his birthday umbrella post

Forget the royal wedding hoopla stuff. Let's talk about my totally funny mental moment I had this week...

(Prepare for a run-on sentence) I was thinking back to the half serious joke (is that an oxymoron?) I made in last Friday's post about starting my own "Umbrella Friday" when I had this realization that this Friday was my hubby's birthday and usually I do a post to honor him, soooooo I would not be able to really make good on my half serious joke about "Umbrella Friday" because I would post a nonumbrella picture of him instead. But theeeeeeennnnn, I was going through some pictures of him to post and I came upon these...

Friends? Is this awesome or what?! This could not be any more perfect. You should have seen my face when I discovered these pictures.

These were taken in China Town on our fifteenth wedding anniversary. The hotel had lent us this tent of an umbrella and we walked the several blocks from our hotel arm in arm, tucked under its shelter.

This guy is the best. He has been through some crazy tough times these past couple of years and has come out of it stronger, wiser, and deeper. This weekend we are going away to a beach condo with friends to celebrate him because this guy, this year, needs to be celebrated.

We will celebrate his friendship.
We will celebrate his humor.
We will celebrate his humility.
We will celebrate his heart.

There have been times over the years that I have been awed at his willingness to face the toughest parts of himself, his willingness to admit wrong, his willingness to dig deep into knowing himself better. This is just one of the threads of consistency about him that has caused me to love him more and more. I know that I am extremely blessed to have a man such as him.

I know that the whole world will remember this day because some royal couple got married with 2 billion people watching (my wedding attendance was .01% of that--I think--my calculator wouldn't compute that many zeroes), but in our household, this day is always the event of our year because we love him so much.

Pal...there are so many people who love you, including a very great and good God who out-loves us all.
But today, on your birthday, know that I love you with a full heart. I am so very proud of you are as a man, hubby, and father.
Happy Birthday!
T

let us observe

Yesterday was a beautiful California spring day. T-shirt and shorts kind of weather. The "lets get out and go to the park" kind of weather.

After a picnic lunch, these two were sprawled on the grass deep in inspection/discussion mode. It's what boys do: inspect, discuss, do more inspecting, do more discussing. (Ever been to an antique car show with males?)

Not privy to the casual observer was what, exactly, these two boys were inspecting/discussing.

Like me. The camera lady, attempting to complete her mindful Picture Inspiration assignment. Which was to "observe"...as in, "capture a sliver of a moment, without the photo subjects knowing that you are capturing them." You know, be a fly on the wall. 

So like, how easy was this assignment for me? I totally rock at being a fly on the wall. I pulled out my camera, set it on the grass, and hit the shutter button a million times. Observe, capture...it's what I'm made for people.

After a million clicks my son finally looks up.

Kid: So mom, what do you think? Do you think this bee might be hurt?

Me: (crawling over to now join the inspection/discussion) Uh, you mean the one that you are poking with that blade of grass over and over again?

Kid: Yeah. He just keeps rolling over and can't get out of this little hole and fly away so I keep shoving the blade of grass in his face.

Me: (silent pause of disbelief) If I were desperately trying to get out of a grassy hole and someone kept shoving a blade of grass in my face I'd have a hard time too. (infer the "duh" tone of voice)

(more silence, more poking)

Me: Let me rephrase that. So what I'm saying is that maybe you should just get out of her* bleepin' way, stop poking her, and let her get out of there on her own.

So. Picture Assignment complete. Lesson's learned:

1. I am pretty good at observing, and capturing. I have always loved being a fly on the wall.

2. No matter how smart our boys can be, it's moments like these that confirm that there is a short circuit in their ability to fully master the power of observation. (And thus, the ability to draw sound conclusions.) I am not stereotyping here, I am just observing what I see folks. I'm married to a boy and I have a son. I'm a female. Please refer back to number one. 

Girls, you know what I'm talkin' about right?

*99.9% of bees you see out and about are girls working hard to gather pollen. They are also the ones that make the honey, clean the hive, tend to the queen. The boys are at the hives attempting to mate with the queen, until they get kicked out or killed. They also do not have stingers. I'm not sure I believe in karma, but if I did this would probably be the tid bit that sealed the deal for me. How do I know this stuff?  Three years of preschool teaching experience, and a trip to the UC Davis Bee Biology Lab with twenty little three and four year olds. They all got to wear little bee-keeper outfits and helmets and let the boy bees crawl over their hands without the fear of being stung. Was all absolutely adorable. 

freckles and eyelashes

Photos I took a long time ago and never shared, but recently found while cleaning out photo files...

