Quiet Miracles

My near-daily walks with these little guys is one of the quiet (though not unrecognized!) miracles of my life right now. Four generations of us—some combination of iivo and me, my dad, EV, Ronald, and these little boys—traipsing around this neighborhood we’ve lived in for most of the last four decades. Paired with three dogs and a large double stroller, we’re quite the scene, I’m sure!

Buy You a Dress So Pretty

My daughter OG has moved into her sister's old room. (EV has moved into a new room, in a new house, in a new life, in a new town, with a new name... but that's another post for another day!)

One of the things OG is doing is to decorate the room in a Victorian theme, which includes a picture wall of old black-and-white framed photographs of family members. It is beautiful...both the room, and the photo wall!

When my aunt—my mother's sister and my daughter's great aunt—mailed her the old black-and-white photos, she stuck in a couple of color snapshots from my childhood. Among them was this gem:

Good heavens, Mom! Buy me a new dress, already. Put that thing I'm wearing on my sister, and buy me a new one, so we might not both look like, well... Hmmm... I don't know what to call that...

(Oh, and doesn't my cousin John look thrilled to be photographed next to his obnoxious little cousins visiting from out of state?!)

This picture makes me cringe and smile, all at the same time. Kind of like most things in life I look back on with a fresh, new perspective from the future...

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*Entry 7, July - The 12 Months of 2015 Blog Challenge 
The title is a line from the song "Pouring Rain" by David Stewart.

The Beautiful View Outside My Window Today

Now His Life Is Full of Wonder

Today is my son PT's birthday. He is not here to celebrate with us the way he has every year of his life to this point, which is eating his favorite foods--whatever he's chosen for the meals in any given year, and whomever he's chosen for us to share them with.

And even though he is a freshman in college this year, he isn't spending his first-birthday-away-from-home in a dorm room, either.

No, this year, he and some friends have taken a Spring Break road trip to Colorado. Not a bad way to spend your birthday, I'd say. (Beats the view around here today, that's for sure!)

Happy birthday, PT! Hope you're having a blast!

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*Entry 3b, March - The 12 Months of 2015 Blog Challenge 
The title is a line from the song "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver.

Let My Hair Grow Wild and Free

I received the following picture from my son today. His declaration: "So apparently my hair gets really poofy when it gets long."

That, and you suddenly look a lot like Andy Samberg...

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*Entry 3a, March - The 12 Months of 2015 Blog Challenge 
The title is a line from the song "Find Me" by Margaret Becker.

Spaniels!

I received the following photo texts from my daughter OG today:

Just randomly settling himself on a plastic bag...

With his little toy

All comfy

Isn't our little Finley adorable?!

Fruit Ninjas

Williamsburg, Fall 2013

This is my daughter EV's (and her photographer friend Jessica's) idea of a fun photo shoot...

Peace, Be Still

We have had a longer, deeper snowfall overnight that has closed schools and kept our Daddy home for the day!  Here's to surprise holidays in the middle of the week, when everything is canceled!

The thing that strikes me the most about fresh snowfall is the quiet it brings with it.  And I don't just mean the lack of traffic noise because no one's out on the roads.  In some other, deeper way, life is muffled by this thick blanket of white that has fallen and covered the earth.  Like the tousled head of a sleeping toddler, buried beneath hair and blanket, life has paused from its endless energy and constant motion and found stillness. Peace. 

With no notice, no time to fill the empty square with events and appointments, we are granted the gift of a true day off.  And if not that---(homeschoolers are not unable to reach their school building on a snow day, after all!)---at least a morning or an afternoon of rest. Refreshment. Renewal. 

So today, as I gaze out my window at the blanket of white,  I wrap my hands around the warmth of my teacup and breathe deeply of this reality: 

"Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:7)!

 

"Bird of Mouth"

Snow that amounts to anything and is profuse enough to whiten the ground is rare where I live.  This morning we awakened to such a blanket of white.  It is beautiful!

Clearly, the birds are also happy... happy with our backyard bird feeders on this snow day.  The word has gotten out--however birds share these sorts of things*--and we're the happening place to be!

 

 

All puffed up, trying to stay warm!

In other news on this fun snow day... (yes, even homeschoolers can have snow days...)


I had to make our big king-size bed around this remnant child, who had refused to vacate the warm family spot that all six of us had piled into when the alarms went off this morning!


The delicious breakfast our dad--who didn't have to go into work until 11:00--made us... pflintzen with filling and jam, bacon, and hot tea.  Yum!

 Homeschool on a cold snow day!

* My clever husband had called it "bird of mouth"--hence, the title of this blog post.  Whatever it was, we're happy that the snowfall sent all the hungry birds in town to our feeders!  Today I saw cardinals, finches (both house and yellow!), mourning doves, juncos, titmice, Carolina wrens, pine siskins, and red-breasted nuthatches, and a couple of species I don't even recognize. Our friendly chickadees and our lovely woodpecker stayed away today, for some reason.  They're home staying warm, I hope, like the rest of us!

Good Stock

My daughter OG tracked down these old pictures of each of her grandfathers, sized them, printed them, and put them inside old-fashioned, "Downton Abbey-style" frames for her sister EV's birthday.

Have you ever seen anything so adorable?!

A Different Kind of Joy on Mother's Day

Mother's Day is often a very pensive day for me.  Besides the usual dwelling on how grateful I am for a family who loves me in spite of my many, many failings and flaws... and how thankful I am that it is easy to love them in spite of theirs...

I am also very aware that there are many who--though they love and appreciate their own mothers on this day--also become painfully and acutely aware on this day of the fact that they themselves are not mothers.  Some are alone and lonely, wanting desperately to be wives and mothers, but not having yet walked down that path.  Some are walking through the aching pain of infertility, desperately aware of their empty wombs and their hearts that have motherly love to give, without object.  I know that today is sometimes hard for these sweet friends.

I'm also aware of a set of dear friends for whom Mother's Day holds a very special and different meaning. These are my friends who have opened their hearts and homes to a new child through adoption.  Some of these dear women had birth children of their own before they adopted, and some did not.  Either way, they found room in their lives to love another as their own.  These children are so much theirs, that the fact that they're adopted has long ago ceased to be something anyone even remembers!

These women--these families--inspire me and challenge me and sometimes even convict  me.  I admire them, and I appreciate them, and I love them.  Aren't they beautiful?!