Category Archives: my life

i heart dad

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Last year we spent Father’s Day at my sister’s house. My mom was still here, very ill and struggling, still hoping that her battle with lung disease would have a happy ending. My son and daughter-in-law were reeling after losing their first unborn daughter to kidney disease, and my one year old niece Aryielle was just home from the hospital after becoming critically ill and having been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes.  A year later we are going to brunch with Andy and Meagan, the onesie in the photo is for our son who is expecting a daughter any day now. This afternoon we’ll go to my dad’s house, barbecue some chicken, and watch two year old Aryielle run around the backyard, healthy now but forever dependant on finger pricks and insulin to remain so.  It seems that time really does fly, whether you’re having fun or not. Happy Father’s Day:)

thursday challenge: sweet

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At Thursday Challenge a theme is announced each week. You may either take a new photograph related in some way to the theme, or select one that you have taken previously. This week the theme is sweet. I thought about using one of my iStock pics of strawberries, but decided to go back in time and post a photo of my kids when they were little and oh so sweet! This is one of my favorite pics of them. They were playing in the backyard on a hot summer day, naked as can be, filling buckets with water and turning their sandbox into a lake. I suppose I have babies on the brain lately. Meagan is doing well and due in just two weeks. I bought a really cool little stroller to keep here at the house yesterday and the Fed Ex guy brought the Noah’s Ark toy box I ordered (which came in a million pieces so Mr. bookbabie will have to put it together this weekend!). I know Meagan is ready over at her house and the two grandmas-to-be are definitely ready too…now we just need us a baby to spoil:)

Sweet memories remind us of the roads we have traveled and the people we have loved. ~Flavia

PhotoHunt Saturday: Lock

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This is the group shot from my mom and dad’s 5oth Wedding Anniversary party in June 2006. It was the kind of day I knew that I needed to savor, to lock away in my memory forever because things were about to change for my family. I don’t know how I knew this, I suppose as we get older and our parents age it’s a given. Yet, it was more than that. I remember that the air itself had a golden glow that afternoon. My parent’s four children were together as we rarely are, most of their grandchildren too. But as great as the day was, there was also something very fragile about it. It felt like we were on top of a hill looking back at our life as a family, ending a chapter and about to turn the page. I wanted it to be the perfect day for my parents because deep down in my heart I knew as if someone had whispered it in my ear, that their perfect days together were quickly winding down. The following winter my mother’s health began to noticeably decline, and by May we began the rounds of doctor appointments and hospital stays that marked the last difficult fifteen months of her life. Memory can be a wonderful thing, binding us to our past, but only if we lock in those pages filled with joy and let the sorrows go.

PhotoHunt Saturday

skywatch friday

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I took the photo above on the patio this morning. We’re in store for another beautiful spring day around here. Yesterday, Meagan and I had fun shopping at garage sales and a resale shop for Brooklyn. I must say, that’s the way to go, especially for toys and clothes that they grow out of so quickly. It’s starting to seem real for all of us, that this new little soul is going to come into our lives very soon. And yet we often seem to add, “if everything goes all right” at the end of a sentence when talking about the baby and the future. We’ve tried to stop feeling that way, tried to assume that everything will be fine this time, but I think the truth is we are all balancing precariously on our own individual emotional tightropes. Going through each day eating, talking, working, pretending everything is okay all the while afraid deep down that one more heartbreak may be one more too many. Sometimes I worry that we need this little girl too much, is it really fair to expect one small baby to heal so many bruised and battered grownup hearts? Then again, maybe we’re already falling. Maybe we’ve been falling since we lost my mom and baby Kiley, maybe the moment we hold Brooklyn for the first time each of us will finally find that soft place to land.

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven. ~Henry Ward Beecher

best of youtube

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My husband asked me what flying dreams mean yesterday. I told him I always thought they were confident, hope filled dreams. In his dream he was flying with ease, turning and soaring through the air while holding something up with his hands (he couldn’t remember what it was). Strangely enough, I had just run across this flying video on YouTube the day before his dream when a Twitter friend posted a link to a similar one and I saved it for a future post. I haven’t had a flying dream in a long time myself and I told him that I hoped it was me he was holding in his hands. Mr. bookbabie may not be Superman, but he’s been my best friend for thirty years and I’d go flying with him any old time!

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious.  And why shouldn’t it be? – it is the same the angels breathe. ~Mark Twain

teaser tuesday

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Rather than pick up the book I’m reading now for my two Teaser Tuesday lines, I went to my bookshelf and pulled out The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodson Burnett. As a young reader, it was one of the first novels I read and I haven’t looked at it for many years. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read the actual book in my hands, I bought it just so I would have a copy in my library. I hope my future granddaughter is a reader. I would love to have her wander into my den and pick up this book someday, then ask me what it’s about and whether I liked it. When I opened the book this morning my eye went right to this wonderful line, “Fair fresh leaves, and buds-and-buds-tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air.”

I’ve been working outside a lot for the past few days, weeding and planting flowers in my own garden. We’re making a lot of major changes in the landscaping around the house this year, taking down many old trees and shrubs. There are times in our lives when we don’t want change, when we perhaps get a little too comfortable with the way things are. This spring, I felt like I needed to shake things up a bit. While Mr. bookbabie was concerned about cutting down the overgrown trees, I couldn’t wait to have them gone. I wanted to cut out all the old growth around our property and let in more light, start over again with new trees and shrubs and a whole new color palette for the flowers. Perhaps it’s silly, but I think a part of me hopes that this landscape makeover will also help makeover my spirit, cutting out the old dead growth and letting in a rainbow of fresh new light 🙂

(almost) wordless wednesday

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I made this doll for my granddaughter Brooklyn, who is due on July 1st. When I was a young girl I loved Raggedy Ann and I still keep a small collection of handmade Raggedy Ann dolls in our guest bedroom piled high on an antique chair. I’ve often daydreamed about how fun it would be to have a granddaughter discover them someday while crawling around and exploring our house. We dream a lot of dreams in our life, dreams about big careers and big paychecks, about exotic vacations and maybe even about movie star boyfriends, as Americans we are taught to dream big. But I think maybe it’s the little dreams that matter the most. The little dreams along with those small everyday wonders that when added together expand our hearts and make us more grateful, more loving people. So maybe give yourself a break today, set aside those big dreams that seem to be a million miles away, and go ahead and dream yourself just one sweet and lovely little dream.

See other Wordless Wednesday participants here.

being and becoming

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I took some flower pics for fun this morning. I’m still struggling with the whole balance thing, I always feel like I should be doing chores or only taking the kind of iStock photos that sell well. I wonder if it’s mostly an American problem, always feeling like we need to be doing something that will make money or accomplish some kind of work related goal? We do tend to be a workaholic society. Why is it when we do something solely to feed our spirit we feel guilty, even though we know in our hearts that at the end of our lives we aren’t going to wish we had spent more time at the office or vacuuming the floors! Hmm, so I think I’ll take a me day today, do some creative stuff, read, meditate, maybe even watch the grass grow (really, I sprinkled grass seed this week outside my office window and it’s cool and rainy so it’s going to sprout any minute now!). But first, I should throw the wet towels in the dryer before they start growing mold, empty the dishwasher, clean off my messy desk…

Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.  ~Matthew Arnold