answering life's 2 questions

A road oft- traveled...

2012-01-24T23:17:00.002-05:00

with so many women. A first-time-soon-to-be-momma; late-20's; educated on the benefits of having a unmedicated, minimal-intervention birth for her January-due baby boy. A supportive, loving and excited Daddy. Pre-natal appointments with an OB who rolled his eyes when she would express her desire for this "granola birth" in a hospital run by nurses and doctors and anesthesiologists with schedules and demands; good intentions and yet the worries of lawsuits. An early check of the dialation progress, and a discouraged, tired momma who was told (and obeyed - no thanks to me! :) she couldn't eat or drink anything. An early arrival to the hospital due to the prescribed antibiotics round for strep B. Being hooked up and immoble for hours at a time - leaving the chance to labor in hot water or walking around the hospital not an option. A discouraged momma who - inspite of an amazing partner; gentle, loving Mom who herself is a nurse; and a rockin' DOULA :):) - wondered how if she was only at 4cm. after hours of being in pain, wanted relief and sleep....which came with a price. Epidurals are a brilliant creation. But the baby's heartrate decel'ing and Momma's inability to feel the pushing better led to a rather rash decision to call in to secure an OR for a section. The big knife. The patience of dear Doc. was gone within a 1/2 hour. The kind, gentle ways of the rest of her birth team were a contrast to his curt instructions of her pushing. It was forgotten that babies do things in their time. That the miracle requires patience. That his heart was recovering fine after each decel. That this momma had read and trained for this birth: with books, articles and information, and in Cross-Fit and Yoga. That she had a 6-pack full of strong muscles under that stretched-out uterus, and a heart willing to push just a little longer and a little harder. That “There is a secret in our culture and it is not that birth is painful but that women are strong." - Laura Stavoe
(ok, ok, it's pretty damn painful! )
But, it is heartbreaking to watch a story unfold when you are scared for the ending. When you want it to have a storybook ending, and you watch instead unfold in the form of a nightmare: where the momma feels every inch of the knife cut from the C-section, and spends the next few hours with blue lips, on numerous ineffective but powerful pain meds unable to hold her gorgeus new bundle of sweetness. Where you wonder why you are the only one whispering in her ear: "You can DO this. They are already planning on a C-section but you CAN do this. Take a deep breath and make the next one count." Where you sob in the car on the way home: partly from sadness from the birth experience of someone you have grown to care about deeply and the disapointment of knowing your support, knowledge and enthusiasm couldn't override a woman's fatigue and time spent in wires and tubes; partly from the beauty of two families melding together..waiting hours on end for the news that all is well and the ones they love the most are safe and sound. From the almost-tangible love of family in a dark waiting room in New England; laughter and tears and bonding and a first grandbaby on both sides. Phone calls and photos and texts and life-changes and newness that is unlike anything else in this short, joy-filled journey called life. From the gut-wrenching feeling that accompanies each- WAY TOO INFREQUENT -birth of which I am blessed to witness - that this sweetness is a past gift, something that will not come again in my life, that I will never get over wanting again and again; yet glorifying and rejoicing in seeing it being opened by others. Always with envy. Always with a sense of loss and sadness mixed in with the tears they think are from "loving what I do..." (I fool them well! :) Tears partly from the relief that in the end...everything WAS OK and the pain and trauma from a birth that took a different turn had a handsome baby boy in the end with a nose like his dad and paternal grandma whose happiness was almost bursting out of herself at that observance.
I KNOW there are times that interventions save babies' lives. I KNOW there are good doctors who - in spite of their anatomy and not having any idea what labor and delievery feel like - are compassionate and supportive while being objective and patient. I have yet to doula for very many. I will continue to sing the praises of midwives from the top of the hills...

Even with a non-properly-working camera, I captured some of the emotion present here which ALMOST (ok, not even CLOSE, but...) helps make up for these absolutely horrible photos. What do you expect when your camera has to be on 6400 ISO???!!?! As grainy and as blurry/nonsharp as pictures can get with the low light and the high ISO, and the arrival of my repaired camera today from Fed-EX just makes this even harder to post. (cant wait for SOMEONE'S BIRTH to get some REAL low-light hospital baby-love!!!) Thought I would be able to use some of these for my someday-website until I used my messed-up camera, but the appreciation from momma and family makes it worth capturing the "behind the scenes" for her after all the trauma, especially...

thankful today for:
1) luke's Hugs and kisses and "I am the only one who loves you the most!"
2) Billy playing and wrestling with the littles before bedtime
3) somewhat lighter RED hair, more than the darker auburn that made me feel like an Adams Family member
4) cleaning day here
5) Bottle Cap candy from Billy

Video sent to the family - note below is what is on Vimeo to them yet is same font, etc here. So happy for them and the little man.

An unexpected arrival into so much love.... from Keri Bryant on Vimeo.
Lys and Ed - Well, I read that "the only bad pictures are the ones you don't take!" I didn't tell you that my camera was messed up - it is now sent in to get repaired - and most of the photos I took I knew would be really, really grainy, blurry and yucky due (this time! :) to my camera. BUT, that isn't why I was there, and I am happy I at least captured some of the AMAZING love, courage and support that filled the birthing center that whole night. EJ and your mom were BOTH pros, and the concern and excitement in the waiting room was almost tangible. It made my heart fill with joy for you and made me hope my own grandchildren someday can come into such a sweet blending of family.
This little guy might not have arrived the way you both dreamed, but he was just preparing you for a lifetime of surprises and sacrifice to be the amazing parents you will be. Congrats to you both!

Brilliance —

2012-01-23T23:14:00.001-05:00

is abound in the things I have seen lately....like taking old stuffed animals and making money from them. I mean ART...(much more important!) —— click HERE for one of the coolest rug I have ever seen. I think it needs to be in our new kitchen "great room" and that spaghetti sauce and mud from the ice rink would just add beloved character.

Speaking of STUFFED, I just wiped my nose in order to stop it from running into my mouth. With my hand. I am class, personified. And energy....though I have done Insanity for a week and a DAY (whoot whoot!!) I am too lazy to get up off the couch and get another kleenex. So my hand had to do. And the clean pajamas etc (you know...) at 8:00 at nite after being in workout clothes all day (minus the winter hat covering up my dirty dark/purplish-red hair) without a shower...that is just laziness, personified even better.

Monday news:
1) the BATCH is not only mediocre personality and looks, but the loudest kisser I have ever seen/heard. Yuck. GIve me some quiet and give me a dude that makes me laugh. (like my own man though he makes me equally as mad...:)
2) Luke's snowman today had blueberry eyes and smile. Melts my heart every day, that kid. Slushy, dirty snow with rain all day after 5 inches or so on Saturady. It was a lovely, relaxing Saturday of not really leaving the house too much and just being with the fam. (and not too much grumpiness on my part, though the house is in utter chaos)
3) I don't know where 3 weeks went. I was and AM gonna blog more. And do 329 other things better.
4) Chicken Noodle Soup makes dreary winter days more bearable.
5) I have 6 percent battery

Thankful for:
1) kleenex
2) good health
3) sore legs
4) watching Batch with Billy and making fun of girl drama
5) my bed

"Time" is literally falling out!!!

2012-01-07T01:08:00.001-05:00

for this Mama of one little guy. Who blessed us tonite with a little bit of blood, one less tooth and a big grin. All he was doing was saying hi to our dear friend Chip and Big Ole Chip's hand brushed his face the wrong way and that was it for said tooth. I walked in the room a few minutes later and was told it had happened - just like that, no big deal. Look what happens when you take off your coat and hang up your purse?? You lose your baby's childhood, piece by piece, and it's just about killing me. A weird mixture of sadness for how quickly it is happening and joy in his pure sweetness. There are no words for it. Though I have lots of excuses and lame reasons why I just couldnt get up the gumption to write much the past year, lots of it has to do with not being able to put into words the mix of emotions that are ever-present, right under the surface: How much I miss this little face each day when he is at school, but how relieved I feel other days to be able to do stuff I haven't had time for before or to be anxious to have peace from another face that isn't quite as sweet. To feel completely and totally blessed to have such amazing, healthy, fun, kind, smart, loving kids...and yet still get so angry at them for being totally fine living like pigs. To constantly forget the things that we need to get done around here, yet want to have a burning passion and talent (business, specifically!) separate from their failures and successes. To always be the last mom for this pick-up or that drop off; to miss Luke's story he shared at the 'holiday' party due to being EXACTLY FIVE MINUTES late, yet to constantly yearn for more babies to cuddle and adore. (Who grow up, might I remind you...) To be constantly pointing out to the Mister what we (or most often, HE) needs to do better, different, stricter in order to parent these gifts in a way where they are confident and kind and not entitled and mediocre. (Yet on any given Saturday I am the grumpy one, annoyed that there is so much to do around the house and no one to do it; secretly jealous that he is the one who plays the most often and enjoys them instead of worrying about how crappy the yard job was done or who complained the whole time doing it. ) To want to bottle up the sweet moments with each one of the FIVE of them, Daddi-o included, and to be reminded daily how quickly they fly away. Some days that makes me deeply sad, and other days it is a relief when I feel that the one who seems like she is so angry to be here won't be in just a few short years...

"Sunrise, Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset. Quickly Fly the years..One season following another; laden with happiness and tears."

- From Fiddler on the Roof

One. Day. At. A. Time.

ANd they go toooooo fast (MOST of the time!!!)

Tomorrow is the first Saturday of the month, and I am completely determined to make it a good one. Not one of yelling and making sure the list of damn chores gets checked off, or who lost Luke's other basketball sneaker. But one of spending some time just being together outside of games and birthday parties. I am determined this year to change the mood here on Saturdays, as there as ALOT of Saturdays that make up a year....Or very few, when there are just a few years left!! I am taking the big girls to MY happy place Anthro, where there are great sales on skirts and dresses that I can't begin to rock with my gut right now, and have them feel beautiful and modest in a few new things for church. And I am loving up on the toothless little man when he shows me the cash from Mr. Tooth Fairy (he just happens to be a Mister in THIS house!) and looking forward to hearing about how much fun Em has at the rockclimging bday party that is her first chance to surprise a good friend. And THAT is one of my fave things...

Lots to be thankful for today/tonite...

1) FRIDAY - fave day of the week.

2) 2 days this week of both watching kids skate, then joining them. For a few mins. til the usual pain starts in my arches.

3) 3 delish meals out in a 24 hour period with dear, dear friends. (Ok, ok the friends go first even before the Nicoise Salad or the Fig Ice Cream!) They enrich my heart, my life, and I dont know what I would do without knowing that they are there..even if 4 years - and a sponsored marriage!! :) - goes by between the catching up lunches. I am surrounded by amazingly wonderful, brilliant, talented, giving, funny, dear dear people and I want to be someone who gives as much to friends as they give to me.

4) Taking the time to reach out and treasure those relationships when it would be easier and make more sense to "get stuff done." Ah, the *$(* lists!!!

5) Kitchen cabinets STARTEDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

6) 2 more days til ANOTHER bestie comes to work in NY and Sunday will be with her....UNLESS

7) the almost-FULL MOOON puts my client Momma into labor. Today is her due date, and I am thrilled to drive an hour away (more thrilled if it isnt 3am!) to join her and boyfriend turning into parents. There is nothing quite like seeing 3 people become a family and if the fairy tale ends happily, they will marry and stay together and call me in 2 years for baby 2!

8) sleeping in in the morning

9) chance to win THIS below

10) BEAUTIFUL posts like THIS ONE about the ins and out of mothering...and how each day is full of the mixed emotions. ANd 11) friends who know me well enough to send it to me! xoxo J.!!!

Click HERE to go to Crave Photography and win a free 85mm lens. But I don't really want one of (all 3!) of you to win. Come on, like I am that selfless. I just increase my chance if I share it on here.

What are YOUR dreams?

2012-01-02T01:14:00.000-05:00

is the question a blog-bestie-turned-real-bestie asked in her beautiful writing this past week. Posed to her by her husband she adores, who was smart enough to know that in wording the question another way he could be IMPLYING that she needs to make big changes.

Tangent: (I am so good at these!) I was blessed enough to have my mom come help when all four of my sweet babies were born. She is a mover and a shaker, and between her and my dad, there were always plenty of lists made around the house, half-crossed out with immediate plans of when the rest would be checked off. Besides cooking delish meals, cleaning, loving and playing with a 2 or 4 year-old toddlers depending on which girl was born- or just listening to me be emotional post-birth...she also was spectacular at getting things crossed off that I didn't even know were on my list. (Partly because there wasn't a list; mostly because the afore-mentioned baby, 2 and 4 year old within 5 years) Putting up paintings or pictures that had leaned against walls for ummm...years (?!?) or painting a room or putting up shelves. Making a house feel more homey. Several days in a row she asked me the same question: "What is your goal for the day?" I think it took 3 days of that question posed (and answered with a blank stare) before breakfast after nursing a newborn every 2 hours all night had me break out in tears. Giant. Tears. And sniffles. Now I can laugh at it when a few times a year I get that question from my man, who is maybe just reminding me that he still can tolerate living with someone who is closer to a TYPE V (or L on a good day...) than a TYPE A. I no longer feel like I am in "survival mode" as I did with 3 sweet little girls with the intensity of their need and their ages - while also battling undiagnosed depression I have written of often here (back when I USED TO WRITE MORE THAN ONCE A MONTH!!!) BUT BUT BUT —— I am guilty of many a day when a goal is far from my mind. Or when the list of "things to get done" goes unregarded and unconsidered. Not a glance. Not a bra put on or a stitch of makeup and not due to a good work out first! But I digress...

SO, what are YOUR dreams? I ask the whoppin' 3 sweet bestie-friends out there who read this. Ok, maybe 4 counting ma belle Soeur Clark. Do they correlate to a "goal for the day" or for the year or are you thinking longer term then 2012? Are they regarding health, family, love, loss, change, fear, passion, work, or talent? Do they involve a bucket list or are they just the kind of dreams that involve putting your nose to the grindstone and "gettin er done?" Are they too scary to write because then you risk not seeing them come to fruition? (oh, these are sounding like those *$*@#$ GOALS again, huh?!!) And don't they call those things RESOLUTIONS today??

"We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.
Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential."
-- Ellen Goodman

LOVE THIS. Got it today on my daily quote emails. So perfect. It is way too easy to remember all that we dont do and all that we aren't rather than what we are.

This past week for Christmas, my mom suggested NOT that we have a goal :) but that Billy and I give the kids the gift on Christmas Eve with telling them about our 2 Christmases on our missions. Mine in France and Belgium, and Billy in So. Californnia, where he didn't spend it puking from the stomach bug the first one and having a crazy lady throw food at him on the 2nd one. In preparing to TRYING to tell them the spiritual side, not just the comical-only-now side of those 2 memories from long ago, I re-read parts of my mission journal. And was reminded of how goal-oriented I was then. I mad lots of list. Not just for New YEar's but for a new week. A new month. A new Ville. A new companion. You get the picture. Always the same discussions to memorize (never happened) the same pounds lost (eventually happened) and the same if-only-I-perfectly-obedient-we-will-teach/baptize/etc etc. (sometimes happened...but this was FRANCE!!!) I look back and smile at the "goals" and dreams I had for my mission, before I knew what it felt like to be called Mom. Before I knew what it felt like to dream about sitting in the same room with a daughter who laughs with you or tells you something she is feeling or thinking. Before I knew what it felt like to have some moments/days/ weeks wondering who the *$*% invented the whole marriage-thing and if they are up above looking down laughing. But then to have other moments in the same day or week where you feel so blessed that you don't know what you did to deserve it. Before I knew what it felt like to have a little guy who adores you so much that you think your heart will burst and wonder why with all the rich Pharmacuticual companies in our country one of them hasn't yet invented a pill that slows down the growing-up process. To tighten back the top-two baby-teeth and freeze the prayers that ask for his new Bearded Dragon lizard to be safe. And to have a side-affect be always wanting to spoon with mom and dad, or running full speed and jumping into my arms after getting off the bus. Every. Single .Day.

Who knew that the dreams would change? I guess I knew they would, but where do the goals end and the dreams begin? Who knew that the teenage girl with a 6 pack who looked around at Moms at a pool or the Rogue River and thought often "Why doesn't she just do some freakin' sit-ups with a stomach like that????" would be dreaming of the days when OP bikinis were actually flattering? Or the decades I spent with absolute surety that I would be the "cool mom" who has daughters who would be excited to go shopping or to a movie or to lunch together? Or the chick flicks that made all of us girlies SURE that we would someday marry a boy who loved us so much he would stand at our window with a boom-box playing "In your Eyes" at full volume, even though it might wake up the perfect babies and toddlers sleeping in the next room?

Oh, my, life is flying by. And it is a good one. Full of ups and downs; beauty and ashes; give and take. And I am determined to record it more.

To record the wins and the losses. The little things that "someday will be the big things." And I am determined to somehow get to a place where a super-messy house doesn't make me wanna yell at everyone around me when they complain about cleaning up and let it ruin the rest of the evening so that all the beauty that happened that day is too much trouble to write down and it's easier to just read someone else's blog or edit photos. It goes too fast, and is too amazing and wonderful.

So, yes, I have dreams. I have dreams for a lifetime, and dreams for 2012. I have dreams that are attainable with a magic wand of patience, increased love, gratitude, forgiveness, self-control, hard-work, organization, sacrifice, loyalty, and maybe most of all a little pixie-dust of Ritalin or Adderal thrown in for good measure.

Maybe they involve long, long, LOOOOONG TO-Do lists. Maybe - just MAYBE - I will be the one who doesn't let my doubts of God's love creep in and outweigh all the good feelings and blessings from living the very way that blesses us. Maybe I will be the one who puts my family and friends ahead of myself more often than not. Maybe it will involve prioritizing what matters over what doesn't. Maybe it involves not wishing away a few years left with a certain someone living in this home. And maybe it will involve getting her to India this summer, without me, but with my push and prayers. Maybe I am tired of seeing cute things at Anthro that would look good on someone I used to be before that final kid made my belly (ok, and arms....) look permanantly 5 months pregnant. Maybe, just MAYBE I will scrape up enough PRIDE from doing "INSANITY" (yes, that is what it is that I am starting it....) that I will actually get my paperwork done for my doula work...and finish something. Something I started, well.....way too long ago and have CHAMPIONED procrastinating. Maybe it will involve a sense of pride in having a website, a biz and beautiful cards. With my contact info and two hard-earned skills on it. And maybe, oh maybe, I will make delish, nutritious crock-pot meals (that is something besides soup!) on freezing cold days in a lovely new kitchen that only took 4 years to decide on and finish instead of 5 by 20123. Maybe it involves being first to check in with family across the country, becuase we never know what it gonna happen. Maybe new puppies, maybe not. Maybe it will involved putting photos in the frames on the wall in Luke's room that Emily just asked if I was ever going to do. One of them has a beautiful mom smiling with her 2 kids in it. And the brand name of the frame. I like looking at her and being reminded that is is just cool and exciting to have 400 hopes and dreams and balls in the air and be so busy...ummmm...distracted?? — that you can't print out a picture and put it in.