Every time I look at this photo I pause to wonder (and envy) over those freckles and eye lashes. To me, the uniqueness of how we are made, the attention to detail, the one-of-a-kindness we all possess is a testimony to the creative genius of God.

I just want to put my arms on her shoulders (like her mother does), look her in the eyes, and plant these words upon her heart:

You are so beautifully unique! 
There is no one like you. 
You are crazy cool, here for a reason, endowed with purposeful gifts.
And do not let anybody ever disrespect that truth about you. 
You hear me?!
You are worthy of love.


Makes me wonder what would happen if we spoke those words more often to the children around us? What kind of generation would we raise up to take our place?

A crazy cool, gifted, purposeful generation of adults who believe in their unique place in this world--who would not have to waste their adult life compensating for what we did not give to them. 

That's what kind of generation we would raise up.

Amen.

(Ok, getting off my soap box. Off to clean out more photo files.) 

patience, taking turns, and the whole love thing

While she was on the hammock, he was waiting patiently for his turn. (He is such a gentleman.) They even made a little game of it to make the time pass more swiftly. Life is so much more enjoyable when we take turns, share, and wait patiently, right? I mean this is what we teach our children, though it is much harder to practice in real life.

Because as adults we think it is easier to insist on sharing a stupid toy or hammock because we think those things are so small and inconsequential. Yet as adults we forget to enter their childlike brains, the brains that place a high value on toys, ownership, and going first. Instead, we insist on them behaving with the emotional maturity of an adult. But when they do we are pleasantly surprised and humbled by their example.

Our words come floating back to us when we find ourselves having to share our freeway lane, our front row parking spot, our place in line, our dessert. Or when we are struggling to wait for our turn to speak, make our point, defend our rights, exist in the same space with someone who believes differently than we do.

I know not every situation is as easy as taking turns on a hammock. But maybe we would experience living a with a bit more joy if we could practice like it was?

Hmmmm...I shoulda mentioned this to the guy who drove by our car real slow on Easter morning and flipped us off when we accidentally got in his way. Actually, he flipped off my kids in the back seat, looked my son in the eyes and uttered some curse words all while giving him the bird. I was a little glad he was not going into the church parking lot because that would have been slightly awkward. Happy Easter!

Anyways, it was a good talking point with our kids. How some people are so consumed with selfishness that it breeds anger and hate, which breeds more selfishness. I think that guy needed a hammock moment, or some love, or maybe some grace.

See how rewarding it is when you practice leaning into the practice of patience? When you let go of needing to be first? When sharing is love? When extending grace is more of a sweet drink for your own soul than it is for the receiver...

I know I am going to be eating these words this week while my kids are home on spring break. I will let ya'll know how it went come Sunday. :)

umbrella friday (or random friday)

Last night we were eating dinner at a shopping mall food court (good times) and Bean turns to me and says...

Mom, you know how I've always wanted to be a teacher when I grow up? Well I'm thinking that I might want to try and be the President.


Imagine her saying this while eating a Cold Stone cup of chocolate ice cream, with gummy bear mix-ins, while holding her new lady bug Pillow Pet that her grandma just bought her. (The matching lady bug slippers were in the bag next to her.)

This girl's got big dreams people.

So since last Friday I mentioned that I've got a collection of umbrella photos that haven't been shared and I thought I would make these next couple of Fridays "umbrella Friday". I'm doing this because I often feel left out of the photo blog/flickr theme cliques that do "Thursday, Bench Day" or "Bokeh Tuesdays" or "Fix-it Fridays". I'm starting my own friends. You can join me. Or not. Whatever.

On another completely random note. I was on my mom's and dad's computer last night and I went to go fix something on the blog and when it came up I was horrified by the quality of my pictures on their computer monitor. Mom, Dad, if you are reading this...

You need a new computer monitor. 

Which then makes me a little concerned about what other people see when they come here to this blog? I just assumed that everyone has a fantastic Mac monitor like me and that every photo (whether mine or someone else's) looks fabulous.

Have I been living in La La Land?

Please don't comment if this is true. I'd rather live in my own little world.

Anyway, happy Umbrella Friday....or Random Friday. It's all good.

San Francisco

A little view from our hotel room on the 17th floor.

It was a dreary day this day, but nevertheless, the view of the city below us was worthy of a photo.

