For hire

Need one?

This one is organized, articulate, thoughtful, witty, sweet, observant, welcoming, generous, and adorable. She'd work for a bowl of chocolate pudding, or a piece of Hubba Bubba bubble gum, or even a swig of your root beer. She might even hold your hand, give you a big hug and a smooch. Warning: she might talk your ear off, or offer you a lick of her Tootsie Pop, or fall asleep in the car if your tour is by car.  Oh and she might teach you the lyrics to a Hannah Montana song and sing it for you slightly off key (sorry), read to you her favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, or attempt a corny joke. However, you might find yourself on the receiving end of a very sweet letter (signed with an xoxo like her Grammy and Mama taught her), and a handmade trinket she whipped up in her craft closet.

I can vouch for her expertise and her tour guide savvy-ness and can write a lengthy letter of recommendation if needed. If you have never had a Bean for a tour guide then I highly recommend it.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend blogger friends.
See you Tuesday! I'm taking a blogging break. I will definitely be picking up my camera, but I need some rest, need to unplug from the world and gather myself, be with the family.

xoxo

 

p.s. And a sweet heartfelt thank you for the little comments yesterday. "Anonymous"...you were a blessing. Made my day. Feel free to make my day any day. God Bless!

a lesson from a Ranunculus

If I may be a little honest...it's been a draining week. Emotional. The kind of week where tears are at the surface and I find myself unable to settle. I hesitated writing this but I can't post happy and funny. Not today.

The Ranunculus is one of my most favorite flowers, especially in bunches. This snapshot is of a bouquet that was given to my dear friend when she received the heart sickening news that her mother (also a dear friend) was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. I took this picture over a month ago during a visit and it has sat in a file waiting for me to give it the proper attention.

So here I am today posting it because I believe God has used it to remind me of something...

that though my circumstances at present are draining, they have not brought me to face to face with the reality that my life is near its end. My circumstances, though painful, are not "stage 4".

Perspective: a term I use not to invalidate the struggle of my personal reality, but to weigh it on the life scale and find it slightly off balance in comparison to the more weightier of possible life problems...such as facing terminal lung cancer, or loosing an unborn child, or waking to the news that your husband has been in a fatal airplane crash (all of which have happened to personal friends over the last year). I am alive. My kids are safe in bed. There is food in my pantry and gas in my car. I have a loving family,  an amazing husband, and a God that loves me.

Thank you Ranunculus for reminding me of this.

5 Seconds: Groovin' Downtown

Week three of my "5 Second" series and this family still makes me smile. I have to say, as I was posting these I had to shake my head with wonder at the beautiful weather we had two weeks ago because as I type it is dreary, rainy, cold, and miserable outside. Seriously? This is MAY people! I live in the sunny state!  (Deep breath)

Moving on. These collection of "5 Seconds" were taken during our exploration of downtown. Lots of fun was had by all as you will see...

Java and dinner anyone?

After reading the "specials" menu the kids decided to actually take a peek into the restaurant's big sliding windows. I quickly popped inside and snapped them looking in. 

So, one of the things our little city boasts about is their mushroom farms located on the outskirts of town. They hold a yearly Mushroom Mardis Gras festival (coming up this weekend!) and people travel near and far to eat mushroom this and mushroom that. It's crazy. I'd like a one-on-one chat with the person who decided the mushroom would be a good thing to have our city claim as their "thing", because the mushroom, in my humble opinion, is not really that exciting. And have you ever smelled a mushroom harvest? It's akin to driving through a massive cow pasture. The sulfuric gasses that are released when mushrooms are harvested create quite the gag reflex. There are certain areas of town that are caught in the downwind currents of the farms and I pretty much avoid them. I once met the gal whose family owned one of the farms. She said her perpetual worry was that the smell was permanently soaked into her clothing and that she constantly smelled of mushroom stink. Ya think?

A couple of years ago some artists got together and decided to create some mushroom sculptures for our downtown area. (Because we need to milk the mushroom thing for all it's worth.) There are now quite a few that dot our downtown landscape and the kids love to climb on them. 

Here is the "oceanic" mushroom...

And the "vroom vroom" mushroom complete with exhaust pipes...

And the "Wizard of Oz" mushroom...

(I know you're totally jealous now. You're wishing your town had a mushroom farm or two.)

We then headed over to the bike mural--which was kind of cool because Dad works for one of the biggest bike companies and is himself a bike engineer. He sits at his desk and creates new bikes for a really popular, hip bike company and owns over twenty bikes himself. 

(At least he thinks it's twenty, he lost count! And his wife wouldn't let him bring them all over from their homeland of Germany. I don't blame her. Garage space is prime real estate in my book.)

Then there was a little more play time...