I bet she has hopes and dreams for herself and for those 2 kids. I bet she has a goal for today. But for now, she can just stay where she is, and be ready for me to rip her out.

Any. Day. Now.

2012, I own you.

Thankful for:
1) Joc having little cousin Christian on her hip tonite at my in-laws
2) the love my kids have for their cousins and vice versa
3) resisting chocolate frosting that is to die for and Aunt Jeanne's funeral potatoes. One. Day. At. A. Freakin. Time.
4) A growling stomach...i guess.
5) Luke's comment this morning when I got out of the shower and he was brushing his teeth "Your butt is all clean and Dad's is all mark-ey." Yep, pimple free back there, folks. That from behind-shot is gonna get me on the cover of Victoria Secret, if not Playboy.
6) posting without a photo. I can do it. OF.TEN.
7) christmas memories
8) sleeping in on sundays with 1:00 church
9) a surprise treat of waffle cone sundaes on our doorstep on arriving home
10) one more day in the morning to sleep in...then
11) kids back at school (gosh, brutal honesty.) WEst Coast moms with kids home 2 weeks in December: I salute you. I am prostrated in front of you, humbled at your greatness.

Peace out, 2011. It's been real.

MY heart on a beach....

2011-12-06T22:58:00.002-05:00

THankful for: 1) throwing away rotten pumpkins, wilted mums and a ragged cornstalk. Made the urns and windeowboxes into Christmas magic. Soaking wet in the rain, muddy and sweaty (as it is still almost 60 here!) but it is done and beautiful and quite the contrast to the inside of this house....part of the hardwood floor put in tonite and weeks away from the cabinets and rest of kithcn being gutted and finished. It only took 3 years. No biggie. 2) Luke's words that made me LOL tonite: I tell him a guy in a movie is crazy and "not all there in his head" so he asks me, "Does he not drink enough water?" Cause I always tell him he has gotta drink his liquid to be smart and its good for his brain. LOVE it. He would hardly drink a thing if I didnt enforce it like the police...so glad he is listening. Love that kid. 3) homeade butternut squash soup from bestie who loves me 4) 150 Christmas cards mailed. ANd a family I love and adore that filled it up. At least they (ok, everyone but my significant other!) is very photogenic so there is no way to tell in the pictures that a few of them here can get pretty grumpy. 5) Christmas cookie day here tomorrow after 1/2 day of school. Sprinkles, colored frosting and redhots. And friends. A house full of joy. Even if its also full of construction dust. 6) watching the Biggest Loser and thinking...yes, I CAN do a triatholon in June. What is my excuse not to? I have been thinking it for a few days and just cant come up with that many. (besides maybe that I am terrified of the swim part??) am I crzy??? 7) Domino's for dinner and a guy who will bring it home afer a hard day of work in a crappy market when the kitchen is too loud to cook..or even just for niceness. 8) a healthy body to even consdider being crazy enough to swim 1/2 mile, bike 12 miles, then run 3. Yep, I am crazy. Fat and crazy so maybe the perfect combo. 9) Christmas music 10) Carly's excitement over a baby blanket she made at YW that she is giving to little Buddy Christian for CHristmas. So sweet and so cute. ' '

L.O.V.E.

2011-11-21T22:34:00.001-05:00

spells love. Even if you can't "read" or see it. Even if you have a 110 pound 15 year old that wears baggy sweatshirts that make the "L" more like a "C" and a little sweet guy who tries so hard at everything but has too short of arms to keep up with his big sisters and cries when they hurt his feelings or his pride. Or a beautiful 13 year old that is easily annoyed and wants to be the "L" because she knows she will make more effort than the older sister and is tired of listening to me say "Can you JUST keep your arms straigh?!?" to her. And even if you can't read the "M" on the Em :) or see that she is the only one still smiling as she teeters back and forth on one leg; always happy, amazingly optimistic. All so different; all patient and forgiving at my annoyance at wanting the "perfect shot" taken quickly and painlessly. Framed on the wall to remind me that when we are yelling at each other, tired and grumpy or our Family Nites are dissruptive, spirit-less, perfunctionary, and feel like a total waste...there there really is still beauty all around....when there is LOVE at home. At least ONE of them posed perfectly. Not the one who was told what to do but the one who sometimes I thinks loves me the most! The one who waits at the bottom of the stairs for me to get ready, even if (on rare occasions) it involves a blow-dry AND actaully making my bed and putting away clean clothes. The one who comes in while I am on the computer now and puts her head in my lap, hiding the keys. The one who lays perfectly still while a one-year old yells and pulls on her ear. The one who woudl be the perfect mama to puppies but who can't get pregnant when the male STUD dog isn't so studly. Spent the weekend trying for this dream of mine to happen, and in a nutshell, it is a comedy of errors. A gorgeus 90 lb. Yellow Lab who can't figure out how to get it up and get in going on. After 3 days of hot dates (that weren't even lukewarm at times..) we finally involved a vet today. Because I am trying to be better about writing, I hope someday I will read this and laugh....REMEMBER WHEN I spent several hundred dollars on Bella to get her to have puppies??) And that is only becaues the owner of Oscar the UNSTUD - paid for half of it! (it was too late in Bella's cycle to go find another stud dog, etc) I am just amazed at how hard we tried and how much it takes for 2 dogs to get preg-o when there are unwanted mutts all over at every pound and every home from shelters. WEirD IRONY of life. SO the vet is probably laughing all the way to the bank tonite BUT I admit a mental lap in good judgement when I am a tad caught up in obsession and have someone else on board not trying to talk me OUT of it..but in fact willing to pay for half of it and who wants puppies too. LIke THAT makes it sane. And like Oscar's owners are going to be aroudn to be happy for us if we were lucky enough to have any and there were ten piles of pee and poop everywhere for a few months. BUT that is what I want. Ok, enough about how much I love my Bella and want more of them runnig around. I also wanna weigh in the 140's again; to finish the kitchen; (to be able to talk about that without a battle to the other person here in charge...) to make Christmas special and Christ-centered for my chidlren/the man; to help Joc and Carly bring up their grades and study more; to make photo books for my in-laws, sister, parents, brother and sis. in law for Christmas, and about 10 other things at the top of my list. And my kids and Billy should always be at the top. Man, oh man, I am alwasy working on (CHANGING!) that and making it a reality. And putting that 148 pounds higher too...yikes. Watching Taylor Swift sing on the TiVoed Music Awards and am excited that TOMORROW nite she will look even better LIVE. Taking my 2 big girls to see her in Madison Square Gardens, where I took Jocely about 8 years ago to see Dixie Chicks. We saw T Swift 2 years ago for their Christmas gift. They dont know and I adore surprises. Cant wait to see thier faces and love making memories with them that they can look back on. Wish i coudl just do that for them for Christmas and call it good! :) Weekend was filled with breeding attempts and 80's party which is always fun. Didnt have to look far or go to any costume storre when you are married to the guy who has a closet full of those clothtes. One of these years I am gonna have my 1988 body back - maybe that woudl be up the attic or in his closet, too - and then I might just pull off some crazy work-out outfit with legwarmers. Candance from Aerobics at "the Palace" in Provo, circa 1990 thru '92. Might have well been 1982 though. Love it. I am out of practice at this. Need to get in grove again. I miss knowing that I can look back on these entries and remember the days...

Grateful for: 1) not packing for Thanksgiving coming up - going 5 mins. away to Treva's and loooove watching the cousins togehter
2) enough money to not break us with doing somthing as FREAKIN CRAZY as getting my dog knocked up at a VET!
3) Luke's excitement about having HOT LUNCH Today. It's the little things...
4) Joc's excitment about her science teacher giving her a granola bar when she said she was hungry in class. she told me in the car and Daddi-O at dinner. It's cute when you think you know what makes a teenage girl happy and then you are continually surprised. Think I will start paying better attention and buying granola bars in bulk.
5) Warm, T-shirt of sweatshirt weather when Turkey day is a few days away. amazing fall warmth making up for the mediocre, dissapointing color! ' '
6) A NEW DOULA CLIENT for Jan. 4th. Which is so lovely to think I could be spending Christmas at a hospital an hour away for the measly fee I agreed on...I must have been feeling very...desperate. Vet insemination, missing newborn sounds and the miracle of new birth. HA! No, actually I am excited since it is her first baby and she was very nice on the phone and it's my first referral. Now maybe I will certify by the beg. of 2012. Gosh I have such severe ADD.

Oh yes...and a chance to win 10 grand worth of photography stuff. not that I am really using it anytime soon....but you never know. ONe chance is sharing on my blog for my thousands of readers...:):)

http://laurawinslowphotography.com/blog/2011/11/21/10000-holiday-bloggie-bash-laura-winslow-photography/

So much harder than it really looks...

2011-11-14T22:29:00.000-05:00

to capture families. I learned a few weeks ago that all those great shots I admire (and am waiting anxiously for of our family...) are just really challenging. Maybe if you have lots of experience. Or if this cute but grumpy dog didn't need to be in each shot. But basically I left my first "paid" family session totally discouraged knowing the shots weren't gonna be that great. And I was right. So, I am retiring any hope of being paid to get photos of families, but excited to go forward with birthing photography and start getting some clients! (if I can just stop doing 46 other things every day and late evening...) Tonite I am seeing if it really works to blog from Lightroom into Blogger. It it does, I might actaully get some more messages into here, since I love adding photos of the kids and our life. I keep telling myself I am going to record all our ups and downs more, and then nothing changes. So, even though I know they don't need photos in therm, I vow to record more often all that is going on... and it is alot! :)
Thankful for :
1) jamie 's constant willingness to give of her precious time and energy to teach others.
2) Her constantly opening up her home - throwing showers and parties of every kind, inviting so many people and making such an effort to connect. Makes me want to be a better friend and person, and be kinder and more giving.
3) thank you notes and school photos sent off to lots of people
4) heart still full from last nite's "Young Women in Excellencte" at churhc. I feel completley blessed and humble to be working with the youth - especially those sweet young ladies with whom my daughters are both friends and whom they admire. THey are courageous, valiant, bright, loving, fun, creative and giving. I adore them and am so grateful that my girls and Luke have a foundation of good values that they are being raised with that so many parents don't have without a church or something else like it in their lives.
5) 4 mile run this morning. Yep. Hard to believe. I actually like it when it is over. And when good songs come on and I am distracted.
6) Ben Rector on Pandora...best. Running. Station. Ever. loooove
7) hot soup and bread for dinner started in the morning
8) Family home evening story/llesson on not giving into the "just this once" temptation...led by a Daddi-o who adores his kids and has more patience in his arm than I have in my whole being.
9) one lesson down in my breastfeeding course
10) BELLA getting closer to Eustrus. (what is that? well, since I am blogging REGULARLY ...you will have to wait and see!! ) NOt that YOU is more than about 2 friends. But I am blogging for ME, baby. I loved being able to read what /who/where/why/with whom I was doing and feeling and seeing and regretting and loving and watching and eating and yelling at and remembering and hugging and kissing and listening to and wondering and accomplishing and failing at and..... we will see if I can stick to this. Have faith. :):) ' '

Ok, added after exporting outta LIghtroom. Appently, I have a few kinks to work out. The amazing thing is, I just will send this to my friend Jamie, and her brilliance and INSANE computer/Lightroom/HTML/ LIFE knowledge will have it fixed in no time. And did I tell you that she does this all with 5 kids at home ? no biggie....

"Once upon a Time, There was You"

2011-10-06T12:04:00.000-04:00

By Elizabeth Berg. Simple story, but powerful prose. Makes you ponder on marriage, divorce, and the sweetness of being a parent of a child you hold dear.

"....She thinks people who value creating a home and caring for children are vastly underrated. Vastly, vastly, vastly. Plus more vastly than that, and then some. What better thing than to have a skinned knee tended to by someone who feels the injury along with you? What deeper comfort after a bad dream than seeing a familiar silhouette at your doorjamb, feeling a familiar weight settling itself at your bedside? A table set properly, folded clothes, a stocked refrigerator. Who can say they do not appreciate it but also, in certain moments, grant it the elevated place it deserves?"

and

"...People are stupid. Why are they so stupid? There is an algorithm for the way humans are designed: love and be loved. Follow it and you're happy. Fight against it and you're not. It's so simple, it's hard to understand."

LOOOVED both of those!!!!

And many more that I didn't remember to write down and couldnt underline in the library copy. (the downfall of all the money I save by being a huge library girl..)

I finished this a few weeks ago and keep telling myself it will be the last pleasure book I read. I think I said that in July, though. I am sure I said that (heaven forbid writing it!!) in August. I said it in September and now I think I stuck to that and might - no I WILL - accomplish that goal. When I bother (oops I mean NAG!) my hardworking husband about remembering to do this or that around here that I have been asking him to do he sometimes asks me how my doula papers are going. Gulp. Ok, point taken.

I am on to my book on breeding doggies. Yes, that is the least I can do is read some books and the endless internet help after what I spent yesterday on sweet Bella at the vet. Making sure she has "good" or "excellent" hips, and eyes a few weeks ago. To pass on good genetics to her puppies. Maybe someone should have X-rayed by brain and heart to see if I was going to pass an official panel of Doctors' opinion on if I should be a mother to anyone over the age of about 10. (sweet Em, so that means I up the age to 11 next year.) ...that is how i feel lots of days. Gulp, again. Maybe that is part of why I am so excited to see little ones again in this house, even if they do have 4 legs. To have the sweetness of new life and the love that the miracle of birth brings to a family. Maybe the kids won;t be praying for 2 years in our family prayers, "We're thankful that the puppies came to live with our family" as they did for Luke Duke in his glory days as a chubster babe, but I am sure that they will bring some warm feelings and tenderness. And we could use some of that around here, as all families can.

November should be the magic time for getting her knocked up by handsome Oliver. A cheap date in the romantic setting of golden-breathtaking-fall of New England. Maybe they will even have the backdrop of a red barn. :)

Thankful for:
1) beautiful words
2) the chance to stay home and make it a safe house for the 4 souls I love
3) a 80 degree weekend coming up!
4) washed and folded laundry
5) mums and white pumpkins

Good advice...

2011-10-03T01:23:00.000-04:00

My very smart momma gave that to me about 18 years ago. I was living in Eastern France, on the border of beautiful Germany, and I was halfway through a mission that involved lots and lots of closed doors and people that didn't want anything to do with us. I was with someone another young woman 24/7 who was angry with me and I didn't know why. I would try every day to talk to her and get complete silence, and annoyance at my attempts. Yet as missionaries, we don't have a choice about getting a new roomie or going out for a long run to think things through and get a break from one another. We were together at all times...for 2 months.
I would forget about her code of silence that she had created (due to an accidental being left behind on her bike that I was totally unaware of that had occured on our first few day together) and get excited about news back home. My brother's track meet. A friend's wedding. New photos.
I would - in my forgetful humanness and need to talk! The horror!!!! - share something from a letter...then get a look of disgust and annoyance....shot down like having an AK-47 to the heart. I would get burned, and continue to reach out to touch the flames.
Because it's human nature to want to do what comes naturally: to interact, to be loved, to have assurance that you are heard; understood; acknowledged; appreciated.....seen.

So, instead, I cried. All the time. To myself. Into my pillow, or on my bike with the chilly winter European wind in my 1993 permed hair. I wished for it to take me away to any of the prior places I had been with people who loved me and spoke more than one word answers. I had enough pride where I only asked her a few times what I had done; but never got an answer. (Had to find that one out about a year later from another source. Real fair. ) And I continued to get burned. Almost every day.

I had enough pride I told a few people, but no one knew what to say. I prayed, I waited, I wrote only a few letters home in a matter of those 2 months, and I worried my poor mom who wasn't supposed to call me to see if I was alive and well or not. I was - quite simply - the most miserable I had ever been, and didn't know what had caused it.

So, I remember getting the above quote in the middle of these 2 months from my mom on a very 1980's computer printout banner, probably a dozen pages long. ( There might have even been the marks of the torn off perforated holds on the side....) I put it up on my wall. I am pretty sure my "companion" had no idea that it was in response to the agonizing desperation of my existence that I shared in my letters home. I am pretty sure I read the quote numerous times a day. It was a constant reminder to change things, but I don't think anything ever did.

I would like to say that I read it and began to return the silent treatment; to get smart. To fight fire with fire. To stand tall to meanness. To concentrate on the fact that this silence and cold heartedness wasn't going to go on forever, and that just because I didn't have someone's approval and support - or someone's interest and friendship - didn't mean that I it was from my being any less valuable or worthy of friendship than i had been the first 22 years of my life. And that in the big picture of life, it was just a small few months in time, and that I should have been able to not really give a damn.

I was just lonely. And human.

I am not lonely, here. Life is too full and busy and wonderful and blessed to dwell on what needs to be changed to make me wallow in the sadness that consumed 2 short months of my life when i was in my early twenties.

But, there needs to be changes. Big ones. The simplest ones are easy to share, and the same complaint I have been listing for years...the number just keeps changing. (hint hint: I used to say that I need to lose 10 pounds when I was in my 140's and now the 140's seems like a distant dream....and I am discovering that running 5 miles a few times a week doesnt matter AT ALL - )($*%)($*!!!!!! - unless you also severely restrict anything delish and normal....if you are above the age of 40. )

Others are harder. And more personal. And maybe I will record them since I am trying to make the change of being able to look back and write down our lives. Suffice it to say that it is time to stop procrastinating addressing the issues around here. That aren't changing. No matter how much I wish they would on their own. No matter how much I hope that a new Monday or cute shoes or a great photo or a good movie or an amazing book or an exhilirating run (!!!! whatEVER on that!!!!) or a funny text or Luke's hugs or a yummy treat or a powerful song or a new kitchen will fix them. Or change me.

