day 11 - dreams - land and farm

He grew up in "the meadow".  A large, open, rolling field full of waist high grass, wildflowers, and plenty of critters I'm sure I don't want to think about.  His Granny's house was right next door, affording all the luxuries of a good grandma.  Before dinner ice cream snacks and Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies, as well as built in babysitting that allowed the watching of movies that the mom did not allow.  Behind his house was a forest, full of tall pine trees and "the spring".  A small creek for finding salamanders and crawdads.  Endless dead branches for erecting forts and other military paraphernalia that all boys create.  Boyhood utopia.

Over the years, whoever owned the land in "the meadow" divided it up.  They sold it to a developer or a builder.  And the builder started to erect nice little cookie cutter houses on it.  Slowly but surely, "the meadow" is now almost all full of these nice homes.  Which is all fine and well.  It doesn't bother me much, one way or the other.  I'm really not much of an outdoor girl.  (In fact, photography is really the biggest prompt to GET me outside).  But the death of "the meadow" has been a hard pill to swallow for him... for his sister, his mom and his dad.

They long for the old days.  When it was just those few houses, and that beautiful sprawling meadow.  It didn't belong to them, per se, but it was the beauty that awaited their eyes every time they looked out their windows.

I think that's where his dream began.  I don't remember when he first told me about his dream to have land and a farm.  I am quite sure, however, that I dashed it... hard.  I'm sure I said "no way".  I'm sure I said "are you CRAZY?"  I'm sure I said "what on earth would you want THAT for?"

Thankfully, since those first days of marriage, I've learned a lot about what it means to be in a relationship.  What it means to be in a marriage.  What it means to have his dreams become mine, and what it means for my dreams to become his.

It's not all about me.

I still feel that way.  Why would you want that?  Why would you want that responsibility?  Taking care of what we do have is all we can manage as it is.   We already feel like we have no free time.  We already feel like we hardly get to spend any time together.  Having that would only mean more things that require managing and taking care of and less for us.

I don't relate.  At all.

But he wants, and has always wanted, land.  Space.  Boyhood utopia.  A place for the kids to run and explore.  Go and do.  A barn and a tractor.  I honestly cannot remember if he wants animals, too.  (And I'm afraid to ask to remind myself!)  A few years ago, I let go.  I let go of trying to control him.  I let go of trying to talk sense into him.  I let go of all the negative things I saw that came with that dream.  It is HIS dream.  It just is.  And if he wants it that bad, then go for it. It'll be my dream, too.

I don't think he really believed me!  For a long time.

Now he casually looks for land.   Some day.  Some day he'll have what he wants.

Our elderly neighbor is just a delight.  He and his wife were never able to have children, so it is just him.  He has been a tremendous blessing to us as we've lived in this house.  He's helped Shawn with countless house projects and outdoor endeavors.  He seems to relish in passing on the things he knows to the younger generation, and relish that he's found some young folks who care what he has to say.  He's enjoyed our kids, almost as much as we do.  He has any tool imaginable.  He grows a garden and gives us his tomatoes, zucchini and cantaloupes.  He checks our mail and rolls down our trash when we go out of town.  And when it is warm outside, he spends his first 10 minutes home every afternoon just talking to me and filling up a tiny bit of the lonely hole in this isolated stay at home mom.  He's just a delight to us.   He has land, and a farm... just 10 or so minutes down the road.  And he lets us go visit, any time we wish.

In fact, since the weather was so lovely last weekend, Shawn took the kids over there while I got some things done around the house.  For now, this will do.  Mr. Farrel's farm will be our borrowed farm while our kids grow up.

When I read the prompt for day 11 -- dreams  -- I knew instantly it would be this that I'd document.  His dream for land and a farm.

(And I would just like to say that, it IS a little bonus, now that I am into photography like I am, that farms and wide sprawling land happen to make just wonderful backdrops for pictures.  that had NOTHING to do with my change of heart, I promise!)

day 08 - joy of love - gift from the heart

Day 09 for the Joy of Love mini-course was Gift from the Heart -- what they have said, done, promised, given.

Oh, how many things I could have shot for this!!!  But in the end, I decided to go with my crown necklace.

Shortly after we were married, I read "Wild At Heart" by John Eldredge.  I felt like I was reading the manual to my husband.  It explained so very much about the masculine outlook on life that I just had no idea about previously.  I am forever grateful to John Eldredge for writing this book and keeping me from inadvertently trying to emasculate my husband and future sons.  When I heard, though, that they were writing a version for women, I could hardly contain my excitement.  "Captivating" by John and Stasi Eldredge proved to be no less than everything I expected it to be.  It spoke to my heart more than nearly anything I've ever read before.