And smooch time. I love that I caught this 5 seconds of love between a little girl and her daddy.

Are not they just the cutest family? I probably say that about every family, 

but really, they were just the best. THE best!

Here's to more "5 seconds". Hoping you are catching yours today with those you love.

Happy Wednesday!
xoxo

The Backyardigans

These are the real Backyardigans.
(Forget the Saturday morning singing cartoons!)

They built their forts, set their traps, chased away the bad guys (and girls),
and drove the camera lady crazy while playing dodgeball.
(She had words with the ten year old.)

This Backyardigan was attempting to blend in with his surroundings.
A little undercover work, you might say, to keep watch over the others.
Or maybe it was just self preservation?

This Backyardigan got lost in the wonder of her fairy fort.

This one decided a nap was in order. Or maybe he was playing dead?

(Again, self preservation?)

And this one in the day-old braids was keen on picking flowers. 

Though that morning glory was not to be touched.

Did I mention they played dodgeball? 

While this one was having a little more difficulty blending in, he did give the camera lady a chance to work on her rule of thirds. 

And more work in her fairy fort...

It was going to be a shining moment for these little button flowers as they soaked up the setting sun and danced in front of a backdrop of bokeh, until the camera lady noticed that some of them had quite literally lost their heads. 

No it was not the ultimate Backyardigan, the Queen of Tarts, that ordered them to be hacked off,
but rather the result of some backyard shenanigans.

They were simply victims at the hands of the real Backyardigans.
You know how they can be...

a familiar path

Sometimes you set out on your journey and the path is clear, wide open, with room for exploration.

But after awhile the way turns rocky.
So you go from step to step, prayer to prayer, one rock at a time.

After awhile you grow weary, confused, and wind up following someone else
who claims to have a better map. (It just seems easier.)

Yet as time passes, you realize that you have lost sight of yourself and your path.
Though their map may be a good one you discover it is not right for you.
So you pause and climb to higher ground. You find you need to stop and evaluate...

...orient yourself to your surroundings, reclaim your own map.

The stillness beckons you to sit down, get reacquainted with yourself
and rediscover the compass of your own heart.

All so that you can get back on your own two feet, find your path, and step into a newer, more mature, version of yourself. You begin anew.

Words for my own heart today as I am forever in this cycle of learning.
Welcome to Monday.......a chance to get back on my feet, find my path, and begin anew.

a silver lining

It is the end of my day. This is my view from my front door step. You know my love for clouds so it is not a surprise that I wanted to catch these as they passed through my immediate atmosphere.
You would also never know that it is the middle of May here. The weather has been odd, up and down, windy and rainy one day and hazy and muggy the next. And I am still in my sweats. And I think it is supposed to rain this week?! El Nino has surely worn out his welcome. I love a good rain, but when he has upstaged Spring it gets a little annoying. Oh well, at least I have these skies, these visitors to capture. Just looking for the silver lining.

 Hope you are enjoying your weekend. :)

growth and development

I know that for many of you this photo is wrong on so many levels.

I know it's not my typical. (If this is your first visit here please move on and check out other posts, the pictures there are so much more, shall we say, nice and artful, pretty.) And I'm sorry if you have a repulsion for snakes. I, on the other hand, have an odd like for them. (Don't ask me about lizards or scaled-legged things.)  And there is a story to tell so do scroll up so that the picture is off your screen and read on for the story.

The setting: A hilly back road out in the country that locals use (instead of the freeway) to get from one town to the next. (Feelin' pretty good that I can call myself a local.) The weather is warm enough to heat the pavement to a nice reflective ripple effect, to the point where I can see the on coming car's headlights in the heat waves. The kids are in the back seat eating a snack. Kid is reading his book. It's 4:30pm and we are on our way home from Bean's riding lesson--silent in our seats enjoying the back road scenery.

A quarter of a mile ahead of me I notice a car stopped in the middle of the road, slightly pulled off, but still enough in the middle that I begin to wonder if I will have to swerve over the double yellow lines to go around it. It is parked on the crest of a small hill so going around it is risky as I can't see that far ahead of it to know if an on coming car is approaching. As I come to a slow stop behind it I realize they are not stranded, but instead, looking at something out their window. I follow their gaze to the ground below them and see what they see...

"A snake!" I yell, out of excitement. "Kids, it's a snake!"

My kids burst forward in their seats and we all crane our heads to get a better look. The car in front of us creeps off and we move into their place. But it isn't good enough for me. I pull off the road, park my car and jump out to discover that it is not one snake, but in fact, TWO snakes. And they are doing their thing right there on the side of the road for every stinkin' car and passerby to see. I am flabbergasted. I mean, it's actually kind of cool how they slither along, weaving themselves into a braid, but really? They do this out in the open for everyone to see? And do they not realize that they can get hit? Run over? Flattened? Seriously. Were they slithering along their merry way when a chance run in gave them an idea to do it right there on the road? This must happen in the wild more than I know. Clearly I have not watched enough Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel.