I am not crazy. I am not depressed. I just will not accept the silent treatment and total denial anymore. I don't have any idea what to do about it, but it isnt acceptable. And I have been saying that for a few years....

And I will not keep doing what I have always done...thinking I am going to get different results. I am smarter than that.

Thankful for:
1) Gen. Conference words of wisdom - the few I heard and ones I can look forward to listening to soon.
2) football game and boat ride with the fam all day Saturday. Yucky weather but fun to be together. It was a memory made for the kids that involved something besides soccer and chores on Saturdays. We were together.
3) Iced peppermint tea
4) helping out a youth meeting and feeling the excitement and enthusiasm of teenagers with their whole world wrapped up in friendships..and romance...and feeling blessed to be able to help guide them to make good decision.
5) new plans...

Wordless Wednesday....

2011-09-28T18:44:00.001-04:00

Thankful for:
1) pouring down rain so that soccer (Emmy Lou) AND field hockey (Joce) was cancelled which is good for them...and good for the taxi driver. Mostly them, though, as these days I have all day long to get things done in quiet. Well, some days, of course. Felt good to see Em just relax in front of TV with her little fave brother and laugh at stupid show. And be a kid with no scheduel and...
2) NO SCHOOL tomorrow. Living on the east coast, far from family and friends, has its bennies at times. Very few times. Like with the upcoming fall display and NYC's broadway shows. And the rock walls everywhere. And Rosh Hashanah. And that is about it. Period.
3) Joc's text from school saying she got a "95" on her Spanish test. Might have been real excitement or might have been the gel for the 'yes" answer she wanted to got to friends today. And tonite. The only one not staying the night (we banned them last year) ...gotta be a rough life being the kid of fairly strict parents. (yes, I would know..) But its a tough tough world out there and we are stepping up the stictness around here. Someday she will thank us.
4) BELLAs eye test today. It was all clear, which means if she has good hips and elbows (according to a way overpriced X=ray from her vets that help to certify her for having good genetics) than she is all clear to get knocked up by a hottie who has a gorgeus big English Lab head and a sweet disposition. And he is actaully really well-trained, which is much more than I can say for Bella, dearl. His name is Oliver, and I think it will be true love. And a free date..can't wait.
5) no cooking as B. is on way home for dinner out since this weekend is booked up (nothing new there..) and we can't have dinner out as a fam either nite. Tonite is minus Joce but at least we are trying. Mexican or Pizza?

13 year old....

2011-09-26T00:33:00.001-04:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, sweet Carly!!!!!
Lots of trips this summer to the ice cream join in Alex Bay. Your favorite is Cotton Candy or Mint Ting-a=ling. You love it almost as much as your cousins, and you are the only person I know with a sweet tooth as big as ME. (Luke loves his candy too, but can't eat a whole "Crumbs" cupcake. You and I? Of course. And then maybe another. Guilty as charged!

You spent a week with this cute bestie at the island, and then another week with another. These are good friends from church, with the same values, and love of laughter. They lift you up, and you entertain them with your craziness, and your sense of adventure. And you are a good friend to them with your gift of asking lots of questions about how others are doing, your listening ear and your ability to make others feel so good about themselves. One of my greatest desire's for you is that you know what it feels like to have very good friends. I would wish for you a bestie that makes you feel like you are sisters...a soulmate. My childhood and high school years wouldnt have been the same without mine, who I miss everyday. But as long as you have girls like this in your life, it will be a good one with friendship that will fill your heart and ease the pain of growing up . (both mom's AND yours!:)

Caught between a little girl who loves to play with little ones...

And a girl who is growing up and hard to buy for and loves photos of friends, new shoes, mascara (!!!), Pro-Activ, Taylor Swift's old songs, and laughing. WHo loves to play with her younger cousins as much as her little sister and brother, and Bella. Who is diligent and persistent in school work, sports and keeping the tough standards of the church. Who is honest, kind, loving; grumpy in the mornings and sweet a minute later.

This weekend was extra special, as we celelbrated both Carly's big birthday with MY big one that passed in August, by running in a 5K that is sponsored by Women for Women Internation. One of my fave orginazations that supports victims of war-torn countries making them into survirors who can change the world. I have sponsored a woman (27 bucks a month that brings letters from your "sister" and the knowledge that you are REALLY making a difference...) for almost a decade. I have slacked off in my letter writing the past few years, and now regret the women I sponsor who get my money but not my heart. Like my vow to write more of the blessed life I have on here for future years, I will also keep in touch with the 2 new women that Carly and I chose. My girl's name is "Esperance" which means "HOPE" in French. These women could be the children I met in Belgium or France, as the Zairois were my favorite people. How I miss them daily.
I am grateful for the few people who contributed to this so that we could donate almost 1300 dollars. I was, quite frankly, shocked at how many dear friends or ffamily didnt' respond and didn't donate anything. I live in an area which makes people's jaws drop at the size of the homes and the exravagance of lifestyles, here. Wonderful, kind, non-assuming people live behind those doors and walk the streets of this quant town everyday. But not everyone - whether they are related to you or not - wants to be generous just because YOU (I) believe in a cause. Just because the thought of visitint these women someday for a real hug makes my heart race. Just because I have 300 friends on Facebook that I think might be interested in helping strangers in a foreign land doesnt mean they care enough to send money to somewhere to which they aren't connected. I have learned how much harder it is than I thought to convince someone to be connected to something that isn't their "fire." That they probably feel as I do when I ask a certain someone about energy stocks, or why the boat or car isn't working. Do I really care?? Well, I can pretend.

But, when you are a momma, you are blessed to be able to pass on what you think is your FIRE to your little ones. And maybe even their friends....

So proud to have been a part of these girls seeing how little it takes to make a big difference in the lives of women so far away, and not as blessed as we all are. Then, we left NYC's Roosevelt Island (Didn't even know it existed!) took a 5 minute beautiful Tram ride into mid-town Manhattan, and went to our favorite Times Square spot ....(ok, besides the theatres that house Wicked,
Les Miz, or Aida. )

The best Italian food ever: CARMINE's.....

Giant Size portions, rich/heavy food, entire roasted garlic cloves in the Fetticine with Clam Sauce, and the best salad in all of the city. LOVE this place, and love these girls! Love that I get to see them grow up together and come into their own!

Times Square in the eyes of 12 and 13 year olds??/ The crowds are fun, Forever 21's loud music isn't obnoxious, Toys R' Us 's ferris wheel is worth the wait, (Love this age!) and the view is perfect. They were in heaven.
And knowing I put a big smile on my 2nd daughter's birthday face?

Heaven for momma.

Thank you for coming into our world 13 years ago, Carly Jo. You made it a more wonderful place, and still do.

Grateful for:

1) memories of Carly making her "face" at 10 months old..already an entertainer

2) how Jocelyn would have to translate for her when she was 2. Spoke in perfect sentences but just way too hard to understand. 3) So glad we have hundreds of hours of video of that sweet, spazzy voice with that lisp...thanks to videoman, Billy.

4) a 13 year old on the couch today reading for pleasure(!!) and doing her homework for hours..even on her bday.

5) butterfly kisses at bedtime with her when she is feeling not-too-grownup. A tradition I won't let die and will embarrass her in front of college roommates and maybe one last time on her wedding day...

GOODBYE, dear summer.

2011-09-22T22:58:00.000-04:00

How I will miss you so......

Started this at the end of August, and now we are wrapping up the end of the 3rd week of school. Getting into the swing of it is a work of art for any mom. For some, it is a relief after a summer of being with their kids every day with no schedule and little people faced with boredom and begging. Needing to be entertained and driven; refereed and sent to the naughty chairs or have their cell phones taken away.

We did not have the perfect summer. The kids fought. (big surprise) There were tears (kids and mom, too) and there was driving. But most of it didnt involve a seatbelt, and was either at 5,000 feet above the earth to go see family out in Oregon, or with the wind in our hair on a boat. Driving kids in a tube, or getting to and from the kids' beloved cousins' homes for endless hours of swimming, skiing, wakeboarding, jumping off boathouse roofs, heating up in hottubs, jumping on trampolines, catching snakes or frogs, or picnicing. As always, it was hard to leave the River...and hard to get back to where the alarm is set for 5:45, 15 minutes after the big girlie has hers set for (gulp!) SEMINARY!

Oregon was nearly perfect. The only complaint would be that 5 days out of 365 is not long enough to be with dear loved ones I miss so much. I need to spend hours catching up on all that has passed over the summer, or just the fun and love that was there. I am grateful for a mom and dad who were generous to have their 3 kids and their familes stay at a place on the breathtaking coast, where the water is so cold it hurts your feet...but the giant rocks against the warmth of the sunset just takes your breath away. I have been to Switzerland and lived in France, and I still think it is at the top of my list.

I miss this place above for lots and lots of reasons, and not the least of which that there was no alarm clock.

So much to blog, now that I am VOWING to be better again and record my sweet babies growing up and all the joys (and sad times) that I was better at capturing in past years.

It is TIME....

Grateful tonite for:
1) great public schools in our town (even if it is depressing to be old enough (FORT-TEEE!) to have a sophomor!!!! which is evident at our 2nd open house tonite. Tough, caring teachers who are funny yet serious and demanding. And who love their subjects. Photography majors who teach Enlglish because they love to write and read. Physical Therapists who teach Biology because they can't get enough of it. Spanish teachers of 37 years. 37!! There need to be more that those kind of teachers and I can only hope they are in all schools, everywhere. (maybe the Republican presidential hopefuls need to come visit here when they form their answers to education "fixes")
2) all laundry cleaned and folded
3) beautiful book I finished up today during the kids gymnastics - (love Elizabeth Berg and her great writing) which reminded touches on the regrets of life and how much easier it is to try to fix things in the beginning instead of - years later - wishing you had worked harder to do so.
4) Air conditioning on Sep 22nd!!! (hangin on to summer!!!!!)
5) forgiveness and looking forward......
5)
2)

Maybe I am crazy...

2011-08-01T00:34:00.001-04:00

for looking into flights for Paris.

No, not the one in Texas, but the real one. The City of Lights. The one - 20 years ago - whose "gare" (train station) I spent 3 hours in waiting for the train I should have been on to take me from Belgium to my first city on my mission: Dunkerque, France...about 4 hours north of Paris and full of people I loved and served and taught and have never seen since .

Oh yes - La gare: I had taken the wrong train from Bruxelles, Belgium thanks to 2 young men who claimed that they knew what they were talking about and that it would land me where I needed to be. I had been in Bruxelles for exactly one day, and I was sleep-deprived but enthusiastic; nervous but confident; overwhelmed but awe-struck. I was going to share my religious beliefs with a culture who had decaes of Catholicism deeply embedded in their strongly convicted hearts; ones that aren't very open to new ideas or loud Americans who eat and drink while walking on the streets and who (GASP!!!) wear wool socks with Birkenstocks. The horrors!

But, you see, I didn't know then on that afternoon in the Paris gare what I had ahead of me. I didn't know that I would be stared at for my ugly footwear (I don't blame them at all!) or for my grating accent. I didn't know that the French are more "honest" than our culture and that I would get asked why I don't speak as well as other Americans I was with, nor that I would be told by people that I had put weight on. (FYI - patisseries and bread will do that to you. Quite quickly. Merci for letting me know how good it looke on my cheeks!) I didn't know in that Paris train station that I would knock on enough doors for a lifetime in just the first few months of being a missionary, and how very few people would let us it. I had sweaters, coats and winter boots; but I didn't know that the coastal winds blowing from England's Cliffs of Dover across the Atlantic - straight up my skirt - in December on a bike could feel a million times colder than any snowy day I had endured in my college days of Utah. I didn't know that 3 weeks after arriving there I would spend my first Christmas homesick beyond words and missing my family and the 21 years of traditions and memories we had together. I didn't know how hard it would be: to be up at 6 am every day. Every.Day. Even on our "days off." To think I was going to have such an advantage with 7 years of French, only to be misunderstood so often and have no idea what a person just said to me. To want so badly to be able to give people what I believed so strongly would bring them happiness, yet to have so few people interested in what I came there to do.

But I also didn't know sitting in that train station how much I would come to love the people of France. That I would fall in love with the way they puffed out their mouths when they didn't know the answer to a question the way that we American shrug our shoulders. How they shut down every business, school and bakery in order for children and parents to reunite everyday at noon for a 2 hour lunch together. The way they rarely let a stanger in, but when they did they served you mint-flavored "sirop" or juice from a box, rarely cold. But with love and kindness. That the members of the Dunkerque Branch would become as dear to me as family, and that almost 20 years later I still think of so many of them with a smile...wondering where they are and if they are still in that little building that smelled of Frere Derripon't B.O. as the French's shower (and laundry) schedule is just another difference between the US of A. I didn't know I could pray so hard for people I barely knew, or that someone I had just met could break my heart. I didn't know then that there could possilby be so MUCH to challenge my faith, and it never once wavered. Not once. Or that 20 years later I could be surrounded by more daily blessings than challenges and have my faith waiver on a daily basis.

I only knew then that I was in Paris. The city I had dreamed of as a teengager - each nite looking at the poster of The Eiffel Tower hanging in my blue bedroom, with only Madame Clark encouraging my desire to be a foreign exchange student there. The city where I wasn't allowed to go as a teen, since I "had enough problems following the rules a HOME!" The Paris I had seen in movies, read about and planned on visiting someday with the boy of my dreams.

That day I was in Paris...not with my dream boy but with 2 19 year old boys who were confused missionaries wondering how they had gotten us there. And since obedience is of the utmost importance in missionary life, we stuck to the rules of missinaries, which was to stay in your mission. Which didn't include Paris. So, at 21 years old, I sat in a Paris train station and never ventured up the stairs. Never saw the lights twinkle on the Seine River or climbed the Eiffel Tower. Never sat at a cafe and listened to the most beautiful language in the world spoken only like true Parisians do.

I think it is time.

Who the heck looks into going to the world's most romantic city...ALONE??

Thankful for:
1) beautiful talks at church today by my sister and brother in laws on being modern-day Pioneers
2) Jocelyn sharing little tid-bits about EFY..even if it's that the food was good
3) home-aid gauffres for the fam. I did not parkake but they smelled delish.
4) one day of no sugar without too much pain. (weighed myself at...Oh, i can't even write it. But more than I have weighed since last year at my very heaviest. Since I was with child. Geez Freakin Lousise)
5) WILL POWER
6) spontaneity..am I really gonna do this??? looking at tickets. Just waiting to hear if the main childcare provider - AKA "DAD" of the 4 chillin' - will be able to take his last week of vacay to hang here with them. Who wants grumpy Mom around anyway....Surely Paris is a WIN-WIN for everyone...

Too fast...

2011-07-26T23:23:00.001-04:00

Five babies - if you count the one with 4 legs who adores me the most and spends each day making sure I know it. All of them have spent almost every summer day here on this beautiful island on the St. Lawrence River, making memories with each other and their many, many cousins. The litte things and the big things; together. The firsts: one- ski; double-skiing; passing swim-tests so they can go life-jacket-free; 180's on wake-boards; sleepovers; 20 inch pikes on fishing trips or off the ends of islands; being old enough to drive a boat all alone and go where they wish; bikinis; breast buds (who THOUGHT of that word?!?!); under-arm hairs; shaving; tampons; and much less embarrassing, monumental little moments every day.

Last night's trip to get pizza with most of us here (4 families - 2 here but missing) wasn't monumental or life-changing. It was just my sweet in-laws wanting to spend time with their children and grandchildren and make more memories with them. It was a trip in Grandpa's "Big Boy," where the water behind the stern of the boat looks like a tropical ocean as the blue lights lend a beautiful glow. It's time spent eating together with the boys at one (very loud!) table and the girls at another; as they are at the age where heaven FORBID they actaully choose to sit nexto to one another if they are all together. Then the adults and babies at a bigger table, trying to ignore the stares of a few couples or "normal size" families at other tables; getting up to referee the fights over forks or who sits where. Then more choices - nothing life-changing: Coconut Mango or Birthday Bash or Cotton Candy. One scoop or two. Cone or dish.

Then wondering how much of the kids' good choices in life (yes, the monumental ones...) will be because of their grandparent's righteous example of goodness. Of stopping the Big Boy before we are home to share with them their testimony of beliefs; truths; convictions. To make sure that their numerous, amazing posterity know from where and from Whom their happiness comes. That the fastboats and the houses are nothing without the Bigger Picture. That the children (young and old) will be forever blessed if they learn to rely on more than just themselves, on each other and and on their parents - and how they can know Who that person is. That they would give up anything and everything if it meant their children and grandchildren could be happy and forever together.

It is humbling to wonder how much of my time spent mothering them is spent teaching them anything beyond how to clean a bathroom properly and the importance of becoming avid readers. If these four babies will look back and remember anything beyond that. If they will remember the fun times with not just their many, many cousins and their Dad, but with me. If they will resent me for the strictness, the rules, the quick-to-evaporate- patience, the high expectations, and the lack of eternal perspective. The day-to-day fogetting that they - each of them - will be gone so fast. Too fast. That the life-jackets on the kitchen floor I yell about so often will not be there again.

Ever.

I turn 40 - FOUR! Tee!!! FOUR DECADES - in a little over a month. I have been saying it often for a year, and I still can't get used to the idea. I never thought I would say that. I never thought I would type that. I feel like I am still a teenager, living in someone else's dream most days; watching some other woman raise my kids - usually wanting to correct and change what she does but unable to do so any more than I can stop the angry yelling that comes out when no one but me cares about the life-jackets. I feel too young. It is not about the number; or the wrinkles; or the extra pounds around the middle that used to be a 6 pack pre-birth. Rather, it is a reminder of how quickly life goes by. And that there is nothing anyone can do to slow it down. To slow down these quickly changing babies of mine; turning into little people before my eyes. The number 40 is just a such a reality check - (because it really is SO FREAKIN OLD!!!) and the reality is that it feels like only a few VERY QUICK years ago that I was turning 30. And that the two weeks leading up to it were 2 of the most tear-filled weeks of my life. Maybe I fear that I am going to repeat that, only with this time more mistakes and regrets and things left to do that I felt 10 years ago. (please, oh please, Lord, bless the Lexapro to work extra well so that won't happen!!!)