When I was a little girl and twirled before my father, asking the question that every little girl asks ("Am I lovely?  Am I beautiful?  Am I worth saving?  Am I the beauty to rescue?")... the answer I felt was "no".

Just becoming aware of these longings and feelings that are the essence of my being female was extremely healing.  Realizing that even though my earthly father didn't affirm those longings in me, my Heavenly Father does find me lovely.  He does find me beautiful.  He does find me worth saving.  Very much so.  And yet there is still that earthly part that wants to be found those things by someone else here on earth.

Shawn has most certainly stepped up to that role.  I strove so very hard for all my life, studying, achieving, working to be the best... to go a place I didn't even know I was going.  I worked as a chemical engineer out in the 'real world' for 3.5 years.  And it sucked the life out of me from the inside out.  It was awful.  Just awful.  On top of that, I felt God's gentle tug at my heart that I needed to put Him first, and put my family first.  We finally made the decision that I would 'retire' from Corporate America. I would become a stay at home wife.  Well before I was ready to become a mom.  A very strange cultural decision.

When I quit, Shawn gave me a gift.  From his heart.  He went on the quest to find a necklace with a crown.  Even though I'd never felt like a princess to anyone in my life, he asked me if I'd now be his princess.  I wish I'd written about the gift then when the emotions were fresh and raw.  But I didn't.

I wear the necklace often, and I often wonder if Shawn really understands the significance to me.

day 07 - joy of love - generations

Day 7's prompt was generations.  Oddly enough, we were visiting my inlaws when I got the assignment.

Unfortunately, I stink at posing people.  Stink Stink Stink.  Not to mention that my kids perform oh so well on command for photos.  So these pictures make me roll my eyes, because they couldn't be more artistically boring.  But they do capture the generations...

I took the top left image on Sunday for the assignment.  That is my husband with the kids, with his parents.   (I asked them to make a silly face).  But I cheated a little with the others, to include all the applicable family.

I also included the generations shot my grandma requested last fall, with all of us on her front porch.  My grandparents, the three grandkids and their spouses, and the great grandchildren.  I included a shot from last summer with all the cousins eating ice cream on our patio.  That is one I'm proud of, and wasn't orchestrated.  It really just happened that way.  And lastly, one of my mom and her husband, me and the kids last spring.

Those are the generations!

day 06 - joy of love - what THEY love

We got Gizmo just a few months after we married.  Shawn could not STAND not having a dog.  He begged daily until I caved.  We had to go with something small that could handle apartment living, so we went with a Shih Tzu.  We were in a new place, as newlyweds, who didn't know many people.  We trained Gizmo well.  Very well.  He was our baby for five years.  He was a great dog.

Then we had kids.

Gizmo went through a period of mourning when Nathan was born.  Literally.  Then five months after Cora was born, Gizmo went on sabbatical to the grandparent's house.  I had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, Cora was five months old, I kept forgetting to let Gizmo back inside when we went outside to do his business, Nathan just couldn't wrap his head around the fact that kicking and hitting Gizmo wasn't okay and received 15 spankings a day over it, and I just couldn't take it any more.   He stayed there until this past August.  Not quite two years.

I honestly didn't want him to come back, but Cora loves him so much and Nathan wanted him back, too, at the time.  Shawn did, too.  No one else seemed to be on my side, except Gizmo.  He was much, much happier in grandparent land.  I used to love Gizmo so much.  But now he's just something else that whines and begs at me, causes trouble, refuses to obey, and gives next to nothing back.  He's incredibly neurotic and weird and barks and howls at imaginary things on top of any time the kids make any noise at all and I'm just DONE with this dog.

Things went okay until just a few weeks ago when Cora really ramped up her fascination with Gizmo.  Of course, being in a different house with different rules "untrained" a good deal of all that we'd worked hard in the beginning to create in our good indoor dog.  But now on top of those issues, Cora's constantly hitting him, kicking him, pulling his tail, throwing toys at him, covering him with blankets or our rice bags... he's snapped at her on many occasions because she just won't take "no" for an answer.  NOTHING seems to deter her!  I am constantly punishing her for her refusal to leave him the heck alone!

I'm DONE with it.  I'm done with the howling, barking, neuroticness.  DONE I tell you, DONE.  I sent this email to my husband about an hour ago, actually.

i am dead serious.  i would like to investigate giving gizmo to someone. i do not want him to live here anymore.

Today I instituted a new rule.  No one may play with Gizmo ANY MORE.  Done.  I am so done.  It's over.

But when Day 06 came out... what THEY love... I knew it had to be Gizmo.  Cora doesn't care much for any toy over another... but by golly does she LOVE Gizmo.  And I'm oh so over her LOVE of him.

