this moment ::

Inspired by Soulemama's {This Moment}

{this moment} - a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from my week.  I want to pause and savor this moment. 

this moment ::

Inspired by Soulemama's {This Moment}

{this moment} - a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from my week.  I want to pause and savor this moment. 

this moment ::

Inspired by Soulemama's {This Moment}

{this moment} - a single photo - no words - capturing a moment from my week.  I want to pause and savor this moment. 

Portraits of my children

Whenever I can capture the essence of my children with my camera, I am delighted!  There are times when I view my world as through a camera lens, I can see the pictures before I ever see them on screen or paper.  It can be frustrating to me when the camera isn't seeing what I see for whatever reason, the lighting might not be strong enough for the camera, or it might be too strong, or the pictures come out blurry from the movement of the child.  These days, it’s rare for me to be able to capture that special millisecond of time because of all of the demands, but it certainly is special when I do.  Sometimes it comes from a child calling my attention, other times I happen to be a part of the action and can see the photo unfold right before my eyes. 

I love portrait photography.  It tells a story without words, it has emotion, it has meaning.  It’s like carrying that one moment into eternity; that one moment that gets frozen forever.  It’s that special. 

Last night I had one of those moments.  The story goes like this.  Elise comes up to me telling me about this bee costume she made, I look up from the computer and know instantly to go grab the camera.  She had cut and pasted bee antenaes and wings, found the perfect yellow shirt from her drawer, attached a stinger, she had thought of everything.  Out the door we went to get the right amount of lighting and click click click.  The photo I was most proud of was captured towards the end as we were wrapping up our little session.  She happened to look up at the sky and there is was, that was amazing.  Intuitively, I had an a-ha moment and snap, I got it.  Now I have a wonderful little memory of these 5 minutes spent reveling her little homemade costume, and grateful I took the time to make a big deal of her creativity.   

It's his turn

It seems like only yesterday that I was introducing you all to our newest guy in the family.  He’s been with us already for a whole year.  I’m stunned.  This has been the fastest year of my life.  He’s a joyful little bundle, loves to be held, loves to play with all his siblings and loves to say his first word, "good!" 

This birthday celebration I wanted to keep simple.  Simple in a 7 person family kinda way.  I picked a rainbow theme, bright and definitely cheerful and is he.  I was coming up empty handed as far as a handmade mama gift, so last minute I headed over to Good-Will and purchased a large men's tie-dye t-shirt to sew him a pair of pants for the party!



Party production was at its finest in the wee hours the night before!  Sewing, and cake decorating made for quite the memories, was so glad to get the machine back out again, it had been far too long.

We had an amazing day!  Everything came together perfectly for his first little birthday.  So many memories were made that day, I'll never forget how he ate his cake and how he played outside, how nice it was to have family over and relax and enjoy the day in a non-stress kind of way.  We're so grateful for this little guy, his sweet, and charming personality.

Happy 1st Birthday Nathaniel Gene!
xoxo,
Mama

Outside

This weekend, lots of time was spent out of doors.  Stroller riding/pushing, biking, planting, measuring, watering, it was a full weekend.  We're getting our garden ready for the planting season.  All the root vegetables were planted several weeks ago when the moon was in the dark phase.  I refer to this often.  We're excited another planting season is upon us!  I love this change of pace in our family day to tending to the small crops planted, excited to see what grows best this year (hoping for more squash this year and earlier tomatoes!) Its always an experiment isn't it?  So much depends on the weather and how many deer pass by, but each year we gain more experience and knowledge to apply to the next growing season.

A Little Montessori

I don’t get around to doing as many Montessori-like activities as I wish these days, but on Friday it so happened that I was able to sit Nathaniel down in front of his Object Permanence Box and he stayed engaged for longer than I expected, especially with me snapping the camera hoping to not distract him.  

I have been a big fan of the Montessori approach for teaching children for many years now and feel like I'm at a place where I can practice some of that knowledge researched years ago with our baby Nathaniel.  I had introduced the Object Permanence Box about a month ago and he would just crawl away mouthing the ball.  But on this day, he stayed engaged, so that tells me that he is ready for it.  It challenged him.  

I have also opened a YouTube channel for my blog.  Its not perfect by any means, but I wanted to share some of the videos I've taken and will continue to add more.  So far, there are two uploaded, I have more that I need to locate and upload.  You can find them on my channel here.  {This is also the video of Nathaniel doing his work with his Object Permanence Box.}