Ten years ago, we were here on this same island and had watched the same breathtaking sunsets and had river baths and family time for two montsh. By mid-August, I was 2 weeks away from saying good-bye to my first baby as she went off to KINDERGARTEN. Yes, she had gone to pre-school and yes, she was ready and excited. Apparently, I wasn't. It didn't matter that I had a precocious almost-3 year old (constantly in trouble!) and a nursing new baby. It didn't matter that I knew the days would be easier with just those 2 at home and that they would both get more of my attention; more of me. It was just a step; a good-bye; a finality. A closed door to the "coulda's," and "shoulda's." 10 years ago I had a five-year old who still napped, and I would try to time it here in this island home so the 3 girls would do so at the same time. I would sit down and start to read to them all and look down at Jocelyn, and TRY not to think of this as "another last nap before school starts" and the tears would come uncontrollably. (And traumatize the girls again. And again. This lasted for the last 2 weeks of the summer up here. It was like a snotty-nosed countdown to doom. It wasn't something I could explain, control, write about or wish away. It was just...a sadness at the ending. Or the new beginning. The half-empty - and half-full - glass. It was Motherhood.... challenging, unexplainable, heart-wrenching, joyous, emotional and...momumental. Where little and big run together.

On my 30th birthday - August 28th, 2001, I put Jocelyn on the bus with the other brand-new 1st day kindergarteners and had almost all of the tears out of my system. I took pictures with just a lump in my throat with Carly looking up to her big sis and a sweet neighbor girl holding baby Em. I was filled with mostly joy and gratitude for the little girl she had become and the cute personality that her preschool teachers and friends had found so pleasant to be around the past year. I was filled with hope, love, admiration, confidence, excitement, and just a little bit of sadness.  As I said, it was out of my system. I watched the bus drive away knowing she was going to be just fine.  ( And some days now, she actually is!)

I know that I will have many of those same feelings a few weeks before my 40th, as I will face almost the exact same thing. 3 days after turning 40 I get to put my last baby - and our only little man - on the bus, and move on to a different chapter in life.  Hugely different.    MonuMENTALLY different. Joing the club where you wonder "what does she DO with herself all day with ALL her kids in school?!?!?"

Life-changing? Absolutely.   In a good day?   Somewhat.....but again, it's the glass (mostly) half-empty because it truly came too quickly. I would much rather be nursing a chubby-legged baby or even taking a 2 year old to pre-school (and the only mom there with a hi-schooler like the past 2 years at 2 different Preschools)  To have reached the stage in life that means no more babies and no more little people to add to our family means such a finality.  A closed door. An ending.

I look at my friends and family with even more kids than four and deeply envy the blessings and beauty of it. Both in the present day to day sweetness of it - and the years from now when there are more to love and to know.  But the busy-ness and the keeping up with the daily requirements of mothering and being organized (on time and in the right place) and CHEERFUL through it all with my own four hasn't exactly been my gift. The one that I envisioned when I was in hi-school and none of my friends talked about being a mom someday so I secretly wished for a family of 6 teenagers someday like my best friend's where I spent so much time.   One filled with fighting; borrowed favorite-jeans; tardiness; un-done homework; forgotten volleyball games; a shared, dented station wagon; missing earrings; used prom dresses; never enough food and alot of laughter. And frienship. And love.   And chaos?    Absolutely.

But I remind myself,  as my brilliant and long-suffering :) hubbie will say, "you never know what you are missing if it isnt there" common-sense that it is the end of a very special - and hard - chapter in my grown-up years. And to dwell on all the goodness. The times the kids were taught more than how to clean a kitchen floor right. The things I did right and the things I did well. And the love and laughter that is here with the six of us. And that there is always time to change the negative and make new habits. New memoires; new traditions. New noise and chaos.

This September, there will be plenty of time to edit photos and start a website for my doula and birth- photography work, but no time for weekday park lunches with just Luke in the middle of beautiful fall days.   There will be long, strenuous work-outs (maybe even Pilates or Yoga?) without even checking the clock, but no more sore legs from running the near-by trails while he bike-rides and catches frogs....all the while screaming at Bella not to scare them away.   No more walking Em up the hill to the bus to come home to snuggle with him in my bed after a night of him crawling in with us. No more leisurely breakfasts watching him crack the eggs and looking at the clock knowing that - yet-again! - we will be the last ones to arrive late to his school. (Just like the year before and the year before that.   THREE years of preschool for the little man with the June birthday, so that he might be successful and older in the challenging school district where our kids go.   And the time is almost here!!)  .

There will be time.   When there is no dimpled 6 month-old to cuddle and coo at, then there will be time for India with teenage daughters; seeing and serving and falling in love with some of the amazing world that is beyond our own. Time for more trips away with the guy I fell in love with back when we both had that six-packs.

I guess if I had one wish for my upcoming 40th, it would be that I could slow it down.  And even relieve some (lots!!!) of the days that seemed so hard, then.   But joyful, too...The ones where the most challenging part of the day was a diaper oozing out poop; healing hurt feelings after a fight between two toddlers or making them share the doll that two sisters wanted. All the little moments when I could (and often did) influence the 4 of them  for better. The way I see their cousins, their good freinds, my in-laws, my parents, my sister-in-laws and their loving dad doing now.   To know that something out of my mouth wouldn't sound like lecturing to a teen-age daughter who only hears that.  To have back some of the tenderness, the closeness, the tears of sadness before naps for two weeks staight.

So I could relive so many of the days I can no longer recall.

The ones I took for granted.

It truly goes too fast.

Parting Song

First
it is one day without you.

Then two.

And soon,
our point: moot.

And our solution, diluted.
And our class action (if ever was)
is no longer suited.

Wherewith I give to looting through
the war chest of our past
like a wily Anne Bonny
who snatches at plunder or graft.

But the wreck of that ransack,
that strongbox, our splintering coffer,
the claptrap bastard
of the best we had to offer,
is sog-soaked and clammy,
empty but for sand.

Like the knuckle-white cup
of my urgent, ghastly hands
in which nothing but
the ghost of love is held.

Damn it to hell.

- poem from a "Mothering" Forum member

Grateful tonite for:
1) sweet memories
2) forgiveness
3) Lexapro - specifically after 3 years of it fixing my monthly tears and crazy-hormone ups and downs, it allows me to not dread the 2 weeks leading up to Luke Duke's 1st day of kindergarten. Too much :)
4) wake-boarding the 3 kids and double skiing of their cousins with them. So freakin cute.
5) last nite's sleepover with Luke's big boy cousins he adores. They make up for his lack of a brother, and it melts my heart listening him ask a 9 and 12 year old to come over and play.
6) almost-15 year old- Jocelyn being at Especially for Youth , which I attended when I was her age a few times then as a couselor. Feeling the spirit daily .....mixed with cute Mormon boys galore? Seriously, what is not to love? She was forced to go by Big Bad Mean Mom Yours Truly but I am smiling thinking of all the fun she is having, even if I only get to hear "it was ok." Sigh....
7) Billy's old laptop here working that has decent internet speed. I vow to write more...Ok, an update is that it WAS decent speed a few hours ago and now as I come back to it not only can I not get on almost anything tonite..but I dont have any idea why I can only see my posts on my blog page and I am missing everything else. Dang it all.
8) new chapters
9) hottubs in cooler weather
10) Carly tonite asking me tonite if I got some of the dinner I made and gave to them in the TV room. So caring and concerned since she was little. (and intense and passionate!..whose girl IS that??? :):)

The heart of Life is good....

2011-07-22T19:05:00.000-04:00

When you have friends you made when you were 5 or 7 or 12 (at the oldest) and you are still friends when you are all turning FORTY.... 3 decades later.

When you run 3 miles but that seems like just a few minutes because you have so much to talk about that you are done and wanting to go further!!) before you know it.

When you get to see one of them at least a few times a year and your kids call her "Auntie" and she is like another sister.

When the love and caring is still there - just as strong - or STRONGER - after 3 decades of friendship.

When the condo you stay in has the initials "GP" and that is exactly what we are: Lady Cavers from Grants Pass. All our memories were made in GP and they continued this weekend in Chicago.

When these friends support your values and encourage you to live them even though they differ from theirs.

When you still have just as much fun together as you did when you were trying to dance like Madonna in "Lucky Star."

When your laughter together beats the sound of any ACDC song you can still sing the words to. Perfectly.

WHen you can toast each other's 40th birthdays and know (hope...pray!) that there will be at least 40 more as friends in each others' lives.

When you spend $1600 on a fancy French dinner for 8 ....

But the food isn't near as memorable and special as the happy tears (ok, the UGLY CRY!) shared between friends giving their best memories and good, REAL advice to one another.

To us, dear friends.
"Pain throws your heart to the ground
Love turns the whole thing around
No it won't all go the way it should
But I know the heart of life is good

The circle of your friends
Will defend the silver lining."

John Mayer's "Heart of Life" video which I just shared with another dear friend who turns 30-something today. Happy, happy birthday to all of us: Friends far and near. Life is short - and full of challenges and heartache - but the heart of it is good.

No, in fact, it is more than good.

It is....divine.

"My friends are my estate."
-Emily Dickonson

Grateful today for:

1) Internet on "shore" (have to go everywhere in boats) fast enough to blog. I swore I was going to do it TONS this summer til I got up here and found out that my laptop doesn't do too well with just iphone WiFi as a "Hotspot."

2) The beauty of island sunsets

3) cooler weather today

4) seeing Luke do a 180 this week on his wakeboard

5) skinnydipping :):)

6) FRIENDS!!!!!

...."When I love.."

2011-06-07T22:58:00.001-04:00

"...I give it all I've got...like my mother does." (even if it means getting your heart ripped out sometimes by certain teenage children. )

Grateful for:
1) spring day with top down and the above song on replay. Again and again. And the hope that maybe someday my own children will be thinking of me with songs like this, and grateful for the strenght, love and good example that my mom gave to me.
2) lunch at park with bestie = free therapy for one and all
3) beautifying another bestie's windowboxes with Fiber Optic plants, Tobacco Flower, heliotrope, ivy geraniums, lantana, licorice plant, angelonia, wave petunias, nemisia and much more.
4) the scary fact that I know the names of all those without batting an eye. Makes up for the unbelievable decline in brain power that happens on an increasing basis. Daily, it seems.
5) Tuesday nite's "family of 4" for an hour and a half while big girls are at YW. Tonite was Parcheesi and Luke and Em's smiles during it are priceless.

A charmed life...

2011-06-06T10:55:00.001-04:00

"...there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them."
— Katrina Kenison (The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother's Memoir)

There is just no such thing. Lately, more than ever, I have learned that the old cliche is true: Money can't buy happiness. And that the lives all around us that appear to be "charmed" are not. That no matter what, the grass is rarely greener on the other side. And that the heartache that goes on in our preppy little town is as challenging and real as that heartache 10 minutes from here where gang violence and crack is readily available on the corners. It's just invisible. Which can sometimes be even harder.

Grateful today:

1) That I have Luke Duke home this morning. He finished Pre-K the week before last, and I am deternined to write about it. I am determined to be better. To record the little moments, and the ups and down of daily/weekly life. To get something recorded for the future before I edit some more photos or do anything else around here. This school year has flown by and there are no words for how sad that makes me feel. Not because the kids are here full time all summer :) but because there childhood just slips away with each passing year. I am losing Emmy Lou to middle school. Her 4th grade celebration is next week. She will sing her school song for the last time ever and it just might brake my heart in 2!! SHe is such a joy to have in our home, and we pray hard that growing up and hitting teenage-girl challenges will never warp her innocence and loud, boisterous, confindent, happy personality! She turned 10 a few weeks ago and is turning into an almost-young lady!
2) For a fun weekend with good memories: Time with kids, watching them light up the soccer fields, trying to coach a bunch of not-so-athletic girls on Em's team and being grateful that she is fairly coordinated and confident. Dinner out with my man who actually wants to go out on a romantic date with me after 16 years of marriage and is even willing to see a total chick-flick even though I can't sit through most of his movies. Kitchen shopping which ended up at Home Depot with a new washer and dryer. (hoping our next date ends at a camera store...) Sunday brought an extra-special church testimony meeting, delish dinner at besties' where Billy got his fave ribs and lemon/lime cake, and then Seminary Graduation. The busiest time of year besides Christmas.
3) good health - this past 2 weeks my cousin hasn't left my heart and my head for very long. His wife that is B's age just died of Pancreatic Cancer. She was way, way too young. Had a sore back that wouldn't go away and was gone within just a little over a month. Not enough time to even talk about letting go, as they were just starting all the chemo, etc. They decided early on to never have children, and now I am wondering if that was a good thing, or a heartbreaking thing to leave this earth with no legacy. No one left behind that looks and acts just like you. Another friend's mom is dying of ovarion cancer, and has a teenage child at home, but grandkids, too. Too too young. And too many loved ones to leave behind. What is worse - a legacy or less souls to be sad in missing you?
4) A yard full of flowers and the time this week to fill a bestie's windowboxes with beauty. I might doubt how I can mother teenage daughters, but I know my flowers!
5) 2 weeks til OREGON and seeing childhood bestie and family. And being able to hug my cousin and tell him how sorry I am..in person.

One Moment More

2011-05-03T00:50:00.004-04:00

This past week, there has been a daily reminder of how very blessed I am. How short and sweet life is. How it seems and amazing for some, and just full of heart-wrenching trials for others. And how sometimes that can be so very opposite of what it appears.

A week ago I sat and listened to a bestie's strength, in seeing her dear sister hold her new baby for the first time with a scarf on her bare head and a sick stomach. Fighting breast cancer at only 52 years old. Facing mortality with a family who adored her and daughters who needed her there to be a grandma. Fifty-two years old. The exact same age my mom was when she watched my first baby come into the world. Almost 15 years ago. Fifty-two. Cancer-free and "fair."

The night before that, I had sat at a Carly's first softball game, surrounded by a few dozen other young to middle-aged parents watching their daughters - full of dreams and wishes for future athletes - future princesses. There was a younger sister of one of these athletes there who had no hair, and was toddling around on her unbalanced feet. Only she wasn't 13 months old. She was about Emily's age. Maybe 9 or 10. Her head was bald but for a few wispy hairs around her beautiful face with a constant smile. She had a scar on one side of her head in a faint "C" that screamed "courage" to all who tried not to stare. Sweet Emily watched this girl pet Bella and talk to her family. Em asked me what had happened to her. It's amazing how hard it is to say certain words to a daughter of the same age when I look at her and think..."why not her?" I couldn't answer. I sent her to the one who doesn't break down crying at a softball game with the parents nearby. The parents who probably wonder often why life isn't fair.

The week went on, and daily there seemed to be someone affected by the unfairness. Someone too young, too beautiful, too happy. Too kind and good to be knowing what it feels like to be facing less than a year left with their 3 year old granddaughter who has a brain tumor. And too filled with faith than I could ever imagine.....Not angry. Not bitter. Just filled with gratitude. Grace. Peace. Love.

Spring break just ended a week ago, and I was reminded once again how much my husband gets it: how much he loves to be with the kids and live in the moment. To play with them, to laugh with them, to give them moments to be kids. To windsurf with them, swim with them, find shells with them and make memories. To put any time for himself aside til he is all-gray and the pitter-patter of little-feet have turned into stinky sneakers that have gone off to college. He gets it. And I am forever, forever getting there.....

A sweet reminder happened (AGAIN) this morning of this sweetness. In the past few months, I found one of my very favorite photograhers. Her un-posed, joyful photos just take my breath away. I emailed her to sing her praises, and in seeing her recent blog, I shared a song with her that I discovered this morning. (thank you, Pandora...you are a gift. ) I can finally listen to the song without tears, but could only get thru this video one time. My eyes are too red!

Wishing that my life can be full of endless "Phin Moments" and a memory that holds tight days like today: A blond little boy, almost 6 years old, with a first-lose tooth he wiggles daily now; bursting with pride. The sound of two size 1 feet sprinting to the car after preschool, so he could keep his new-found treasure. Him checking on (read - letting go of!) the prize to make sure it was breathing. The challenge of driving down the street while a frog jumps up into the seat next to me and this little hunter scrambles around to find it. Arriving home with the mental list of what I hadn't got done today, and could do quickly if he played outside with the neighbor boy. But hearing these words: "Whaddya wanna name him, Mom?" Hearing, "You wanna hold it, Mom?" Saying "Of course!" and knowing that it isn't always wrong to lie.

The slimy feel of "Blackie's" skin. The joy on the little boy's face when we find just the right container in the shed. The puffed out chest when our sweet mailman obeyed his command to come see his new friend. That he captured. And brought home. By himself.

And with Mom....

http://www.jchaney.com/blog/phin-halligan-a-slideshow-of-a-childs-brave-and-heartbreaking-cancer-journey/

"but the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three on them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."
— Anna Quindlen

Insomnia....

2011-04-16T04:31:00.000-04:00

When you know you have to get up in a few hours. Well, actually a few minutes, now, as I have been ordering bday presents and keeping busy even though it is the middle of the nite. Earlier, I was brought back to the times when the above face made us laugh and grin as much as she does now. Sweet, sweet Emily who is leaving her elementary school and these will be part of her 4th grade celebration slide show. The one where i need a package of Kleenex to watch and wonder why I both wearing any make-up that day...

It was just one more thing I didn't get done and had to do before leaving, but unlike KINDERGARTEN REGISTRATION for LUKE (no biggie, he can go when he is SEVEN!!!!) which was due 2 weeks ago, I had to have this in by this coming week. ANd the photos were on the other computer.....the OLD computer cause emmy is almost in middle school now, which happens here too early. SOOO..when you are leaving for a desereted island (or at least a Carribean island) and you don't wanna take your laptop...you get important things done like sending off necessary pix the nite before you leave at 4am. In a few minutes, actually.

Said laptop is staying home. I will decide as we walk out the door if my large, bulky nice camera is coming or staying. Depends on my mood. I need a vacation from said laptop, camera, Photoshop, and Lightroom 3. When you spend too many hours with certain things or people, you both need some air before you want to kill each other. Kind of like marriage, teenagers, moms and mother in laws, and friends who stay too long.

The white sand is calling our name. We need it as a family. The day to day joy is there, but hard to remember to embrace in the craziness of life.

