point B without detours. 

While in eternally long drive-thru wait line for above mentioned fuel pit stop 

I was attracted to the line of trucks traveling in my review mirror. 

Mile after mile...after mile...after mile...

Drooling on her pillow.

I am always amazed at her ability to nap in the car. 

I think she inherited it from her dad, who can sleep anywhere.

Behold our nation's beef source... 

If you have never seen the documentary Food, Inc. , I highly recommend it. I promise that it will not make you a vegetarian, it will simply educate you on the way our nation mass produces our food. Quite eye opening. Anyway, as we drove by my son announced, "Those are not good cows to eat mom. They're standing in poop and eating corn. They need to be roaming the hills and eating grass." 

(Well said, son.)

Don't you wish God would just give you a little neon sign like this on your own life's highway?

It would be so helpful. Or not. 

Not sure what is worse: to know that the upcoming rest stop ramp is closed, or that I have 76 more miles to go. Perhaps this is why he rarely gives out neon signs?  We would give up way too early.

Destination skyline: Disneyland.

It truly is one of my happy places. Not the LA smog, just the magic of Disneyland. 

My childhood is warmly trapped there and I love to go and visit it every few years.

I will share more of our trip later. I actually did not use my real camera much as it was impossibly heavy to carry around Disneyland and take on rides. Instead, I carried my mom's little point and shoot camera, for which I was thankful to have, but perpetually frustrated at its limitations. 

We will see, I have yet to download them. 

For now I am just happy to look upon my highway snapshots and remember the good time we had as a family...stuffed in our car with our travel blankets, travel dvd player, and iPods. Though the tools of travel change, the joy of traveling together as a family does not.

Going on a trip!

We are heading out of town today...on our way to Disneyland! 

Bean is going to drive...or she might be the hood ornament. 

I'll be back this weekend. 

Enjoy your week!

XOXO

Swinging into the sunshine

There were a million kids and parents at this park today, each soaking up their part of the sunshine.

Not a swing, slide, or monkey bar was empty. 

My dad would put me on this same swing on warm summer evenings...push me so high my stomach would leap with each drop and swoosh. Bean asked me to push her just like Papa used to do to me.

You got it sweetie. And while I'm at it, let me try and capture some of that sun flare. 

I almost deleted the picture above and then stopped myself. I love the blur, the swish of her moment.

And I love love love the little bokeh dancing up and down the swing chain. How cool is that?

Swinging into the sunshine...a perfect day don't you think?

XOXO

 

Has anybody else noticed the evolution of these little sugary, chalky, (and IMHO totally nasty) hearts?

They've gone Britney Spears.

U GO GIRL

ROCK ON

LOL

GET REAL

CALL ME (I'm surprised I didn't see TEXT ME.)

I-M SURE

TOO HOT(okay, that one is more Paris Hilton)

Though I despise the taste of these I was glad to see that the old standbys were still around:

BE MINE

KISS ME

SOUL MATE

XOXO

MY GIRL

SAY YES

YES

And then there was the lone GOT LOVE? that was a sure indicator that the heart makers have definitely entered the 21st century.

My Valentine sweet of choice? Just some plain old chocolate, please.

And a kiss from my own Sweets. :)

Happy Heart Day. 

XOXO

Remind me...

If you happen to run into me tomorrow and you ask me where I'm going, and I say, 

I'm going shopping for a car! 

...then please feel free to rope me to a tree, chain me to a fence, etc. and guard me there until bedtime. 

Please feel free, also, to remind me of how tonight's car shopping experience was really not that painful until everyone started talking numbers and financing, at which point my hubby and I looked at each other and hung our heads in discouragement, grabbed our kid's hands, stuffed them in the car and headed home in silence. Remind me that there were more peaceful, soulful things I could have remained doing before we left for the car dealership, such as:  crouching with my daughter in the beautifully lit "green room" her brother made in the grass forest across the street...or discovering that the grass was loaded with newly birthed lady bugs all traveling up and down the blades in search of aphid....or basking in the beautiful light of the setting winter sun.

Yes, please remind me that I loathe, (no, seriously, hear me say in the most whiney possible voice) looooooaaaaattttthhhhhee buying a car. It is one of the few times I just wish we had more money than we do. Not because I want some fancy car that is worth major bucks, but because I just do not want to give my time away to searching for a car. I want to just walk onto a car lot, pop onto craigslist, see a car that I like (new or used), and buy it without looking at the asking price.

Are you feelin' my pain?

Really, I just want to curl up in Bean's green room, watch the light on her face, and count lady bugs.