My son slowly approaches. Bean is right behind him. 

"Mom, there's two!"

"Yes, I see. Don't get too close, I'm not sure what kind of snakes they are."

We watch for a few moments.

"Mom...what are they doing?"

"Mating."

And then it was if my kids had never left the car. I turned around to grab my camera and they were crawling back in their seats.

(Now I know how to clear them from a room.)

But since the snakes weren't interested in keeping any privacy I whipped out my camera and sat on the ground a few feet away from them and fired off a few shots. I mean, who sees this kind of stuff everyday?!

I got back in the car, looked at my son in the review mirror and smiled. At school, the day before, he had finally had the "growth and development" talk with the school nurse. The 5th grade talk where they split the boys from the girls and teach them about the stages of puberty...you know "the talk".
We knew the talk was coming. The info was going to be nothing new for the Kid as we have made it a point to teach him this stuff ourselves. But for the last few days leading up to it we have been bombarded with:

"So did you and dad have a lot of acne when you hit puberty?"

"When did you hit puberty mom/dad?"

"When do you think I'll hit it?"

"Do you think I'll have a lot of acne?"

(Must I really relive these years?) 

On the day of the talk he came home with a little baggie with a booklet and a trial size bottle of Old Spice deodorant. He asked me if I thought he should start wearing it. I told him if he wanted to he could, but I didn't think he was that stinky. I mean, why run ahead to puberty when we all know that once you are there you will regret the rush.

All this growth and development talk leading up to the witnessing of two snakes doing it on the side of the road and I think my Kid had hit his limit. Enough with the body talk and mating animals. (Oh, and we had also just learned that Bean's horse was newly pregnant so a mini talk had followed that before we got in the car to come home.) Too much for a ten year old boy that just wants to ride his bike and build Legos and talk about his field trip to NASA.

So I will not leave you with the image of two mating snakes. That would not be a very fun weekend send off. Instead I will leave you with a couple of pictures of Bean riding Ruby. Prego Ruby. That picture on the right? That's Bean hearing the Ruby news. What you can't really see are the wheels spinning in her brain, the questions swirling. When we got back to the stall and she was brushing Ruby down she told me that she could already feel the baby in Ruby's belly. I told her that it probably wasn't the baby, but rather Ruby's normal belly.  Babies do not grow in bellies.

No...it was the baby.

Alrighty then. I can see that the growth and development talk still needs some tweaks and minor touch ups with the Bean.

Happy happy Friday all! 

xoxo

Just documenting...

...the hair. 

She did her ponytails all by herself. This I discovered when picking her up after school yesterday. I didn't have the opportunity to see them before school because I was...uh..still asleep. So imagine me driving through the pick up line after school and seeing her walking towards me. My first thought was seriously: Did I do her hair this morning? Then I thought: Perhaps Daddy did? No...I don't think he can do ponytails. And then she plopped into the car and confirmed that indeed, she had done them all by herself. Wow. Ok, Bean has stepped up to the hair plate. I felt this odd sadness: my Bean can do her hair without me. I'm loosing her people. Loosing her to independence and hairdo dexterity and pretty soon it will be her not wanting me to read her a story at night, or not wanting to hold my hand, or asking for a bra or something like that. At least she let me take a quick picture of her (notice the hands on hips, the look of okay mom, let's get this over with). I mean, pretty soon she's going to be taking her own pictures and then what will I have left? Nothing, nothing at all.

Except for maybe this face...

This beautiful little face, attached to the messy ponytails, attached to the cute little body that holds her sweet sweet spirit and tender, compassionate heart.
I will have her.
Forever my Bean.

"5 Seconds" continued....

There were so many wonderful photos from last week's photo shoot that I have decided to share them in chunks during the next few weeks. I am on to something with this whole "5 Second" thing and it has been spinning around in my head as an idea for future photo work. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about please read this post.)

At the end of the photo shoot we went to explore a new fountain that was just built in our little down town area. Of course the kids were all about touching the water, splashing, dipping a toe or two. But as we gathered 'round the fountain I saw a series of 5 second moments in which they were together as a family. It did not matter that I was there, the kids could care less. It was a simple peek into how they are as a unit. I was happily the fly on the wall. A happy fly. (Is that possible?)

Weave those series of "5 Seconds" together and they tell a small story of their time at the fountain...

Traces of their moment together....

...left behind to fade into the passing of time.
Kept forever in an image to remind them of who they are together.

So happy to have captured it for them.