I am looking forward to giggles in the sand, to no Iphone checking, to no texting, to new homework inquiries, no bedtimes, to Jodi Picoult's newest creation, to "Little Bee," (another amazing book on my list) to no thoughts of what I am not doing right or what I am doing wrong. To hot sun; to burned skin; to neon colors and tropical flowers. To 2 little bodies in swimsuits trying to stay little, and to 2 young ladies verging into womenhood; uncomfortable in tankinins and shorts. To their smiles and laughter together and no fighting over clothes.

To time with Billy while they are at Kids Club and Adventureland or whatever it is called.

To memories.

Time to get dressed. So glad I got in pajamas..to not sleep a wink.

Grateful for:

AIRPLANES!!!!!!!!!

ADIOS!!!!!!

Baby hungry...

2011-03-27T23:21:00.000-04:00

Who wouldnt be after holding besties's bebe at church and tonite during Sunday dinner, with that gut-laugh and fat rolls of deliciousness. And the heavy weight of him falling asleep in my arms.

Or THESE eyelashes of my friend's son? Loved taking his photos this week and capturing his best feature. He is one of the happiest kids I know. I looooove this age. (I gotta stop cutting kids heads off so much. I love to crop in close but once it is snapped, you can't get it back so I need to give these more space and get their head in a little more)

But in reality THIS is the only kind of baby I want or think (scratch that - KNOW) I can handle : My sweet 4 legged-baby girl Bella is turning 2 years old next month, old enough to get her eye/hip tests done to see if she has the perfect genes to pass on to puppies. If she is sound, she is clear to become a Mama. Which would make me a Grandma. At 39. But....the timing doesn't work. (kind of like in real life when it's not about puppies and you find out you are pregnant with your first baby at 25 years old when you are interviewing for teaching jobs and think you are gonna have a career first before becoming a mom. :) Due to church responsibliites (for which I am grateful!) I get to do some serious camping in May and June with the youth instead of being home with a litter of puppies that would be here. So...I will continue to hold babies and stalk preg-o ladies for new clients and love up on chubby thighs all I can. And give away bags of baby clothes from the attic. One. At. A. Time. With each bag goes a pc. of my heart. Sigh...

Grateful for:
1) daily reality check
2) family planning methods :)
3) Billy playing "God Bless Amercia" on his guitar next to me and singing like he is Gene Simmons.
4) the love and dedication of women and moms around me for our "Modesty Fashion Show" this weekend. 12 hour days yesterday but grateful for the values that my daughters are being raised with in a world that screams at them to be sexy and hot.
5) sleeping thru the nite...(makes giving more bags away so much easier)

Wednesday thoughts...

2011-03-23T23:38:00.002-04:00

March 21 means...

2011-03-22T00:45:00.001-04:00

pansies, tulips and daffodils in planter boxes and my urns. It means happiness in a small space, and a reminder of warmth and green right around the corner.  It means dirt under my fingernails and having Carly and Em ask, "Can I plant some too, Mom?" And - with faked enthusiasm - letting them put them where they want them to be, as my perfectionism only kicks in with planting flowers.

Like most little elementary-age girls, I got in trouble often. Who didn't? Sometimes it was for fighting with my brother, and sometimes the wooden spoon got broken over my butt for not obeying my dad. But there was one thing I did very, very young that was difficult for my mom to stay mad at: I brought her home flowers. From other peoples' gardens. Along the way home from school, from friends' houses, from my piano teacher's house, from the park. It didn't matter that I was told not to over and over...why in the world would that stop me?

At a very early age, I fell in love with spring, and what it brought. March would bring tiny purple crocuses as a sign that brighter days were ahead. April meant the cheeriness of the daffodils and the variations in tone of so many different yellows. May meant the regal stalks of tulips and how there was always one in a boquet who wouldn't fall outwards the same way as all the others. And the overwhelming fragrance of the lilacs and how it filled the rooms of my college spring semesters, stolen off the campus with BYU landscaping-crew hot on my heels. (couldnt have known that smell as a child, for it was too strong for my mom to have in the house) And finally, June meant the more subtle fragrance of my two favorites: Roses and Peonies. In all their crowning glory.

Today, I don't forage through anyone else's gardens. (Ok, ok, truth be told, I have been known to pick a boquet of Dogwood blooms in the dark of night off someone's tree. ) When we moved here 6 years ago, I left behind a 100 foot long curved-bed perennial garden that I poured my heart into as I did so to 3 little girls under the age of 8 years old. Some moments them climbing in my lap with their favorite books (for the 20th time in a day) brought me the most joy in the warm May days, and other days the climbing clematis would make my heart leap more. I miss those perennials that I planted one by one, but not nearly as much as I miss the days of cuddling with now-teenagers no longer wanting stories, hugs or much of anything.

I often wonder what my gardens here would look like if it wasn't for the fact that we get to spend summers on an island. There are some flowers there. Pots full of annuals that are full of color. But instead of spending hours tending the flower gardens I can only dream about, I get to tend to the not-so-little people as they swim endlessly with their cousins, waterski and wakeboard, catch frogs, and make memories to last for generations to come.

It's a decent trade. Even if I do look at other people's yards the way most men look at porn.

Let the season begin.

"Every spring is the only spring.

A perpetual astonishment. "

- Ellis Peters

Grateful today for:
1) Luke Duke's kind heart. As it poured snow on us walking out to take him to Pre=K, I saw him standing over the newly planted pansies. He said, "Look, Mom, I'm protecting them." Melt. My. Heart. Then he remembered what I taught him they were called when we got home. ("They like icesicles, right Mom?" ) How I love that boy.
2) New music found. The perfect song to welcome a baby missed and loved, and home "safe and sound" with his momma. Sigh...
3) Billy putting kids to be while I work on photos for said video. He couldn't love them anymore if he had thrown up for 4 months...times 4.
4) leftovers from last week which meant no dinner prep. we could pretend it was a restaurant with 5 different choices. and no complaints.
5) a weekend of 2 dinners with good friends, the last of the b-ball games (RIP...welcome, soccer and LAX!) and sleeping in. Late.

Irish Blessing....

2011-03-17T22:42:00.000-04:00

It WAS that kind of a day. (minus the rain...) Where the Irish luck was upon this little part of the world, and especially in my heart and mind. Where the 65 degrees (!!) felt amazing, and the road beckoned me to put the top down on the convertible - first time of 2011. It is hard not to smile with ACDC's "Back in Black" blaring at top-volume and a corned-beef cabbage cooked in Guiness beer (yah, so!!) waiting to be eaten upon arrival at home. After the 3rd day in a row of playing softball with Carly outside. Music to a momma's ears sometimes (better than ACDC....when your almost teen daughter asks to spend time with you. "Mom, are you ready to go play with me, yet?" Sigh...the good kind of sigh. :)

Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the dinner. Maybe it was the fact that after a weekend of 2 late nites and the hour lost of sleep, Sunday and Monday were filled with catch up naps that led to missing dinner with the family I love and yet feel that all I do is let them down. Maybe it was trying to fix things for a child that feels unfixable and untouchable, and as a mother, I can't just not "take it personal." The black cloud kind of hung around and started to dissapear a little today, after a night spent wondering, no praying, for it to SOMEDAY just go away for good. And not haunt me with self-doubt and heaviness. Because life is full of such joy. It is all around me. Surely, there are 5 people in this very home right now that encompass it. ANd for that, I am grateful.

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

May LUCK ("Opportunity meets preparation" according to Oprah!) follow us everywhere we go.

Also grateful for :

1) PANSIES are in!!!!!!

2) Daffodils and tulips, too. Going in my pots and windowboxes tomorrow.

3) Freshly waxed eyebrows and a brave Korean lady that did my upper lip, too. For free. Cause I needed it and American besties don't tell you that your 'stache is getting dark or long. Or is there, period.

4) Luke's rock collection that keeps growing. The joy in little things is one of the greatest things a 5 year old teaches you.

5) Jocelyn getting up for seminary on her own when my alarm is set too low. Crack of dawn. Don't know how she does it.

Being tired...

2011-02-26T23:30:00.001-05:00

is part of motherhood. Sometimes you can be tired from being up every hour or two when your preemie newborn make lamb-y noises all through the night and you worry about his lungs. Sometimes it is a nursing toddler who is still up a few times a night, who needs to be weaned but your heart isn't ready to let go of those special moments at nap and bed-time after books. Sometimes it is a whiny five year old who just doesn't stop needing, needing, needing or a non-stop 5 year old who never stops karate-chopping, even when you are making dinner.

Sometimes it is the constant bickering, and the constant meanness. It seems like the happy family you envision is only something you see in commercials for mini-vans or in other peoples' homes. Sometimes it is being worn out from saying over and over to "be nice" when you wonder how nice you are to them.

And sometimes it is just being tired of the lack of normal conversations. Longing for the days when your child answered you in more than 2 words. When they wanted to be in the same room as you. When they were excited to share with you. Anything at all. When they didn't act like they despise you and your heart doesn't break at the not knowing. Not knowing how to fix it and what to say differently and how to change your mindset and whatever it is that you are doing. Wrong. Or Right. Just doing.

Sometimes there are not enough parenting books, not enough prayers and surely...not enough patience.

And sometimes you just long for the days when a clean diaper, a full tummy and a kiss could make you feel like you were a little one's hero. And that you were doing OK at that most important of all jobs on earth.

How I miss those days.....

Grateful tonite for:
1) 3 fun days of family skiing
2) helping dear friends
3) driving up tonite to find 4 cuties on the ice rink excited to get B's hockey goals for his bday
4) the kids going back to school on Monday (gotta be honest. They don't read this. Maybe someday, then they will get it)
5) Bon Jovi and DelFrisco's Friday nite... NYC in February.

Melted Valentine's chocolate...and my heart

2011-02-13T22:58:00.008-05:00

Luke had the scripture at church today. (it is the only reason I went. Yes, it was one of THOSE days.)

I could capture it due to my latest ugrade on modern technology. Total blessing.

I love this boy, and how hard he worked on it with his dad, who truly believes the words of it.

Thankful for:
1) cheerier days tomorrow
2) helping besties
3) hospitals who heal sweet babies
4) beautiful music discoveries
5) being done with baby Cass's photo montage by midnight. Maybe.

True love....

2011-02-02T00:58:00.000-05:00

Defines the feeling in the room yesterday with this new momma and poppa for their sweet baby Cassidy. (That was supposed to be Em's name 9 years ago, but Billy wouldn't go for his daughter being named after a "teen star" - as in Shawn!)

I saw this little 5 and 1/2 pound beauty come into the world almost 2 weeks ago, and took a few photos yesterday when I did my "postpartum" doula-visit . It was so amazing to see how much this new life was wanted and adored from the moment she was conceived. There is nothing quite like seeing a woman become a mother for the first time, and to be cheering her on for that last big push.

And to have tried beforehand to tell her what it will be like, but to know that there is just no real way to describe what she will come to learn.

Because the mom might know the baby will be a little girl;

that she might be an Emily or a Cassidy or a Paige or a Jenna.

That she might be close to 6 pounds; that the full-moon just might bring on labor a week early; (!!!)

that epidurals pass through to the baby and increase the rate of C-section by 50 percent.

But there is no way she can know how her heart will be stolen forever from her when the baby is placed on her tummy and she forgets about anything else but that new creature. She forgets the intense pain she just went through, and the number of times she said, "How much longer do you think, Keri?... " or "Is this normal?" She forgets about the months spent wondering if she is strong enough to do what she committed to do through her own reading and internet research - to bring this little soul into the world in the safest and healthiest way for both of them. She hears that first little cry and wonders what all the worry was about.

And says repeatedly, "I can't believe I DID that."

And I think (but keep it to myself...)

I can.

And that is the best part for me.

I get to remember the conversations, the questions, the texts, the e-mails, the doubt, the reassurance,

And think again...

"I told you so!"

Thankful tonite for:

1) kids who are sefl-sufficient and active when we have snow-day after snow-day....one or MORE a week since Christmas break.

2) Luke and Em's love of their dad when he comes home

3) having a heart already toughened up when I find myself defriended on Facebook.

By my own teen-age dear daughter.

4) Do over days for this *$)@!* diet/excercise plan that is not exactly my top priority.

And oh, does it show.

5) A warm, cozy house with all that I need and love inside.

A fair trade...

2011-01-28T16:46:00.002-05:00

This speciMAN?

(Yes, he does go in public like that. Basketball games of the kids, Wal-mart, the dump, Home Depot, and various other destinations that Saturday winters require. And yes,

I often fight the urge (failing miserably, here...)

to walk just 10 feet behind him.

This....

for THIS back-yard ICE-RINK???

Many, many hours were put into this gem (given to us by an amazingly generous buddy of B's who's hand-me-downs would gain THOUSANDS on E-bay...)

While many, many kids would love to have their own ice rink in their back yard, not many dads would put in the time. They would think that it was a cool idea, and listen to their kids ask for it the way all I asked for at my kids' ages was a horse. Constantly. (and for the record, my mom drove me to and from riding lessons to the horse I "leased" for a few middle-school-years. Every. Day. Now THAT is parenting, and she had the do-it-all-for-her-kids-thing down pat!)

And, similar to that, this dad-of-all-dads with whom I am lucky enough to raise my children does everything for them. He was up til midnight last night, after a biz dinner and a huge snowstorm (see I-phone illustrations of said storm!) plowing the rink from the 20 inches of snow, which melts the ice. No one asked him to do it, and no one expected him to.

He just does it.

Borrowed fire-pumps, tangled hoses, hole in the new liner, long hours, cold hands, broken fire-pumps, layers of ice, returned fire-pumps at 12 midnight.

His payment?

When I picked up little Luke Duke from school on Weds, (the first day this week that the rink was done and skated upon, these words:

"Mom, Can I go skating as soon as we get home?" :):)

There are many, many Saturday fights over the hours and hours of work that a house and 2-acre yard takes when a certain someone - ATTEMPTS TO! - take care of it himself. I feel that the kids will only remember the dreaded chores and many, many hours put into the upkeep of it all. I am constantly praying to have more patience with the fact that it is his "hobby," the same way I love photography and a good book. I am trying to not care that mine don't leave the yard with a shoddy, half-done mow- job, cause that is what marriage is about: comprimise. I know while I wish for more family-fun on Saturdays, he wishes for me to play more with the kids, as he does. He is a rockstar at spending time with them and making good memories. Cause we both see how quickly they are changing, growing up, and growing seperate from us. And it breaks our hearts.

So, in spite of the fights and the different outlooks on so many things in life, I must remember that my children and I are blessed, and that there isn't much he wouldnt do for us. (even me, if I really beg him and promise him payback in various forms)

Thankful today for:
1) TGIF
2) a borrowed snow-plow, as well. (WTH????)
3) the beauty out of my window (no, I don't think it beats flip-flops and palm trees in my heart's home)
4) leftover crab legs from last night's biz dinner
5) self-forgiveness from said dinner and my man bringing me back fave dessert: Key Lime Pie. It tastes even better at 10 at night and looks good on my 4-kid gut.

Be still, my heart...

2011-01-13T00:23:00.001-05:00

That is what I thought on Monday morning when these words came out of my son's mouth, as we hurried to PRE-K at 9am.

"Be careful on those 2 steps, there, Momma. They are really slippery."

What, oh what, did I do in this life to deserve that? :):)

Slow down, big boy.

You are growing way, way too fast, and I fear that someday you might not attack me with Karate chops; jump on me from behind; smother me with surprise kisses; ask for another book to be read; ride Bella like she is a pony; play hide-and-seek; call your dad "Daddi-o;" sit on my lap to drive the car down our road;write your name in huge letters; attempt to re-do your haircut when Em tells you it looks funny; cry when you BARELY get in trouble from your dad;

cry at the bald spot on your head; get embarrassed easily when people asked you what you did; be so joyful and loving; be the friend at school everyone wants to have; have more fun playing in giant boxes than your new Christmas gifts; want to make cookies with me; adore me as much as I adore you;

be just YOU at 5 and 1/2.

It's the here and the now
that is the blessing. And you are.

My first paid newborn shoot...

2011-01-12T23:09:00.001-05:00

Way back in December. Much harder than it looks, and much more time editing than I would ever guess. Especially when I suck at Photoshop and don't know a curve from a level.

Christmas pictures aren't even uploaded yet. Barely took any because I had a December full of doula pictures, a newborn shoot, 2 photo books for family gifts, and finally....(least importantly?? :) our family Christmas card. I get to doula for 2 clients this months...might be tonite, even! First-time mom and dad, whose current babies are 4-legged and poop in the yard. Who don't come equipped with the that smile right around six weeks that is only meant for you

. That smile that captures your heart and never, ever lets it go.

Even when she is 14 and it rarely appears anymore for anyone but friends.

Grateful tonite for:
1) snow day - total Winter Wonderland this month
2) healthy kids
3) Luke's kisses tonite saying it was a "special surprise"
4) time with dear friends
5) weekend with childhood bestie and how always the 2am talks more is said than any friend here in a year of being together!

Rings and jewels

2010-12-20T00:13:00.002-05:00

.........are not gifts but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of yourself."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

But MAN they would have been so much easier. The portion of myself from this gift is my BUTT that kills from too many hours on this soft couch uploading, editing, organizing, copy and pasting quotes, etc etc. But last year's "best Christmas present we have ever received" from my in-laws made it worth the time, and this year just took longer. Now to finish up the goodies for my sweetie-pies in this house, and try to focus on what REALLY matters. (which is hard to do with the night-time addressing 150 Christmas cards. Next year I will order them in November. For REAL!)

Thankful today for:
1) Being reminded of the REAL REASON FOR THE SEASON in harmonizing during Handel's Messiah. "HALL-A-LU-YAH!" There is nothing quite like singing that song with 60-plus other powerful voices, a 10 pc. orchestra of brilliant Violinists, and a choir director who has sung and trained with Mo-Tab. Ahhhh, yeah. My heart is still filled with joy.
2) Being able to read my all-time fave Christmas book to Jocelyn and her class, as she doesn't get to hear my do much lately but lecture and scold. Sniff sniff. Still can't get thru it without some tears. After 15 years and now I have a 14 year old that is mortified to be in public with me when I do.
3) Busy weekend with less helpful kids
4) only 3 and 1/2 days this week of 5:45 alarm clock.... which means.....
5) the thought of 1 and 1/2 days of SLEEPING. IN. and cousins/ B. family galore coming from Cali

Click here to view this photo book larger

christmas2010

2010-12-16T10:39:00.001-05:00

Courage Hope Love LIVESTRONG Holiday 5x7 folded card

Modern greeting cards and party invitations by Shutterfly.