She begs to give him a treat first thing every single morning.  She must find him first thing every single morning.  She begs for him to come with us any time we sit down, which is only going to cause more neuroticness and wiggedoutedness and issues...

So today, THEY love Gizmo.  Here they are, giving him treats - his favorite greenies.

day 05 - joy of love - love to hate

I have a gem of a husband.  I really do.  But there are a few things about him that drive me up the wall.  They are little.  Inconsequential.  But I've found that little things some times annoy me more than great big things.

My husband doesn't care if the house is clean... as in sanitized.  He doesn't care if I clean the bathrooms.  Windex the windows.  Or mop the floors.  But he does like for it to be neat and tidy.  Clutter free.  Everything in its place, and minimalistic. He's generally very good about cleaning up after himself.  He knows how to cook and clean and steps up to the household plate very well.

But something he always, always, always seems to do is leave the syrup bottle out in the kitchen.  Any time he fixes himself something for breakfast that requires the syrup... he leaves the bottle wherever he happened to be when he used it.  Sometimes on the counters.  Sometimes on the Island.  But never, ever, ever back into the pantry!  There will be no other evidence in the kitchen that he made himself waffles... except for that darn syrup bottle.

He did it Saturday before last.  And as I was cleaning up the kitchen that morning, I confessed my frustration to him.  Not in a mad way.  In a funny way.  It's not a big deal at all.  It's silly, really.  But it drives me stinking bonkers that he never ever.ever.ever. puts the syrup bottle away!!!  We laughed together.  It was fun.  (Because I have many little quirks that drive him bonkers as well... which we've probably talked about a little more often.  It was fun to share the other direction).

A few days later... The bottle of syrup was left right smack dab in the MIDDLE of the island.... I grabbed my phone and started to send him a picture message of the bottle, saying "It's like you're doing it on purpose!!!!!"  But I didn't... because I have a new smartphone.  And I cannot for the life of me figure out how to send a single photo in a text message anymore.  It seems to default to slideshow and is weird and I'm just a teeny tiny bit frustrated about the situation.  At any rate... I started to, but I didn't.

Later at lunch, I picked the bottle to move it out of the way and make lunch for the kids.  And then I found a sticky note stuck to the island, previously hidden underneath the syrup.  It said "I Love You!".

HE DID DO IT ON PURPOSE!!!!

We had a great laugh about that one!  So when Day 05's assignment was Love to Hate... something about your loved one that gets on your nerves... this was the first thing to pop into my mind.  : )

Unfortunately, we traveled last weekend and I had to stage this scenario.  That's not my island and it's not my syrup and in fact, that is my handwriting and not my husband's!  But it doesn't matter.  I'll remember this little incident forever now.

I so love these creative projects... documenting a little slice of life, forever.


See the rest of day 05 of Willette's Joy of Love participants here!

day 04 - joy of love - what they wear

Day 04 for the Joy of Love course is What They Wear.

More appropriately at my house it would be what they do NOT wear.... but since these images are going public, I couldn't go that route....

Neither of my children have cared much about their clothes, ever.  We've never had an argument over "I don't want to wear that!" knock on wood.  However, the last 3 or 4 times Nathan has found the next size up shoe in his closet... he becomes obsessed with them. All other shoes that he currently wears become obsolete.  Completely.  Even if they are WAAAAY too big, he insists they fit perfectly.  There is no convincing him otherwise.

Many many shoes ago, we had a pair of Stride Rite sneakers -- the Sabertooth -- that I just adored.  I loved the style.  He could, at age 2, easily get his shoes on and off and fasten them properly.  I loved them so much, I planned to buy the same shoes in every size they had available, to move up with as he grew.

To my extreme disappointment, I could not find these Sabertooth shoes anywhere!!!  They must have been discontinued when I ordered them.  I eventually found a pair, size 11.5, on Ebay and bought those to store away, for oh, two and a half years....

Nathan found them just the other day in the closet.  His current tennis shoes fit him just fine.  These are big on him, though not too big.  He went nuts for these shoes.  Excited beyond excited.  Has worn them non stop since he found them, even though I've had to plead and beg him to wear his tennis shoes to preschool these days, over his crocs.  The child just seems to love new shoes.

Even better, he realized that these new shoes look very, very close to Daddy's tennis shoes.  That just sent him over the  moon.   Now he loves to wear his new black tennis shoes while Daddy wears his.  When this assignment came out, and I couldn't document the favorite "naked for just a little bit", I knew I'd be documenting the one article of clothing he seems to care about.

day 03 | joy of love | then and now

Day 03 for the Joy of Love course was Then and Now.

