Day 15 of gratitude

Today I am grateful that my kids are still young enough to be happy, I mean ridiculously happy, about the little things.  This morning, I got Ella two packs of colorful hair bands at Target, and the joy on her face when she saw them, stacked them up, counted them, described the colors, and put them in a special box all on their own in the bathroom, well, it was remarkable. These $5 hairbands just made her really really happy.  And that made me really happy.  There are also a gazillion of them so I had a flash forward to her going off to fifth grade wearing the last of these.  As I put them in her hair while she goes off to first grade, third grade, whatever, will I remember how happy they made her the day she got them when she was 4?  I sure hope so.

They are pretty awesome colors, right?

 

Budding photographer

Ella has taken quite an interest lately in taking pictures.  I caught her lugging my good camera around one day which I quickly whisked away and instead showed her how to use my cell phone camera.  She still has a little work to do on composition but she's not too bad.  Here is the picture she took of me right after we voted last week - at least she got the "I voted" sticker, and really, the top of my head is pretty overrated:

Day 14 of gratitude

Today I am grateful to live in a small enough community that there are always people I'm excited to see, wherever I find myself around town.  I went on my third elementary school tour this morning and I am now 3 for 3 in running into families I know on these tours, despite the schools being all over town and very different types of schools.  Durham is a special place with wonderfully diverse and interesting people, and I am grateful to live here.

I will be REALLY grateful when this school search is over but there are many months and many decisions still to be made.  Maybe for today, I'll just be grateful to have the time and resources to just have the opportunity to seek out the best school fit for our family.

Family Holiday Pictures

We are uber-lucky to have a very good friend who is a very good photographer.  No, scratch that.  He's an amazing friend and an amazing photographer.  And every year, he graciously heads out with our family to whatever location I have selected, and manages to take beautiful pictures of our little family.  I love holiday cards and I look forward every year to taking pictures with our pal and then finding just the right one for a card.   Our photo shoot is coming up this week so I've been trying to decide what everyone should wear and where we should go.  I have probably spent way more time than is reasonably healthy picking out the perfect outfits, you know, the ones that coordinate but don't look matchy matchy, the ones that look nice but not too fancy or fussy.  And I can predict with near certainty that someone(s) will smear peanut butter on themselves or refuse to wear the carefully-selected shoes or only smile at the camera for "ONLY ONE MORE PICTURE, MOMMY" (that would be Ella lately).  But I'm just going to take a deep breath, trust our friend to find the joy, and look forward to another one of these great moments captured for us to enjoy for a long time to come....

2011 at the American Tobacco Complex in downtown Durham.  I'd long wanted to do a photo shoot at this great urban site with all of the brick and metal and interesting restored architectural details.  Both kids were mighty agreeable on this cold day.  One of our friends commented after seeing the picture that everyone looked great but why does Josh have to wear the same thing every year?  Duly noted.  Although I do think  that Ella might wear these same jeggings in this year's picture.  Stay tuned.... 

2010 in our living room.  I still don't know how we pulled this one off with a brand-new baby.  I do remember that the only way we could get Ella to smile was to promise her some of "those red and green things" (i.e. Christmas M&Ms).  Look at how she lit up for that chocolate.  Since we wisely put Ella on my lap, you can't even tell I'm wearing maternity jeans!  Both kids are wearing Mimi-made sweaters in this photo which makes me so happy. 

2009, Christmas Tree Lot in the Asbury Church parking lot.  I love the twinkly lights behind us, Ella's adorable smile, and because I'm a sucker for baby fashion, her little Tea Dress and faux Uggs.  I remember this picture well because our buddy called us up and asked if we could come take the picture RIGHT NOW.  We got ready in 10 minutes and it might be my favorite one yet.

2008, Duke Park, right down the street from our house.  We must have 40 pictures from this day and Ella's expression never changed.  She WAS a serious baby.  I love the light in the yellow tree behind us.  One of the photography blogs I follow talks a lot about magic light, and to me, at least, this picture has it.

Day 13 of gratitude

Today, I am grateful for the chance to relax at the end of the day with nothing on my agenda but to catch up on TV.  It was a cold, rainy day here and I've run miles - literally for exercise and figuratively for work and parenting - and it felt so darn good to collapse on my couch with the remote after both kids were tucked in bed.  Two episodes of Nashville, one of House Hunters, and 5 baskets of laundry later, I feel miraculously de-stressed. 

Day 12 of gratitude

I sat at my computer for a good 10 minutes last night trying to decide on the subject of yesterday's gratitude post.  On one hand, I feel like every day I should be grateful for the big things in my life, really the only things that matter - my family, my friends, my sheer luck at being a healthy, happy person with plenty of means for all of my needs and most of my wants.  And so that part of me feels kind of silly when my day of gratitude goes to something like my crock pot (but gosh darn it, I am grateful for that thing, especially on Mondays when we roll in from Ella's art studio at 5:45 which is exactly 15 minutes after we normally sit down to eat dinner).  The other hand says, though, that the idea of a month of gratitude is to think about all of the things for which I am grateful, the really big and the really small, because those things together are what makes life whole.

So today (well, really for yesterday), I'm going with crock pot for the gratitude main dish, served with a heaping side of thanks for my family and friends.  And from here on out, I'm giving myself the freedom to be grateful for anything that sticks out to me that day, be it really important or really trivial.

Me in the frame

So often I am the one taking pictures of our family, but every now and then someone captures an image that actually has me in it.  I love this picture so much because it shows me doing something I love - taking pictures - and most of all, it shows my girl, so happy and confident and sweet and willing to pose for me.  Tonight we were looking at pictures that our fabulous friend F took of us this weekend (including this one), and I said to her "Isn't F a great photographer?"  Ella replied "Yes he is, mommy, but so are you."

Gratitude: Days 9, 10, and 11

We were away this weekend and I could probably have tried harder to figure out the Blogger app on my phone, but if you were in a beautiful mountain house full of friends, 9 lively children, a kitchen constantly pumping out delicious food, and a hot tub, would you have?  Me neither.

Day 9:  Today's gratitude is for the beauty of the night sky.  On Friday night after all the children were in bed, all of the adults in our mountain house party were out on the deck, enjoying a bottle of wine and the hot tub.  With all of the house and porch lights out, the star-filled sky was especially bright and glorious.  Josh and I always say we spend too little time outdoors at night, so I am grateful for the chance to take in the amazing beauty of the night sky on a crisp, clear evening in the mountains of North Carolina.

Day 10: Piggy-backing on Day 9, today I am grateful for mother nature's bounty as seen in the daylight. Last year on this mountain trip, we discovered a short hike off the Blue Ridge Parkway that was just the right distance for little legs to walk, and it ends, just too perfectly, at a beautiful rock deck on top of a rushing waterfall. We took the same hike this year, and just walking through the woods with my family and friends, with few people around, and so much to see - the streams, the mountains, the trees, the birds and bugs - just felt so peaceful and free. Thanks, Mother Nature.

Day 11: Today I am grateful for those perfect weather days that come around every so often when the outside temperature is so perfectly not hot and not cold that all you want to do is throw open the windows and breathe deep. Today is one of those days and it feels especially lovely after coming home from a few days away to have the windows wide open.