View the entire collection of cards.

A letter....

2010-12-09T00:57:00.001-05:00

(shared tonite after a sweet Relief Society meeting about "The gifts of Love" -

Beautiful women -

As I sat amongst a handful of you tonite at "Taking it Home," I marveled yet again at the blessings of being a woman, and especially how that is celebrated in abundance in our church. I marveled at the power that is there when we are together, sharing stories and tears; friendships and mutual trials and joys. When we admit our weaknesses and relish in each others' strengths. When we praise each other for our uniqueness and talent. When we bear one anothers's burdens.

Aside from the continual service that goes into mothering our babies-big and small, I love that the gospel gives us the chance to build lasting friendships that bind us to one another. As was shared tonite, sometimes those relationships come unexpectedly through Visiting Teaching or our callings, and other times it is because the Holy Ghost whispers to us that someone we would last expect is SO in need of a hug, a card, an anonymous gift, a smile, a phone call, a new friend......and we act upon it. ( We stop assuming that everyone is doing great but us! :) I am so convinced that love really should sometimes be spelled

T-I-M-E.

If I had been asked to share a "Gift of Love" story tonite, I would have told you about what comes often to my mind at this time of year. Bear with me as it relates to the book excerpt I wanted to share, or just skip ahead to it, below.

.....As a freshman at BYU, there couldn't have been anyone who loved and missed my high school friends more than me, and I couldn't wait to spend every waking moment with them when I returned home for my 2 week break at Christmastime. So when my mom suggested (read: insisted) on my 3rd night home that she and I surprise one of HER besties who lived 6 hours away, I was angry and sulked the whole way as only an 18-year old daughter can. But the feeling that replaced it when we pulled into Trudy's driveway was one that - as I said - comes back every Christmas. Not knowing we were coming, she didn't have time to put her wig on before she squinted into the dark at our car headlights, but then I witnessed her face change to disbelief and then...well, just the look of what we each have felt when we know someone who is not related to us by blood and HAS to love us....cares about us. And watching the "laughter through tears" (Steel Magnolias!) at the hugging of these 2 life-long friends - who really were saying good-bye - was a gift. It is still my favorite Christmas present I ever received from my brilliant mom who forced me to go with her to "keep her awake in the car."

So, to you women who are giving SO much to SO many this time of year, remember how powerful the little things are. The gifts of time and love to your little ones, your family and your friends. And how lucky we are to be women. And have Care Calenders, and friends, and a sisterhood. To be able to act as angels, disguised as ordinary people. To "get" what I read to Katie, recently, as we shared "laughter through tears" and the gift of time: (from an AMAZING book I was given)

"I faded back, not feeling unwelcome, but rather a witness to a liturgy that I wanted to remember in every detail, as attentive an observer as I could be. I studied the circle of women, now encompassing my mother as one of their number, yound and old, family and neighbors, perhaps single, married, widowed. It is as though they arrived on a timetable, like a flock of migratory birds, their schedule neither agreed upon in advance nor communicated, as much as felt at the subtle first change of season. This is simply what they do. They come. They are called to stand watch, oddly, with no male presence. It is perhaps not that the men, with few exceptions, can't take the pain. It's the ambiguity that they cant abide. And there is that to be sure, endless hours of waiting. Surely these stately creatures are the same everywhere, perched around every bed where someone lies helpless. They arrive one at a time, or in pairs, and they bring smiles and stories and concerned brows and open hearts, and most of all they bring time, they have all the time in the world, poured out like water, crystalline and pure. They lower their shoulders, they place their purses on chairs, and they assume their places, familiar by instinct, either sitting or standing, circling the sick with wings of prayer and patience, protectors and mediators, watchers, slow and graceful, with the singular purpose of a great blue heron wading in the shallow water, saving all effort for when it is most needed, the split second at which it catches a swimming fish in its beak, finally lifting off in flight, with no regard to the weight it carries, rising,

as hope must, lighter than human breath. "

The sweet by and by

- Todd Johnson

Love love love that.

I miss Jennifer's gift at Christmastime of the daily thoughts/scriptures/traditions/support that she shared with us even through her pain. If any of you have "gifts of love" you want to share, I - for one - would love to read them. It's alot more fun than addressing Christmas cards by candlelight. (oh yeah...gotta order those!)

Yes, you ladies are amazing, and I am blessed to know you.

lots of love,

Keri

Thankful for:

1) the good tears tonite in reading and re-reading and re-reading that excerpt from one of my new FAVE books of all time

2) the examples of amazing women around me who so very often put everyone else first

3) a surprise call from BLUE ! :)

4) watching Luke's PRE-K class greet each other in their circle when I shared at his school. "Luke, can you start today with your Mom?"....."Good morning, Keri." :):):) shakes my hand and isn't ruffled by adult laughter . And having him run into my arms when I show up there as a surprise at 10am. ("Mom, are you gonna STAY?!?!" "Mom, read to me!" "Mom, come SEE this!" "Mom, look what I made!" "No, I wanna sit with my mom when she teaches us." "I'll race you!") Oh, my heart! Be still. And slow down, my little man. Just please, slow down.

5) doula sweetness 2 nights ago that has filled a hole in my heart that I didn't even know was there. There are no words, but I will find them and post.

6) A bite (or 2, ok 3!) of Missy's divine cinnamon rolls

7) the sweet man who sleeps in my bed that has folded clothes and done all the dinner dishes 2 nites in a row

8) My first PAID newborn shoot tomorrow for friend's new grandson. With my sweet friend, Lillian, who is kickin' butt and takin' names with her new photog biz as my assistant.

9) Photoshop arrived. But not really thankful for that. Just intimidated. Completely and utterly.

10) The Circles of Love in our lives....

Thanksgiving blessings....

2010-11-25T21:40:00.000-05:00

For many Thanksgivings, we have sat around the table at my in-laws and tried to visit over the noise of 16 or so kids and babies, and the fun of being together outweighs the chaos and what I most often miss: since it isn't my home, I feel bad reminding the powers-that-be that we haven't yet gone around the table to say what we are grateful for this year. This year, with fewer of us, the kids were quick to share the sweet simple things that fill their heart....The island, their family, Jesus, the church, the temple, their friends, their cousins, and even...that there weren't "lots of storms." (Luke! :)

Then came time for grow-ups. I knew that I wouldn't adequately be able to express what I have been reminded of lately:

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

~Cynthia Ozick

When you spend a few afternoons in a hospital room with your heart aching for someone who doesn't get to leave that room, the world outside of that room seems so much brighter. Somehow waiting 40 minutes for your car to be returned to you from the parking attendant seems (almost!) like a blessing b/c it means that you can drive home to the little people who care if you are there or not. To make them a good dinner and make sure they eat enough. To hug Luke's naked little body after baths. To hear Em's newest obsession with playing Christmas songs on the piano....by ear. To read them a bed-time story and help them with their homework.

When you spend 5 days with a fever that leaves you laying on the kitchen floor a few times cause you can't stand long enough to get a drink, daily occurences become a blessing. To be able to breathe fresh air; to feel the rain on my face; to play Karate-chop and box with Luke; to walk Emmy to her bus stop; to taste fresh chips and salsa; to use a gift card to pick out new boots; to make pies with a new recipe; to watch a movie with my man; to take Bella to the trails; to pick-up Luke from school and feel his arms around my neck and see his face light up when he sees me walk in. To plant bulbs, to do laundry, to sweep the floor, to put on make-up because you are going somewhere besides the house or bed.

It shouldn't take someone else's struggles or Lyme Disease to remind me how very blessed I am.

And THAT is what I shared at our table of 16 tonite.

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
~George Herbert

Happy, happy Thanksgiving.

Who knew???

2010-11-23T23:20:00.001-05:00

When you sit on the phone for an hour and a half for a conference call helping plan the next youth all-day activity in December, you don't have to say much. (ya know, unless you are a leader. Which I will NEVER be as I like to follow too much) Just a few "uh-huh's" and "yeps."

And you have time to peruse things you didn't know existed on the internet. Like THIS site which is a cheaper ANTHRO. And to think I thought it was just teenager clothes. I am loving their funky, modern furniture and wallpaper.

Who knew? I wanna help Joc re-do her room and put colors in there that SHE chooses this time. (Hoping she chooses the Waterfalls or Woodland duvet covers. But won't tell her that or she will def. NOT!) Then move on to some funky wallpaper for our new kitchen, which is actually going forward. (YAY YAY YAY) Fridge slowly quit on us over this past week so today was our first day in the 5 years we have lived here with a WORKING ice-dispenser on the fridge without a ball of tinfoil behind the broken dispenser. I felt like royalty! :)

Picked up Luke and a playdate today and he spent 45 minutes crying here at home. Over...not being able to go up to top of the hill and "sell" his papers. Drawings. By himself. For money for his new pet, which he talks about every day. Like he is so deprived of love and affection around here that he needs his own snake or hamster in his room. He better hope Santa Clause is feeling generous on Christmas Eve, and forgets about the snake that got loose in our house a few months ago and is somewhere dried up under a couch or a..??? He has been bored at Pre-K and cries all the time asking to got to kindergarten. The teachers recognize it and ask me what else they can be doing extra so he is happy...like it is their responsiblity to make sure a 5 and 1/2 year old that SHOULD be in kindergarten is happy and busy with other 4 year olds. GRRRR. Regrets, regrets, regrets. Can't help them, sometimes.

Thanksgiving is in 2 days. What has happened to this school year. I haven't even gotten all the summer pix up yet!

Thankful tonite for:
1) my health after spending this last week on my back with Lyme Disease. Yep...102 fever for 5 days and sometimes barely being able to walk. Ended up laying my head on the kitchen floor twice while trying to get a drink. Never ever been so sick in my life. How can something SO small as a deer-tick be so powerful? I just hope and pray none of the kids get it. It would be devastating and terrify me!
2) Luke when he is happy. It can switch so quickly lately that it is a relief as well as a joy.
3) Warm sheets
4) cleaning lady, Erica. I don't know when or how I would do anything else but clean. Only stays that way for a few hours, but I sure love Tuesdays.
5) 60 degree days in November. I heart fall in New England.

It takes a 102 degree fever...

2010-11-16T02:10:00.002-05:00

for things to slow down around here. For that, tonite I am grateful.

Totally unrelated: This is in hopes of winning a Tamron lens that is being given away at Nie-Nie's blog.

Also, this link is for another giveaway for cards and templates at Inspire Me Baby. ONe of these days I am gonna win.

I think I am being told to slow down and do less, as it does seem that I am burning the candle at both ends. I am trying to finish some of my doula books and need to do the on-line lactation class, yet I spend way too many hours doing photography. I finally went and ordered Photoshop, but cant seem to get around to turning in Jocelyn's photo ID and school registration so I can have it sent here. I am blaming that on my severe ADD. I am running around trying to put on a dance for church youth, here, and have a birth coming up in 2 days for a bestie being induced. Here's hoping that she doesn't go into labor, as my whole body aches and I feel like I wanna curl up and dissapear with my body aching and this fever. Don't know yet if it Lyme disease or the flu, but def. worse than just the sore muscles I thought I had from a Powder Puff game on Saturday. I gotta get better by Weds. as I wanna be there to see this sweet baby come into the world, so crossing my fingers.

I am reminded lately how very blessed I am and it is humbling. I get so caught up in the things that matter the very least, even though they seem to matter to me alot right now. Heavenly Father doesn't care at all if I know Photoshop, or if my pictures are underexposed. He does care that my children remember me playing with them during the day and reading to them at nite. He doesn't care if I have mastered Layers or Masks if I haven't mastered my inpatience with Emily or Luke when they act like kids their own age. He doesn't care if I make good videos if I am too tired to get up with Jocelyn to make her breakfast. (oh, do I HATE mornings...) I am trying so hard to find the balance, and some days are better than others. I guess for this reason, I am grateful for being forced to slow down and be in bed with a fever.

It is humbling to be able to love them and hold them when another bestie cannot hold her 2 beautiful little girls. She is in all of our prayers, as she is bleeding on bed rest, and has months to go til her due date. Until you walk out of a quiet Columbia hospital room to go back to your own sweet life and family you adore, you never really know what it feels like to just feel that the normal, everyday life is such a blessing. To have all the stuff you take for granted seem like a gift.

To be able to breath in Luke's morning breath as he cuddles with me every morning and tell him it smells like dogpoop. To take him to school and know that he will be finding baby salamanders under rocks and being the boy all the kids want to hang out with.

To be able to tickle Emmy and see her joyful eyes that constantly have a smile in them. To hear her talk about the new boy she likes (GASP!!) and plan her outfit the night before because of him! To hear her say that the boys on the bus say "You say PEE. Then we say "NIS!" ANd see her shake her head and laugh.

To see Carly sing and dance in
her play this weekend, and know that she worked hard and was proud of her vulture job. To see her starting to bond with the sweet church girls, and hope that she has found friends for life and eternity with her same values and goals. To have her ask me tonite if she could bring me some medicine to help me or bring me a bowl of choc. chip cookie dough. (of COURSE!!!) To love her for her good heart, and always thinking of
others.

To breathe in deep the constant smell of perfume on Jocelyn, even at the end of the day. To feel her gorgeus, thick hair as I hug her skinny, malnourished body that we are trying to fatten up. To have her complain about the hugs while smiling. To speak French to her and have her laugh at me trying to get the meaning across without using any English. To watch her grow up each week, more and more, and wonder if she is making good choices. To pray day and night that she is, and have the faith that what we are teaching her and what is reinforced all around her is sinking in. To admire the early morning start each day (5:30!!!) that she does without ever complaining. To know that the challenges she faces just walking down the hall of her hi school are a million times harder than ours ever were in teenage days.

For all of these sweet things about my children tonite, I am so very grateful. Grateful to be their mom, grateful to love them, to be here with them, to have them drive me crazy and worry me, to annoy me one moment and to make me the proudest person on the face of the earth the next.

Today Luke cried at school because he missed me. My heart melted. How many more years of that will I get?

Looking forward to making another of THESE in a few days for the next baby coming along..My first photography gig for a newborn. Another bestie and her amazingly quick birth. So, so fun and exciting.

You're Never Alone...

2010-11-04T21:42:00.000-04:00

Grateful tonite for:

1) my own easy pregnancies
2) healthy children
3) the power of frienship
4) Luke and Em cracking up at my dumb laugh
5) Billy being willing to go up to island to do close up. Work, work, work while we played all summer! :)

New discoveries...

2010-10-21T22:53:00.001-04:00

are one of my favorite things about the time I spend on the internet.

I LOVE this song.

and THIS ONE.

gustavo santaolalla mp3s
Download Free mp3 now

Thankful tonite for:
1) preparing for Standards Night on Sunday.
2) book group
3) Luke smelling like swamp today after school
4) jumping on the trampoline with Carly, Em and Luke with leaves all around us
5) fall beauty...oh, the COLORS

"Isn't it ironic..."

2010-10-20T00:12:00.000-04:00

dontcha think? (Cue Alannis Morrsette!)....

That I am only blogging right now in hopes that I will win this DVD giveaway for Photography tips?

You can too if you go HERE to enter.

Isn't it ironic..

That I missed GLEE tonite because I was working on STANDARDS NIGHT questions and answers....As in one question from a 13 year old: "How do you know what music/TV is appropriate?"
Well, a show with 2 cheerleaders making out is PROBABLY not too uplifting and appropriate, but DANG the MUSIC (usually VERY APPROPRIATE and UPLIFTING!!!) is good.

Isn't it ironic...

That I smiled for hours thinking of Luke's question to me 2 days ago: "Mom, after school can you help me dig up worms for Skinny?" (his new snake from our back yard.) Skinny is now residing somewhere in our house. Who knows where. Loose. That's right. What kind of mom lets her 5 yr old bring his snake in the house in it's aquarium with a pc. of cardboard on it for a lid?

Isn't it ironic...

That I went to my parenting class today ("Active Parenting of Teens") - very good by the way - and was reminded - ONCE AGAIN!!! - of the cruel IRONY of family life and parenting: we treat the ones around us civil and kind and well-mannered BUT OUR FAMILIES usually get the worst of us. The least consideration, benefit of the doubt, enthusiasm, patience, manners, etc. and we love them the most. We would do anything for our children and - some of us , some days :) - for our spouses! That is just the cruel irony of life that is almost unexplainable. ALMOST...

Isn't it ironic that almost every morning i SWARE that I am not gonna be up late again on-line or doing anything cause I am WAY TOO TIRED at 6am and I know that I would be a better mom if I didn't own a computer or love books or watch TV (though I hardly watch anything anymore) and yet here I am again and Billy is in bed? I am really admitting this? Isn't it ironic??

Isn't it ironic...

That my 6th grader JUST WENT TO BED (it seems like) at 11:03 pm due to homework and YW activity and something at church and dinner and life and...and my red-headed hi-schooler with a team dinner AFTER practice and the same YW activity and FRESHMAN class load? AHHHHH!!!!

Isn't it ironic that with my little guy in PRE-K long days 3 days a week I still haven't spent my Anthro b-day gift card from my besties..and my bday was...end of the summer??? How do I spend it if I can't ever make it up to Anthro a few towns over?

Isn't it ironic...

That I should be finishing up my doula certification this month with papers and my on-line lactation course but I am starting a Photoshop class since I have no idea what the difference is between curves, layers and adjustments???

Isn't it ironic...

That I am finally now giving away Luke's newborn clothes for good (sniff sniff, waahhhHH!!!) ...yet the last 2 Fridays I was blessed enough to see 2 new sweet baby boys come into this world? One as an AMAZING doula experience ( I just have SO MUCH to write!) and the other baby boy I photographed as he took his 1st breath? Both moms were ROCKSTARS. Both so centered, focused and inspiring. If only every future mother could see them....fewer ladies would get an epidural or agree so quickly to scheduled C-sections. I am still on cloud 9 and SO EXCITED that I have a births coming up in NOVEMBER, DECEMBER, JANUARY, and MARCH. Who is gonna claim my Valentine's month?? When it rains it pours. SO so happy!

Isn't it ironic that I started this 1/2 hr ago and was just gonna post the link to try to win the DVD?

It looks AWESOME! Don't you wish you could win it? Click here and try too!

"Isn't it ironic....Don'tcha think??"