A little belief in myself does me good

The massive dump of rain over the last month has created a frenzy of growth with all things green and weedy. Grass that was an inch tall yesterday is now a foot tall today. I'm not joking. The kids and I were in the field across the street and I felt like I was in a new land. New wagon tracks had to be forged, and you almost needed a compass to navigate the landscape. Above: a small, budding, yellow, flowering, weed-grass, specimen of something I spotted in the sea of green. I love how his arms are outstretched towards the winter sun, as if to say, "Hallelujah, the sun has come!" Hallelujah indeed.

Below: a picture I have posted before at this post. Random? No. I am going to share with you how proud I am of myself. (Not easy for me to do.) I regularly follow one of the most popular photography/home/nesting blogs in the country called thepioneerwoman.com . The creator, Ree Drummond, basically lives my fantasy life: she lives on a ranch somewhere in the beautiful frontier of America, she cooks, is an amazing photographer, and has a hubby who wrangles cattle. Oh and she runs a lodge and home schools her kids. (Although that last part is not a part of my fantasy.) A few days ago on her photography page she posted an "assignment": share a photo that demonstrates a shallow depth of field. (That basically means the subject in the foreground is sharp and the background is blurry. Both pix I shared today are an example of that.) Anyways, I usually never consider submitting photos to contests as I always feel quite intimidated. (I know, working on that.) But this time I thought I'd give it a try and have fun with it. I went through my photos and picked one I thought demonstrated what she was asking for. This morning I went on her site to see the groups of photos she had picked for today's "winners" and was absolutely shocked to see mine among them. Of course my immediate thought was, "Look at all the other beautiful amazing photos she chose!" I swallowed my insecurities (with the help of hubby) and smiled at myself for my little accomplishment. 

So I am posting it again below, but if you'd like to see the real deal just click here .  

And please check out the rest of her site...especially if you are interested in learning some basic photography stuff. Her tips and tricks she posts are very easy to understand. And once you go through them, you can join me participating in her future assignments.

Oops...

They had made a pact: neither of them would let go.

They had seen how it worked in the cartoons and movies, but could they really be sure it would work in real life?

Gracie: "I promise I won't let go if you won't."
Bean: "Ok. I promise if you promise."
Gracie: "Let's pinky swear."
Bean: "Yes, let's."

And together they took hold of the bunch, untethered it, and immediately felt the pull of lift-off.

Gravity conquered.

Shocked at their success, Gracie experienced a moment of panic.
 
She released her grip and dropped to the ground.

And watched Bean sail off into the blue...

Leaving her pink rain boots behind.

Somethings never change

Like my son, for instance.

A year ago on Superbowl Sunday he spent his time riding a quad on our friend's property, even though his beloved team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and his idol, Ben Roethlisberger, were playing.
This past Sunday was no different. Well, except that the Steelers were soooo not in the Super Bowl. But still, his priorities were evident. Living out his love for driving anything before his sixteenth birthday certainly trumped watching football. Can you blame a ten year old boy who lives for action? Why watch it on a big flat screen tv when you can be experiencing it yourself?

Some things never change.

And yet, thank God, some things do.

I look at the post I made a year ago: Zach, riding his quad, totally dissing Ben's moment of glory.
I had just started this blog and my skills were just budding. Oh my, what a year of daily wielding my camera has done. If I must say so myself. I am glad that some things change. Click here to see for yourself. (And please don't laugh!)

Instead laugh with me as I recall a season in Bean's life when she would pronounce Ben's name as Ben Roethlisbuger. Laugh with me as you imagine hearing Zach's complete exasperated rants at her inability to give Ben's name the proper dignity. Imagine seeing the look of secret pleasure on her face in grasping the humor of it all. If you have more than one child living under your roof you will also realize that even though years pass and siblings mature, their little squabbles still happen. That poke poke poke and tattle tattle tattle that often flies between them never gets old. Well, except to the parents who have to live with it. (Roll eyes)

Yes, some things never change.

Following Gracie

Yesterday I spent some time following little Gracie.

When you see a little one sporting adorable pony tails, it's hard not picking up your camera.
(Here she is peering into the pool. We spotted a toy car that had sunk to the bottom.
"Twacey, Twacey, get the caw owt!")

Oh I did my duty and snapped some of the guys playing in their own Superbowl.
And I realized why sports photographers use mega zoom lenses to capture every detail.
I could only get so close before being tackled. (Too much testosterone.)

So I focused on what I found to be waaaaaaaaay more interesting.
Here she is showing me her Cinderella necklace, which she never took off.

Here we are making our way out to the playground.
(Note to self: this is a beautiful place for a future photo shoot.)

We stopped and played in the sand pit.

Then she perched herself at the top of the slide...but decided not to go down...just yet.

Poking her fingers through the steps of the structure was much more exciting, and less scary.

She welcomed me into her house.
"Twacey, you come in too!"

And somewhere during our toddling around I made it my mission to capture those eyelashes.

I had fun with you little Gracie.