PhotoHunt Saturday: Creamy

This is the creamy white clematis, Henryi. I moved him last fall from the back of the yard to an arbor that gets more sun up by the deck. So far he seems much happier in his new home, not only does he get more light, but he’s also protected from the harsh winds that can blow through my yard. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about gardening over the years, it’s that you have to be willing to be flexible and change your plans, things don’t always work out quite the way you want them to in a garden.

A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself. ~ May Sarton

See more PhotoHunt Saturday pics here!

thursday challenge: sweet

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

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

baby bump

Did some more baby bump portraits this weekend of Meagan. She’s feeling good but getting to the point where you start to get uncomfortable and wonder just how big the baby is going to get before it comes out! We tried using a window as our backdrop on some of the pics and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. Still learning the ropes with my camera though, and now I have a new flash too, I do wish I was a bit more technically proficient sometimes:)

See more Weekend Snapshots here!

skywatch friday

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

wordless wednesday

People have been drawing on walls since ancient times and today many graffiti artists have crossed over into making a living off their art. Keith Haring was a famous artist who began his career drawing on advertising boards in the subway. His foundation has a fun website for kids (of all ages!) where you can play games (like Hangman) or draw your own graffiti. Sticking with the Detroit theme I have going, this week’s WW photo is of some cool graffiti on a wall downtown. See other Wordless Wednesday participants here.