Thankful for:
1) Sat and Sunday sleeping-in til 9:30 this past weekend. (with Billy even!) I dream of that by Tuesdays. Like salivate thinking about it. I love to sleep. Love love love. Love. LOVE. Like wish I loved HIM and the kids as much as my winter sheets newly put on today.
2) can't think of anything beyone those sheets, actually, as they are calling me.........
ZZZZZZZZZ

Too much time...

2010-09-30T11:06:00.001-04:00

is spent on photog blogs....

Most for inspiration and tutorials, and some for FREEBIES!!

Last nite and today I tried to talk my friends into doing BOUDOUIR photos for their hubbies. (*BLUSH!*) I adore this photographer and want to shoot these sassy, edgy, retro kind of pictures sooo bad!. I am bringing my camera to Chicago in July, where I am meeting up with almost all of my bestie; some who have known me since a mouth full of baby teeth, braids and parted-in-the-middle-hair (before it was stylin') , Michael Jackson music, Big Perms, acid wash, Reebok hi-tops, Girbaux jeans, frilly collars and jumpers, a missionary nametag, and then maternity clothes. And that extra 25 pounds I just can't seem to run off! (%$*&$*#&!!!)
I hope to capture them in their full glory, with cherry red lipstick and Jimmy Choos, and maybe something brand new from Victoria Secret. But if I am lucky enoug, the pictures will NOT be posted here....

Also, hoping to win some new actions from HERE today, and bloggging about them is a way to win. Paint the Moon actions rock and my photos are in desperate need of help.

Captured this a few days ago of Luke in the morning, as he discovered a new friend after the big rain storm. He has a new title in his Pre-K class: "World's Greatest Frog Catcher." He is a rockstar there and everyone loves him. Though some of the kids come up to his shoulder, being worshipped can't can't be bad, right??? :):)

Grateful today for:

1) hours of quiet time this morning...

2) RAIN RAIN RAIN. The beautiful sound that I have missed

and the my flowers and plants have missed even more.

3) Emmy's enthusiasm and energy in the morning when the rest of us wanna go back to bed.

4) Jocelyn's great example of going to (and being ONTIME!!) seminary everyday.

5) Billy right next door today in the town next to us...setting up his NEW OFFICE in only 10 days. no more 2 hours a day of driving. 8 minutes EACH WAY. Hall-LA-freakin'-LOO-ya.

Happy, Happy Anniversary

2010-09-30T09:38:00.004-04:00

To the couple who taught me from the beginning about unconditional love. Who taught me to stand up for myself when boys called me names on the playground, and who forbid me from dating punks. Who showed me the kind of relationship to want to have for that final one. Who showed me that it's ok to have differences, as long as you celebrate the things you do have in common. Who embrace their own individual interests, passions, comfort-levels, and friends.

Who made raising (great! :) children seem easy and almost painless. Who give each other their "110 percent to everything."

Who have stuck by each other through the ups and downs that life throws to each of us: the challenging surprises that make us who we are as individuals and as family units.

Who are loving, kind grandparents to my sweet babies so far away.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, Mom and Dad. May there be many, many more!

I love you!

To Make you Feel My love

2010-09-25T00:28:00.001-04:00

To Make you Feel My love This was FUN!

Blogging lately??

No.

But finally put some not-impressive pictures of my sweetie-pie niece Norah to one of my faaaaaaaaave songs. Oh, I heart you Adele!!

Crazy crazy here.

Too much driving, kid time, school homework and my own "homework" for my photography class.

And births coming up I get to doula for in October, November and December. YAY!!!!!!!!

WHen it RAINS it POURS! :) :)

Our home if full of joy tonight: 9 girls in basement for Carly's 12th bday. Slumber party about to be shut down as my eyes are closing quickly and it is after midnight.

3 hi-schoolers, Jocelyn's 2 besties also staying the night.

I can hear the giggles and the secrets all the way up here.

Thankful for:
1) 12 years with Carly!
2) sleeping in on weekends (Seminary at 6:15 for Joce??? KILLING ME!! )
3) Luke sleeping in his soccer uniform to be ready for his game tomorrow...at 11:00!
4) Em's constant happiness
5) a home that is full of love and laughter- at least tonite!!

So many books...

2010-08-25T00:04:00.006-04:00

and so little time!!!

There is an old, small TV here on the river, and a DVD player. It gets used by the kids more often than me, as I usually make a library trip in June, then come up with a stack. This was summer 2010's:

I sent this stack back to my hometown library, having read only ONE of them. Instead, I spent WAY, way too much time HERE trying to get photography tips and learn how to actually use my nice camera that has taken such crap photos for 2 years. ( And when I wasn't online learning what I need to change, I was reading doula books. And hoping that I can actually continue to put the knowledge to use. )

But, you know what they say about that QUANTITY thing v. QUALITY?? (I dont believe it for a moment with the "spending time with the kids") Well, my stack of what I DID read wasn't big, but what I got out of them was just amazing. With each of these, I was again reminded of 2 things:

1) I just LOVE historical fiction.

L.O.V.E.

The older I get, the more that is so. (and yikes, I am getting up there!!!) Could it be that the more years of history in my own life, the more I love reading about the different truths of the past that the diverse world offers us? It is so funny to me now that I can't even pick up a John Grisham or a mystery, with all the novels calling my name like the ones I continue to discover..and that pile above that I can find again!

2) My favorite, favorite moments in books are the ones when I just HAVE to immediately re-read the words (yes, even sometimes when I am dying to know what happens!) because they are just simply so....perfect. Perfectly put together in a way that I can't find a word for. Profound? Touching? Poetic? Powerful? Yummy? Often you can take what is written out of context and have it be just as...perfect.

I am a lover of words.

So these are the ones that were almost as good as my peach-cream pie this summer:

Ok, there are almost no words to describe how much I loved this book. It is now in my top 5 fave books, I believe. And like another favorite from last summer, this was extra special because it was given to me to read by another bestie. One that knew that I needed to hear the message of Aibileen to her Baby Girl:

"You is kind. You is smart. You is important."

This bestie knows that I forget this sometimes, and that I need to hear it myself. And that someday, (if she says it often enough! :) I might begin to belive it!! And that it just as much as a gift to forgive yourself as it is to forgive others. And this bestie shares with me the greatest desire - to teach this to my own girls in a world that screams at them to be something else. And that confidence from within must start at home. How lucky I am while reading it to be reminded that no matter how good it feels to get a break from my kids, there is no one that loves them as much as I do; no HELP I could ever pay would have the same wish for them I do; to KNOW: "You is kind. You is smart. You is important." and that "... kindness don't have no boundaries."

Of course, I often insist that others read this book or that, to friends and my mom and sister. If it is REALLY amazing, I stick it in the mail, which I did with the Help. It was the best "thank you" I had got in a long time when my mom couldnt get thru the words without tears. Again, yummier to me than peach cream pie.

From The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen

“...Will I ever understand the workings of the human heart? Will I ever know why we so often love those whom we cannot possess, and why we do not cherish those whose love we do possess? We are as thistledown twitching and turning in the current, captives to feelings we cannot control. How are we to understand those persons who mean the most to us, when we cannot truly understand our own blind and hapless selves?

….Now I know the power of the spoken word. Now I know how deeply it can ruin. For the consequences of my own ill-considered speech, I must make amends, and so I paint, here in my tower, with a purpose. I paint for my sisters. I paint for the Queen. I paint for all the women of the world who, burdened by caring for their families, by the expectations of others, by unbreakable chains of love or gold, can never go in search of their dreams. How often we cautiously receive our lives; pale, uncertain Eves. If only we can be so brave as to love and accept the fragile spirit residing within each one of us, then, only then , we might take the gift of sefl-knowledege offered in its shy and trembling hands.

…This time; maybe this time, I will see the one inside who is me…"

HISTORICAL FICTION at it's best. Loved it!!

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar. Indian classe system and WOMEN-power to the max. It rocked.

"Or perhaps is is that time doesn't heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones - the angle of your hips, the sharpness of your shoulders, as well as the luster of your eyes, the texture of your skin, the openness of your smile - has collapsed under the weight of your griefs."

" Perhaps the body has its own memory system, like the invisible meridian lines those Chinese acupuncturists always talk about. Perhaps the body is unforgiving, perhaps every cell, every muscle and fragment of bone remembers each and every assault and attack. Maybe the pain of memory is encoded into our bone marrow and each remembered grievance swims in our bloodstream like a hard, black pebble. After all, the body, like God, moves in mysterious ways.

...A body that we occupy, that we have worn like a coat from the moment of our birth - from before birth, even - is still a stranger to us. After all, almost everything we do in our lives is for the well-being of the body: we bathe daily, polish our teeth, groom our hair and fingernails; we work miserable jobs in order to feed and clothe it; we go to great lengths to protect it from pain and violence and harm.

And yet the body remains a mystery, a book that we have never read. ....Despite our lifelong preoccupation with our bodies, we have never met face-to-face with our kidneys, how we wouldn't recognize our own liver in a row of livers, how we have never seen our own heart or brain. We know more about the depths of the ocean, are more acquainted with the far corners of outer space than with our own organs and muscles and bones. So perhaps there are no phantom pains after all; perhaps all pain is real; perhaps each long ago blow lives on into eternity in some different permutation and shape; perhaps the body is this hypersensitive, revengeful entity, a ledger book, a warehouse of remembered slights and cruelties.

But if this is true, surely the body also remembers each kindness, each kiss, each act of compassion? Surely this is our salvation, our only hope - that joy and love are also woven into the fabric of the body, into each sinewy muscle, into the core of each pulsating cell?" (love Love Love)

"....This is how history gets rewritten...this is how it begins, with exaltation. Now it is not enough for a man merely to have been a man; now the etiquette of grief demands that we change him into a prince, a king. Now the flaws of a man have to be ironed out like creases in a suit, until he is spread out before us as smooth and unblemished as the day he was born...in death, all men become saints..."

and lastly, the main character Bhima loved her 2 children, and lost them both. It rips your heart out.

"...And a mother without children is not a mother at all, and if I am not a mother, than I am nothing. Nothing. I am like sugar dissolved in a glass of water. Or, I am like salt, which disappears when you cook with it. I am salt. Without my children, I cease to exist."

Thanks to the book club up here in Paradise, it made it on the list because this summer's theme was "women's strength." A line from the book shed great light on an inner struggle of mine, like an answer to a prayer. This has been a summer of not only reading, but of the usual solitude on an island where I am have time to take a step back from my suburban/Suburban-soccer-Mormon-mom of 4- life; where I often put way too much effort into girls nights-out, having people over, and letting my friends know how very important they are to me. Where often those women are playing 2nd to the ones who (SHOULD!!) mean the most. It's been a summer like others, where there are long days and late nights with time to bond with the little people I brought into this world, and the man I chose to make a life with....and who chose me. Of being reminded of what really matters in this life and thereafter. And of who my most precious loved-ones are, and the kind of friends that are included there-in.

"It wasn't the workings of other people's hearts she needed to discover now, it was the workings of her own."

(AHHHHHH - HAAAA!!!)

Thankful for:

1) Words, words, words

2) brilliance

3) Em's requests today "Mom, sit by me at Dinner!" "Mom, come swim with us!" "Mom, can you wait for me in the water while I put conditioner in!" "Mom, can I sleep in your bed tonite!!"
Ah, be still my heart. And slow down, little Emmy Lou.

4) Luke's hugs from behind where he almost knocks me down

5) loyal, loving sisters - in - laws (who ALSO kick my butt running )

Is it really almost over???

2010-08-22T20:03:00.003-04:00

That quickly???

Didn't my 3 daughters just come home in June with their full back-packs, crinkled artwork, "BFF's"-signed-yearbooks, 2 inches shorter???

How did it go by in a blink???

As the rain falls tonite on the river, with a forecast of that for several days, it isn't completely impossible to picture going home to reality. Maybe it is the one who is missing, here on the island...(Jocelyn on her way home for sports camp) and the reality of the readiness of this past week: physicals, teeth cleaning, haircuts and buying new lunchboxes. Maybe it is also the cooler nights and leaves already beginning to change up here on the border of Cananda and the U.S. Maybe it is the way my heart does't completely ache thinking of saying good-bye to my little ones in just a short week from Tuesday, sending the girls into the care of strangers, hoping they can possible think they are as amazing as the 2 people in the world that love them the most. Maybe it is the thought of the mindless reality TV I enjoy blogging to, rather than the painful music of "Enchanted," the kids are watching. Maybe it is my new responsiblity of helping with the huge church youth-group back home: planning activites - being at camp, conferences and other gatherings, all focused on strengthening them to take a stand as stalwart young men and women in this challenging, morale-free world. Maybe it is the worn-out T-shirts and flip-flops begging to be replaced. I had these in mind; from my happy place, MAIS OUI.

What makes YOU ready to say good-bye to my favorite time of year???

Thankful tonite for:

EIGHT
MORE.
Days of freedom. (ok, sleeping in, ....)

FOUR.
MORE.
DAYS

Of island life.
Rain or shine.

My latest "porn"

2010-07-23T00:38:00.002-04:00

Is this baby/child photographer named Beth Jansen. (am I the only one moaning?? :)

Is it REALLY possible for your brain to be as addicted to looking at photos as it can be to alcohol, crack or sex? (ok, somebody I know just might be wishing that my brain - or otherwise - was a little bit more in need of one of the above. ANYway...) I tell my oldest daughter and loving, patient man (the one who wishes I wasn't on the laptop so much come nite-time! :) that this is my "porn." Some sick-os look at nek-ked kids for kicks. I look at these pictures and the jealousy rushes thru my bones as I think "Why can't I do this?" Is it my camera? Is it the cheap lenses I have? Cause I really, really love these pictures and dream of doing this someday. Like DREAM dream. Like there-are-no-words-dream. Drives me crazy, really.

I discovered my "this is how I want my pix to be" photos below from a link from another member of Clickin Moms. (amazingly supportive photog site with super informative forums.) Just joined it last week. Luckily for my love of pictures, that is my newest and latest other form of porn: I have spent too many late hours at nite there trying to figure out what I am doing wrong with my pictures, and have already learned so much . So, my kids are tired of seeing me with my camera around my neck, tring to finally meter the light after 2 years of owning my camera. WHO KNEW!!!!??? soooo lame.

I will soon be giving up my late nites such as this for another week with my man arriving tomorrow nite his 2nd week off of the summer. I am looking forward to a week of just our family of 6. Oh yeah. Well, also with the 22 cousins of the kids, their 13 aunts and uncles, and grandpa and grandma. It is the family reunion, which is always such a sweet reminder of how very, very blessed I am, and how grateful I am for each of the above in the lives of my children.

It wouldn't matter if the reunion was at the desert of Arizona, a park pavillion in Salt Lake, (like mine growing up) Disneyworld, or this beautiful river I can almost smell right now. The things we do every day that I love so much just wouldnt be the same without each of the people we do it with up here. (though, I must admit that I wouldnt care if even one of those sick-o's pulled me behind his boat skiing if the sunset-water was glass!)

Jocelyn is still sore from running with Auntie Treva who is helping her get in shape for field hockey. She has her alarm set for a 7:15am (yikes!!) fishing derby with Uncle Dan and a dozen of the older cousins. Today my sweet - but unpredictable - teen sat chatting for an hour or more with her Auntie Krissy. It might have been about the latest Twilight movie, or maybe it was about the German exchange student-cutie-pie that is coming to visit a neighbor boy here next month. I heard laughter. I saw a happy 13 year old, loved by her family. And I saw the girl that everyone else sees all the time, and that I get glimpses of when she is here in our home with just me. Tiny glimpses........And that is enough. (and OH, how I am trying to learn that those glimpses don't appear any more often with yelling or grounding!!!)

And I must hold on to those glimpses and recognize more and more that like my photography.; it can't all be the camera's fault why my pictures have sooooo far to go. Maybe it is the girl behind the lens. Maybe it is b/c I sure don't know what the heck I am doing, and I am really good at making the same mistakes over and over again. And again. And thinking it will turn out different the next time. And then expecting it to be brilliant and stunning.

So, here's to a week ahead of relaxing, BIG family time. And maybe even a good picture or 2.

Thankful for:

1) one bar of cell service for this laptop

2) sweet younger daugters who think I am funny

3) Luke Duke on his brand new wakeboard today

4) taking my neices and nephews behind our boat...all the time.

5) do-overs. and overs. and overs.

Summertime Math

2010-07-18T19:18:00.013-04:00

1 birthday boy,

2 little guys' in Luke's room

3 empty bottles of shampoo and conditioner from endless river showers

4 days of sweatshirts and blankets

5 days of becoming tan goddesses and smelling like coconuts

6 hours total sleep after several nites of catchin' up

7 scoops of Mint-Tingaling...

8 o'clock dinnertimes...

9 gallons of gas a day for tubing...

10 pairs of shoes packed for Sophia, alone...

11 years old was when it all began:

Before bras, deodorant, feminine products, and razors. Before perms, florescent-pink jellies, Izod polos or bedazzled-denim jackets. Before the first kiss, first crush, first break-up, first mistake, first job, first real heartache. Before the first "1st."

Before the last "first kiss," white dress, first fights with our belov-eds, and morning sickness. Before the first pains of labor, the last push, and falling in love even deeper with the seven little people 3 old friends carried. Before ONE of us had to shush another who was sharing too many stories with little ears who wanted to hear more...

And...Yes, of COURSE...there will be more.

First time on this river.

First time sleeping on Atlantis Island.

Definetly not the last.

Thankful tonite for:

1) friends who feel like sisters

2) a beautiful week off for Billy with hot, calm days of wakeboarding and skiing

3) cereal for Sunday-nite dinner

4) the sound of wind-chimes

5) firsts

Some moms....

2010-06-23T17:46:00.001-04:00

make elaborate b-day cakes. Some moms do crafts. Some moms sit and do their kids homework with them, making sure that they really understand what they are learning.

Some moms are patient all the time. Some moms don't mutter "Damnit!" every time they drop something, then tell their kids that we don't say that in our home. Some moms are cheerful in the morning, and actually enjoy the daily rituals of seeing their kids off onto the bus as the sun rises.