I felt a little uninspired of how to do then and now... I wanted to do Shawn for this, since we have been together since high school... but on workdays, he leaves before the sun comes up and returns only after the sun is down.  Makes natural light photography just a teensy bit difficult... Then I remembered how it was right at Nathan's first birthday that I first turned my camera dial to manual mode... I pulled up those images and looked through.  Even though they were some of my first images, there is something about those that still captivates me today.  I love them.  I love the light in them and I can't manage to recreate it even now!  One of my very favorites is one of him looking up, trying to look out, our big window in the playroom.  That set it for me.

I pulled up Cora's pictures from around the time she turned one.  I found one of her that I took - I remember taking it.  She turned around shortly after the shot and took a few steps toward me.  Some of her very first steps!  I remember loving the drama of the image.  She, too, was looking out the window.

Theme set even more.  Both of them, looking out the windows at one year old.  Then.  And today, at those same windows.  Now.

Cora actually still wears the clothes she was wearing in the one year old picture.  Her "elewent" pants are some of her favorite.  They are 18 month size and fit her more like capri pants now.  It'll be a sad day when she can no longer wear those pink elewent pants.  I went for dramatic effect and took one in her clothes for yesterday, and one in the very same outfit.



See everyone else's awesome takes on this assignment here on Willette's blog.

day 02 - joy of love - how they look

Day 02 for the Joy of Love course is How They Look.

Something we've been doing around here lately is making different faces.  Make a happy face.  Make an angry face.  Make a sad face.  Cora doesn't really get it, though she happily participates, but Nathan has been having a blast.  Though, honestly, most of his 'on purpose' faces look pretty much identical.

In fact, last week I told Cora she was pretty, which prompted Nathan to ask what handsome was.  I told him it meant looking really, really nice.  And then I asked him to make a handsome face.  This was what I got.



Incidentally, this is just like his 'scary face'.  But this inspired my concept of today's Joy of Love assignment.  I wanted to capture all their different expressions.

I've never asked Nathan to pose for me for photos, ever.  He doesn't really know what to do.  He fidget-wiggles even more than normal, making it darn near impossible to get an image of him in focus.   But lately, he does want to see the resulting picture.  So that's helped a tad.  But Cora seems to really enjoy when I ask to take her picture and ask her to stand in a particular spot.

I sat the kids on the counter next to the kitchen sink, because that was the only place any light was coming in at the end of this day, my first change to take photos.  Nathan put up with it for a second or two, but Cora had fun.  And I managed to capture their many expressions.



see other people's original interpreations here at Willette's blog post!

day 01 - Joy of Love - Willette Course

Last summer I started Willette Design's Finding the Joy online class/workshop... I loved it so much, but some other obligations required me to put it aside at the time... and surprise of surprises, I didn't get back to it.  I kind of intend to again this summer!  That's the tentative plan anyway.

She offered a Christmas Joy class, but I knew better than to sign up for that... Life was crazy this past holiday season and I knew I wouldn't get to it... or that I would get to it and leave other responsibilities by the wayside...

But when she offered up a free Valentine themed class... the timing was perfect and I jumped!!!  I'm VERY excited the time is finally here.  I'm very excited to have these assignments to induce my creativity and record some precious family moments!  I love her style and her passions.

Day 01 is about what they DO.  How open ended!!!

Since Nathan was at preschool yesterday, Cora was my subject.  My kids love to play games.... but neither of them really "get" games so well... Nathan enjoys games that don't involve boards... but board games are out of the question.  Child does not get it.  I'm beyond exasperated about it, honestly.  So, Zingo has been a good game for our family.  Nathan gets it, for the most part, and Cora just LOVES getting the picture tiles.  She loves just playing with them.  She doesn't get the board, or the object, but she just loves it all the same.  So, Cora playing HER version of Zingo was my object of something they DO yesterday.

She made quite the mess that we got to clean up later... as I processed the photos, she sent every tile flying to all corners of the dining room floor.  Plink pllink.  Oh yeah, fun times.  But finally she did find her favorite piece:  The T-Rex tile.



See other's interpretations at Willette's blog!

boy, do I feel old

I believe it was around 2005 when Shawn and I worked with the youth at our church.  We did a bible study that fall semester on sexual integrity, a subject I'm very passionate about.  Ashley was one of the girls in the youth that year.

Suddenly last fall, she contacted me and asked if I could take some graduation pictures for her and work on a graduation announcement.  Graduation from COLLEGE.

Boy, do I feel OLD now!

It has been a blessing to watch Ashley grow up into a mature, beautiful, woman who is wholeheartedly seeking after God's heart.  I'm proud to know her.  On top of that, I had such a wonderful time shooting her this day, in my yard.  She laughed at my kids until her stomach hurt!  So much fun.

Congratulations, Ashley, on your new Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from ETSU!

(and apparently I had a thing for the right side of the frame this day....)