I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with San Francisco. It is historically beautiful, yet wears its cracks well. It is a city of a hundred dialects, nationalities, social and economical extremes, all existing in a small footprint. Case in point: on our walk down to the heart of the city from our nice quiet Nob Hill hotel, I witnessed a man urinating in an open doorway, another sleeping on the sidewalk, and a host of women wearing Prada heading off to bar. We witnessed some drunk guys attempting street dancing for money, a disheveled woman wanted to sell us an old newspaper so she could pay her rent, and a pirate-clad mime completely covered in gold spray paint watching it all from atop his wooden crate. Hundreds of others buzzed around, in and out of stores, stood with mouths open, watched the drunk guys, and waited in line for the trolley cars. In the span of twenty feet I heard a handful of languages and yet ironically I was the one that felt like the foreigner. I always do in this city.

At one point I felt like I was an extra in a movie scene while I crossed the street and watched a man and woman carried on a petty argument...

He, hanging out of his 3rd floor apartment window:
"HEY! Where you goin'?! Bring me back a pack!"

She, standing in the middle of the intersection, in her bathrobe and slippers, waving a finger at him: "WHAT?! Don't you yell at me! You get your own pack you lazy SOB!"

No kidding...San Francisco is not lacking in character.

Yet this is the way this city is every time I visit. I now know why I enjoy the outer edges, the ocean side, the Presidio, the Marina...because the noise dissipates and I can smell the ocean, not feel overwhelmed or anxious with the disparity of the extremes. It breaks my heart to see broken people sleeping on the sidewalk, women trying to sell dirty newspapers (or their bodies) to pay for a meal. And yet this city is raw with the presence of them, and the Suits and Pradas that walk by them. I often wonder if I lived here if I would get used to it and settle into the chaotic collision of extremities. But then I conclude that I am perfectly content to visit and enjoy it in small bites, taking my lifetime to discover its historical beauty, cracks and all.

the plunge

(This is our favorite lake, filled with snow melt off. It freezes parts off, if you know what I mean.)

I was going to narrate this entire scene but thought it would be best left without words. I think you know what it might be like to work up the courage to take the plunge while others are watching. While they are waiting (and heckling) for you to toughen up and get your bravery on you finally show up and show off.

Besides, the plunge is not for them anyway. It's for you. You want to prove to yourself that you have got what it takes to do it.

And you want to feel the joy of the accomplishment.

(Even though it leaves you with a massive brain freeze and a mouth full of cuss words.)

In case you need to see it in real time...

I remind myself of this every day:

Pay no attention to the hecklers that live inside of your head. You possess what it takes to show up to your own life and take a plunge or two. It's time to get your bravery on!

a welcome distraction

A week or so ago I posted a photo of these chunkalunks...

So before I go on with the rest of the pictures I have to tell you that when my son was born, he was (and still is) a twig. Born three and a half weeks early, at 7lbs and 11oz, I thought he would be a tank. He was always long and outgrowing the normal age appropriate sized clothing, but he never had that delicious baby fat. Bean on the other hand, was born with those yummy pudgies, and the more she grew the pudgier they became. I was obsessed with her little soft legs. I miss them friends! They are now eight years old and still cute, but not the baby cute that I so miss.

So imagine my delight when, in the middle of doing some other photo work, this little one traveled into the back yard through the shared, neighborly fence. I was completely distracted by her cute little bathing suit and little legs, and thoroughly overjoyed to spend the next half hour following her around....

She moved onto the motorcycle and was looking for the "beep beep"....

Done with the motorcycle and making her way over to the ultimate in toddler satisfaction...

The car.

And finally, something that actually had a horn...

It was time for din-din so Daddy scooped her up and handed her off to Mama. 

And I waved goodbye. :(

I went back to my other work and she eventually returned in the comfort of Mama's arms. 

I remember when my kids were small enough to carry them around. I wore out a shoulder with the second child doing this, enough to have surgery and physical therapy for two years. (Another long story.) But I would go back in time just to experience it for a moment, shoulder pain and all.

And thus ends my fun little photographic documentation of my work distraction on that day.

I will leave you with my favorite photo, not of her pudgies, but of her wispy hair and piercing eyes.

Friends, how could I not be distracted from work with a face like this? 

Ok, off to work. I would say that I am open to any distractions,

but my camera is in the hospital so they cannot be of the photographic kind. 

Oh well. :(

Have a great Monday!

hello Friday

Friday, how I love thee.

You are the light at the end of my tunnel.

My deep breath.

My welcome friend.

There is not another day that I love more than you.

You are rest.

You are sweetness...

...arriving every seventh day until time passes into eternity.