Some moms are anxious for their little ones to get on that said bus, wondering when the day will come when they will have time to accomplish the things they haven't done in their lives in the time they have been dropping things, apolizing, hugging, and wiping spills and bottoms. Some moms are glad that the kindergarten where they live is all full-day, as it means that there is more of that time to make up for all those spills and forgotten talents. Some moms feel overwhelmed and complete - depending on the day/minute/week?? - with one child; with six; or with 3 girls and a little tow-headed boy. Some moms don't miss the smell of a newborn's downy head; as they know that also means lost sleep, throwing up, the terrible two's, and no mommy-daughter trips to teach at a Indian school that they have dreamed about for years. This mom is reminded of that MOST of the time; til the moments of holding her brand new nephew and hearing his soft grunts and coos.

This mom...makes candy bar signs (and pretty damn - I mean DANG!! - good ones if she does say so herself !!) just like...her mom did. And doesn't plan it on purpose so that the unexpected 3 EIGHTH GRADE BOYS that accompanied 13 year old daugther off the bus read it first. They tried to hide their laughter with the "skor" part, but to no avail. She thinks she will only be hated for a few days by celebrated, sweet red-headed daughter. (Or maybe weeks.)

This mom...doesn't know how time went so fast. How it just seems like a few years ago that she took a deep breath in of her first baby's red downy tufts of hair.... never knowing that simply nursing in a garage-sale chair could bring such intense, unexplainable feelings of intense joy. This mom doesn't understand how the red hair can so quickly become all curled and ready for it's 1st dance, and it's first nervous last spray in hopes that ???? will notice its style tonite. This mom isn't ready to sit through 8th grade graduation tomorrow, knowing that in less time that Luke has been making us laugh, those red-headed locks will be the envy of a college campus out west.

This mom..is tired of people asking her what they decided to do with Luke Duke. "Are you putting him in school??" It's only the middle of June. Why should we have decided?? No biggie. She LIKES the not knowing. Makes life so fun and unpredictable. And when she hears, "No one EVER regrets waiting to send their son or daughter, but people OFTEN regret sending them. " Sounds alot like something this mom says often..."We would never regret HAVING just one more..but we might always regret NOT having one."

This mom....has a bag to pack and a boy and girl who want to swim at the neighbors. And about a hundred things to do before we leave for our beloved island. This mom...is ready for cereal at 9:00pm for dinner, sunset skiis, sleeping in, slowing down, Oregon friends visiting, 3 feet of air, no homework, cousin time, sister-in-law secrets, dates by boat, crickets and loon lullabies, and not thinking about the next chapter.

And making 2 more candy bar signs for the other 2 litte ones. That don't mention anything about Sugar Babies.

Real mothers.....

2010-06-08T09:00:00.004-04:00

"When did they stop putting toys in cereal boxes?

When I was little, I remember wandering the cereal aisle, (which surely is as an American phenomenon as fireworks on the 4th of July) and picking my breakfast food based on what the reward was: a frisbee with the Trix rabbit's face emblazoned on the front. Holographic stickers with the Lucky Charms leprechaun. A mystery decoder wheel. I could suffer through raisin bran for a month if it meant I got a magic ring at the end.

I cannot admit this out loud. In the first place, we are expected to be supermoms these days, instead of admitting that we have flaws. It is tempting to believe that all mothers wake up feeling fresh every morning, never raise their voices, only cook with organic food, and are equally at ease with the CEO and the PTA.

Here's a secret: Those mothers don't exist. Most of us - even if we'd never confess - are suffering through the raisin bran in the hopes of a glimpse of that magic ring.

I loko very good on paper. I have a family, and I write a newspaper column. In real life, I have to pick superglue out of the carpet, rarely remember to defrost for dinner, and plan to have BECAUSE I SAID SO engraved on my tombstone.

Real mothers wonder why experts who write for Parents and Good Housekeeping...seem to have their acts together all the time when they themselves can barely keep their heads above the stomy seas of parenthood.

Real mothers don't listen with humble embarrassment to the elderly lady who offers unsolicited advice in the checkout line when a child is throwing a tantrum. We take the child, dump him in the lady's cart and say, "Great. Maybe YOU can do a better job."

Real mothers know that it's okay to eat cold pizza for breakfast.

Real mothers admit it is easier to fail at this job than to succeed.

If parenting is the box of raisin bran, then real mothers know the ratio of flakes to fun is serverly imbalanced. For every moment that your child confides in you, or tells you he loves you, or does something unprompted to protect his brother that you happen to witness, there are many more moments of chaos, error, and self-doubt.

Real mothers may not speak the heresy, but they sometimes secretly wish they'd chosen something for breakfast other than this endless cereal.

Real mothers worry that other mothers will find that magic ring, wheras they's be looking and looking for ages.

Real easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one!"

-- Emma, the mom from....

This excerpt from a fave author's latest work made me smile. The book was 4 stars, by the way. (and one of those was because it addresses the autism/vaccine connection in a very real, powerful, personal way albeit it fiction. And I thought I loved my girl Jodi before this book....:)

Grateful today for:

1) all the real mothers I am surrounded by
2) honest, loving, supportive, amazing, inspiring, passionate, protective, loyal besties
3) a group of Young Women I adore and look up to and get to hang with every Tues. nite.
4) chocolate fondue
5) 72 degree blue -sky days with my Luke Duke in the back singing and the top down. Pure. Joy.
6) can't forget...sweet and short conversations with a (WAY TOO!!!) soon-t0-be hi-schooler. Little nuggets lately that are....the magic ring.

Let them be Little

2010-06-07T00:36:00.002-04:00

Let them be Little - NCCNS 2010 Click here after muting my blog music. (and get some kleenex 1st)

My first video of pix put to music. Testing it out to see how easy it was to put to Blogger, and how it looks. My sweet sis in law gets to watch hers in the morning when it is done, and I am currently obsessed with that song ("The lovely Years" by Fisher) but I will refrain from putting her bare 9 month pregant belly on my blog or on Facebook. Though I must admit that I think that is the best song on this earth for a video with children in it. I think I have listened to it apprx. 48 times.

Someday I will look back on it and remember with shame that this is what I spent a large part of Sunday doing while the good parent here played with the kids and did Personal Progress goals with Joce.

A few weeks ago my friend's mom said to her that "blogs are like reading those obnoxious Christmas cards but...every day." Well, my holiday greetings don't usually tell anyone about my kids' straight A's (quite the opposite for one, here, even if I wanted to brag...) or the marathon I just ran. Nor does it tell the reader that Em was the star of her soccer team.

It always has photos, like most people. Sometimes all of us, or sometimes just the little ones who change so quickly, and are growing up way too fast. We have smiles, and they are sincere. But tonite - ok, today, this weekend - I feel like I do nothing to cause those smiles. In fact, quite the opposite. And all the things I constantly do - or don't do - that I promise myself I am going to change seem as illusive and impossible as it is to keep the little ones little.

SOOO I am grateful tonite for my camera as it captures the happiness. And for feeling like if nothing else in life, I can make touching videos.

Some Gave All

2010-05-31T10:46:00.002-04:00

But all gave some....

So thankful today that:

1) my children will never have to wait for their dad to come home from another tour while protecting their freedom

2) others bravely stand by while their loved ones do

3) there are people like my old friend - an Army Ranger - who did 5 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fiercely loyal, tough, patriotic and passionate. If there were more like him serving, the evilness in the world would lessen.

4) that service is voluntary in our country. No matter how admirable or honorable it is, it doesn't change the heart of a mother or wife and the loss would feel the same.

5) the most beautiful weather in the history of Memorial Day weekend at the island which included waterskiing, swimming, fishing, planting flowers and veggies, and 2 movies.

They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation.

Henry Ward Beecher

One lousy garbage can...

2010-05-24T08:46:00.004-04:00

is all my neighbog dragged out of her garage this morning, as I walked little Emily up the street to catch her bus, Bella dragging me along, as usual. She then got in her luxury SUV, leaving at the exact same time every day as Em does, where I have heard this lady teaches at a middle school in another town. I often wonder if maybe she puts on an act here on our street and that I am wrong in feeling sorry for the tweens she teaches. Or if she puts on an act at school and I am right.

One garbage can for a week? I want to believe that it is because she is a passionate recyclin' machine, but I keep thinking of what it would be like with only 2 adult mouths to feed. I think that the lonliness wouldn't make up for the lack of garbage that drives me crazy here, as B's Saturday trip to the dump often has the truck overflowing.

I remember the only conversation this woman and I have had: As there are only 9 houses on our street, I wanted to include her - since her smile (HA!) is just so includable! - in our invation last year for a block party. Over June hamburgers cooked on a grill at the end of our cul-de-sac; a chance for the ones with kids just out of college to dish out advice to us "young ones" on what to expect...or even how very fast the time goes by. All of us at different stages of life; one with a mother who just passed who often told Luke he had the most beautfiul blue eyes she had seen in her 101 years. (I believed her. )

Our conversation didn't take place at the cookout with our mutual neighbors, rather through her glass door; no attempt to hide her annoyance at my knocking on her door on a late Saturday morning. I had to leave her invitation on her step, as she claimed she didn't know the code to open her door from the inside. "My husband sets it, and he isn't home." I wondered if he lets her out in the mornings to go to her job, and if she has to ask his permission to go anywhere else. I wonder if she goes to school and teaches her 6th grade girls about the reasons why slavery was abolished sprinkled with the causes of heartache and if it explains how one can pass a young 9-yr old girl and a wagging yellow lab every morning at a bus stop and never, ever smile.

I wonder....did she ever want children? Does she have any idea what is missing in her life? Did they try for a decade or more until they gave up? Did she go into this relationship knowing she would spend her life dragging out one garbage can every Monday morning and making an almost-total stanger wonder what could possibly be so sad in her life?

Those are the ponderings I started my week with today.

Grateful for:

1) Knowing the code on our door/garage/car and being able to come and go and do as I please most of the time

2) the joy that my job at home brings me and how much my kids make me smile every day

3) my little guy here at home with me, as preschool ended last week

4) the sight and scent of PEONIES in bloom...everywhere!

5) Batchelorette with girls I adore...and being glad I am not one, most of all.

Happy Momma's Day....

2010-05-09T22:31:00.004-04:00

to my first playmate, my biggest cheerleader, and my earliest teacher. The one from whom I have learned some of the most important things in life: you can completely lose yourself in a good book; forgiveness brings peace ; there is hope for moms and daughters after the teenager years :) ; the greatest joy is found in serving others; what it means to stick by those you love even in all of their imperfections; a short letter to someone just might be kept for years by the receiver ; sometimes love is best shown in the kitchen; never doubt the influence you can have on another's life; and that no matter what hobby or interest I have outside my home and children, I can never, ever get back the years...so enjoy these little ones while they are little, for it goes too fast.

This last month she took my 2 big girls to our nation's capitol, where they were able to see sides of her I know so welll, some I admired at their age; others I inherited and still resent. :) Those emotions that are always right on the surface, for one. (the red, puffy eyes at church and movie theatres is just not appealing) I am so glad that my daughters will never doubt the fierce pride that she has for our country, and the sacrifices that were made to give each of us the many blessings we take for granted every day. I love that they will remember the way she prepared for the trip by immersing herself in all the history of our Founding Fathers, and heard her recite their important, immortal words. I love that they learned that she doesn't do anything halfway, and that there is no such thing as a leisurely walk when there are things to do and places to go.

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. - Abraham Lincoln

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. - Oscar Wilde

As is the mother, so is her daughter.
Ezekiel 16:4

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much.
Jacqueline O.

THankful today for:
1) inspiring mothers everywhere......
2) those who aren't mothers, but understand their powerful, eternal influence
3) examples of friends who are the kinds of moms I want to be
4) a husband who loves me inspite of what I DONT do with the kids, and encourages me to stay home and be the biggest part of their growing up
5) my babies who own my heart

and lastly, hoping to win some new Photoshop Actions by posting a link to this cool blog here....

Who knew...

2010-04-22T22:30:00.002-04:00

that in proof-reading your 8th grader's paper, you can be humbled and reminded that "while we try to teach our children about life, our children teach us what life is all about." - ? - angela schwartz

She had to choose poems to write about and how they related to a book, and I love one of the ones she dissected.

Famous

By Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous
to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole,
not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

Reminds me of another one that is one of my all-time faves; the OTHER one she chose because she connected to it:
To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
--- inaccurately attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson

And lastly, I immediately thought of this gem that is my all-time fave church person quote, that I just can't read without that lump in the throat:

"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived." — Marjorie Pay Hinckley

Thankful for:
1) a quiet, dull (????) day with 4 children at "take your child to work day." Yes, my man is a gem and I owe him bigtime. BIG. time.
2) that I get new chances daily/weekly to try to REALLY LIVE
3) smell of fresh-cut grass
4) pink pink pink blossoms everywhere
5) gelato

Happy Happy Birthday....

2010-04-20T23:29:00.005-04:00

...to "Hampshire's
Belle Fille. "

Je t'aime, avec tout mon coeur.

"A dog has no use for fancy cars, big homes, or designer clothes. A water log stick will do just fine. A dog doesn't care if your rich or poor, clever or dull, smart or dumb. Give him your heart and he'll give you his. How many people can you say that about? How many people can make you feel rare and pure and special? How many people can make you feel extraordinary?"

~John Grogan (Marley and Me)

Thankful today for:
1) the way Bella waits at the bottom of the stairs for me when I shower/get ready. For how EVER long it takes.
2) the way she is so excited to see each of us, but especially yours truly
3) her whole body wag
4) her deep, loud bark is only heard when she thinks she sees/hears a deer
5) how Luke loves her so much he squeezes her too tightly and says, "I just LOVE you, Bells!"
6) the thought of puppies. Lots of them. Every year. In a year. From now. Be still my heart.

Taking a break...

2010-04-18T00:11:00.002-04:00

from my usual time I spend perusing photography blogs/websites to get back to my other love: it was time to catch up with some of the many "granola" blogs I read!

Luckily, I found something I had watched years ago but never kept. Or remembered where to find it.

I can't watch it without the ugly cry. Not because it is sad; simply....it is beauty-full.

Disclaimer: You just might drop everything to sprint to your OB, screaming, "Take out my I.U.D!! NOW! and P.S. You're FIRED!" )

http://www.lifeinmotionphotography.com/slideshows/amerlyn/

There are no words.

Except "don't say I didn't warn you."

Grateful tonite for:
1) yummy newborns around: friends and sister in laws either pregO or with newborns. Thank goodness.
2) memories
3) inspiration
4) Em and Luke in the cars today, riding all over the lawn
5) the smell of fresh cut grass

Friday foto week 13??....

2010-04-09T15:03:00.011-04:00

This week - for a few short days - I only have 2. TWO. As in a tad less than the average American family: 2.1 children. My big girls are in Wash. DC with their grandparents...my mom and dad visiting too quickly, and treating them to their Christmas present, a trip planned filled with fun. (we just heard from them, and they saw Barrack and Co. land via his helicopter on the White House lawn. Now that is a memory I hope my girls will treasure forever.)

It has been quiet.

(But, this is my blog, so I can be honest:)

It has been peaceful.

The 2 that are here are best friends. They adore each other. There laughter and silliness fill our home with joyous noise. There is no disdain or teenage angst. There is no annoyance over clothes, whose turn it is to unload the top part of the dishes, who has to walk Bella, no eye rolls, no big sighs, no fresh mouths, and no fights.

NONE.

I love my 2 middle school daughters and I know by the time I see them on Monday, I will be happy to take them in my arms and tell them I missed them.

It might even be true. :)

But for now, I am enjoying these 2 darlings whose bodies and minds are changing too quickly, and who I just can't get enough of. Their happy spirits, the fun we have looking for crabs or swinging or playing hide and seek on the playground together. Or even how much I love helping them with their juice boxes. Unwrapping their cheese sticks. Watching them laugh together.

Billy reminded me last nite that Carly and Jocelyn used to friends like that. I miss that stage, and hope that someday they will be again. There is hope, after spending a week with my big sis in March and reminisching about the fights and the angry tears of our teenage years...remembering with a lot of laughs. I miss her, and am so grateful for those memories of yesterday and today that we can make.

But for now, I will love the 2 that I have here and now. In my house til Monday nite. And I will try to always remember the things I will miss someday...someday way too soon:

These yummy toes that are growing way too fast. Almost always dirty. Going 89 miles per hour from the moment he wakes up and often he is the last kid asleep.

That delish little boy body that will someday have hair where it is bare now, and smell.

Alot.

And the way that, even at 4 years old, he is already modest and asked me to hold up a towel to "hide him" from our friends while he changed out of his wet trunks.

But not hidden from me.

I was the one that held the towel and helped him into the trunks. That I remembered to bring. (this time!) Made him warm and dry. Wrapped him up in it afterwards and held him.

Made him all better.

For now.

Those eyes. Those amazing, bright, full-of-life and wonderment and innocence, gift from the Bryant side BABY BLUES. They will always be blue and beautiful, but soon they will see and know too much.

His lack of fear. And total and complet boyness.

Those constant smiles. They are both JOYFUL beings. Happy, friendly, people-lovers. Trusting of all. They brightern others' lives with their enthusiasm. One of my greatest prayers is that this JOY will continue as they grow and are challenged by hormones, school, friends, and heartache. That the joy will always outweigh the pain and that we will see those bright smiles as often as we do now. They fill my heart.

That sticky, messy face from ice cream. Em is my eater that leaves it all on her face, kind of like how she leaves her heart in everything she does.

The painted toes with flowers after girlie mani/pedi's, as Carly and Jocelyn are "too big." (These pictures remind me of the song in Mama Mia, on Broadway: "......Slipping through my fingers all the time..." Major ugly cry right there in the theatre. )

The pony tail that she insists on doing herself. No help. "NO MORE BOBS, MOM!" she says, with her constant grin. She is growing it out, and I am fighting the little girl turning into a pre-teen before my very eyes. My heart aches with the thought of her last year coming up in her elementary school...

His love of popsicles. And thinking he needs one every time we go to the park. And how it drips incessantly and he doesnt care.

Childhood on a stick.

And yes, I really do want to eat him up even more than he wants another one. (Oh, just slow down, my little man, slow down.)

His bike helmet with Bob the Builder on it. He didn't want to take it off, even though we were hours from riding bikes on the beach sidewalk. I convinced him to take it off so I could see his handsome face for pictures.

Those hands that still grab mine to cross the road...for now. And hold my face. And remind me to slow down and enjoy them.
For this, today, I am grateful.

(Best friends forever. Fingers crossed.....)