Nothing would be finer than to discover that heaven is a never ending string of you.

********

These photos have nothing to do with Friday. I just simply have so many photos of Bean with some sort of umbrella, I figured I needed to start sharin' the love.

Happy Friday.

xoxo

T

a goodbye and a surprise

Friends...my camera is back in the hospital. I am so sad. I really hope this is the final time, or someone in Canonville needs to issue me a new camera for all of the heartbreak I have had to suffer in the fifteen months I have owned it.

I completed my Picture Inspiration assignment for the week and then packed it up and drove it to UPS and said goodbye.

I am grieving, but moving on.

So this week I had to capture a reflection, without the context of the real thing that was being reflected. I had to "pay attention to the shape, color, and light of reflection itself." (Yeah, I needed a translation too.)

Anyway, I translated it to mean: capture not the real thing, but a reflection of it as if you were walking by and happened to see the shape of it, the color of it. Like a little surprise or something...like...that...

Here is an example.  Let's say I am brushing my teeth at the bathroom sink, I look up from spitting and rinsing, and I happen to notice in the mirror, Bean's pink, cupcake-looking shower cap, with a Bean underneath it. And she is eating an apple, while soaking in the tub. Would you not be surprised to find such a thing?

Or, I happened to be on my way to plop some of the Kid's socks on the stairs, to remind him that he needs to put them in the hamper (like I do almost every hour of the day), and I just happened to catch a reflection of him in the mirror, sitting in my favorite red chair, looking at me with a look that says...of course my mom will pick up my socks because if I just sit here and reflect on how she always picks up my socks without doing it myself, even though she nags me to do it and threatens that she will throw them away if she has to be the one to do it, she will eventually tire and pick them up herself. 
(I really was not "surprised" by this reflection. Were you? I get this look all the time.)

So do those two examples make sense according to my translation of the assignment? I really hope they do because I no longer have a camera to attempt this assignment again. 

It's an odd thing to send your camera off. I love my camera tremendously, but it is nice to have a forced separation from it. It creates a good vacation. The reunion is always so sweet. You know what I mean? (Wow, this sounds like I could be talking about my kids, or husband. Hmmmm....)

I will still do a few posts while my camera is gone, share some yet-to-be-shared photos. But it will be nice to clean out my files and get some other stuff done that has been waiting patiently for my attention. 

And lastly, here is a non PI assignment photo. While I was snapping the photo above I kept looking at my little vintage cameras on the table there. I have a handful of vintage cameras that I bought from an antiques dealer in town. She gave me a box of twelve or so, for $50. Was a total deal and such a fun find. I have thought for sometime now that I need to take some pictures of them. 

So here is the first...

Aren't they so cool? I love my little camera family. Please pray for a safe return of my other child. There will be an empty hole in my heart until it does. 

mistakes

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the amount of photographic beauty out there in Internet Land. I have to daily remind myself to choose to set my face to my own path and purpose and not let what others are doing drive me to a game of comparison.  I was already thinking about this battle when a photographer friend mentioned her own similar battle and so I realized it was not just me who struggled with this. How silly to believe that we are alone in our struggles. We forget that others are imperfect like us. (As photographers this battle is compounded by that fact that we only display what we think is our best work, forgetting that others also have a pile of rejects on the editing room floor that no one will see.)

As I was going through old photos, uploading them to my online storage site, I came across these out-takes that I never shared. They were "mistakes" in my opinion. Lacking in focus or whatever my insecurities were telling me. I might have gone and edited them a bit to try and dress them up, but honestly I did not have the energy for it.

On this second pass I stopped and decided to share them with you. They are SOOC (straight out of my camera). Never touched. This is a quick look at me, struggling to get my manual settings situated, my composition right. Some of them are misfires, some are the pictures snapped before I caught the one I wanted to keep.

This one?  Not sure what I was doing?

I was trying to capture my "niece" in that golden sun. She was laughing at her uncle teasing her. Missed her face completely...BUT I caught her smile. 

A total misfire. Sometimes in that crazy sun flare the autofocus can't find a place to rest. I remember being frustrated with this and struggling to find my settings.

I think I put a similar photo in a collage somewhere. Now I love it.

Bean's "meatball"...

I know they are not total failures. In fact, now I love them and am embarrassed that the only "mistake" I made was to have thought they were as awful as I first thought. I am keeping them because I am sad that I was so critical of myself. 

I guess what I am trying to say to myself is very cliche: no one is perfect Tracey. 

And whatever/whomever I am comparing myself to is just soooooo not worth it.