I often think about the things my parents passed onto the girls, the little unseen gifts in hobbies, habits, memories and the like. Knitting was one of the little blessings mom left with the girls. She took the time to teach them, and to pass on the love of a hobby. Just a little something I am thankful for today.
We ordered some stand-outs from WHCC the other day for our living room wall. They arrived yesterday afternoon and we set to arranging them last night, with this as the final result.
“It is the main earthly business of a human being to make his home, and the immediate surroundings of his home, as symbolic and significant to his own imagination as he can.”
This afternoon while Emma rested and recovered from a stomach bug Torrey was doing a little writing on the iPad. I grabbed my camera for a quick shot of the day, and got a good laugh in the end. She had just written the first stanza when I started clicking away. I didn't read through the rest until I uploaded the photos, and got a good laugh when I got to the fourth stanza. I wonder who she was referring to there... She sent me a copy of the finished product, with permission to post it below.
Blank by Torrey Culbertson Have you ever sat, Down on your chair, With a pencil, some paper, and a pen? Staring at the paper, thinking, And a blank piece of paper is staring back.
Your mind wanders, Trying to think, Of places, times, and feelings. Thinking of things you have thunk, And a blank piece of paper is thinking back.
Tapping your leg, Gnawing your pencil, Thinking, pondering, wandering. Waiting for some ideas to come, And a blank piece of paper is waiting back.
You sit there, Thinking away, When something comes clicking, zooming, and snapping. 'Tis a camera, distracting away, And a blank piece of paper is snapping back.
Sitting there thinking, When all of a sudden, You're smiling, chuckling, and eventually laughing. About your poem about nothing, And a blank piece of paper is smiling back.
Laughing, laughing away, At the poem you had just written, It was about thinking, pondering, with no outcome. This poem just written, And the blank piece of paper has written back.
Chewing your finger, Thinking of more, For the poem about nothing, blankness, no more. But your poem is done, it is written, And the once blank piece of paper is done.
“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” - G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” ― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions
When I talked to the girls about doing Project 365 again especially for the sake of providing Daddy with pictures of his growing girls while he was gone, they asked if there could be "Kid's Choice" days each week where they'd pick the idea and/or location for the photos. Today was Torrey's choice, so she browsed through my Pinterest Photography board and found the above Old Hollywood style shot as inspiration. After a little hair curling action and digging out a vintage hat we were ready. These were the shots we came up with, the first as Torrey's pick for picture of the day.
One of the things that bogs me down a bit about Project 365 is having to make a choice. I know I have to make a thousand little choices a day, but sometimes it feels like P365 adds two hundred more! That's probably because I cannot simply take one picture... I somehow manage to shoot (with my rapid fire shutter) 150-200 shots per day. Many are duplicates as I keep the continuous shoot mode selected on my camera. But it adds a lot of decisions and editing at the end of each day. Not to mention the fact that I have a terribly hard time deleting photos. I've gotten much better over the years, but I still have tens of thousands of photos saved on multiple hard drives and servers.
Now that I've finished my confessional rant, here is the photo I chose for today, and the other contenders for the day. I have a busy day tomorrow, so hopefully I won't get too trigger happy with the ol' Nikon. Happy snapping!
This was the #2 favorite of the day, but in the end Torrey chose the first one as her favorite.
I loved this run down looking wall at an old abandoned grocery store in town.
I watched Torrey in her third trip to the school spelling bee. She worked so hard, and I sat there with my stomach tied in knots watching her. I knew how nervous she was, and how hard she had worked. She did well, but didn't win. We talked about winning and about losing... about working hard and enjoying the journey. Life is like that, isn't it? Life is full of gains, loses and recoveries. A beautiful mess, and I love it.
“Aristotle said that the essence of drama is fear and pity.
Where do you feel more fear and pity than when you look at a kid in a spelling bee?”
-Rachel Sheinkin
“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”
-Mother Teresa
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”
-G. K. Chesterton
“Photography has the capacity to provide images of man and
his environment that are both works of art and moments in history.”
-Cornell Capa
“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story
which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
-C.S. Lewis
we've had record levels of rainfall in the past few weeks here in washington... which is really saying something! i mean this is washington, and rain is like my pile of dirty laundry that is so often present that you really appreciate it when it's not. that being said, yesterday it poured all day, and after work i got cozy under a warm blanket & enjoyed a good book. (i supposed i should have spent some time with that looming laundry pile, but what fun would that be?)
and the rains water the roses of life, of which i have many. my roses seem to be growning up entirely too fast these days. torrey was so excited to finally become a 5th grade buddy to a sweet little kindergartner. it's amazing to see how big all of the 5th graders looked next to their kinder-buddies. not to mention just how proud they were to be of a help to each of the little ones who needed them.
on saturday torrey and i stumbled across a vintage show by following some signs we saw. we were spending a little mommy-daughter time talking and driving. she found a cute skirt made from a vintage tablecloth, and i found this cute little frame. we shared a piece of homemade pumpkin pie, and stacked up a few precious memories for the future.
i'm sitting here in my "coffee corner" chair in my living room, next to my handsome husband. my handsome husband who is currently state side, and at home. this man who has always stood strongly by my side through thick and thin. so for the moment, i think i am going to shut down my computer and spend a little time with the man of my dreams. the man sitting next to me. :)
here it is friday. another week under our belts... full of the little daily duties that make up everyday life. nothing monumental or terribly important marked our week, although it was a week full of this and thats. makes you wonder, sometimes, where all the time goes. perhaps it is out having coffee with the one-sock-eating dryer bandit... or maybe dining with my missing left shoe. either way the time flies by and leaves us just a trace of it to wonder where it has gone.
the part i have a hard time understanding, is how in the very same day (at the very same moment) time can be both flying and dragging. my kids seem to be growing up at the speed of light and the deployment seems to be racing {cough} like a snail on a gravel road. ah time, you are a tricky one.
boy, i'm extra productive rambler today!
anyway, i spent the day first dropping off some scrappy projects for lasting memories, then shopping with my friend cheree. cheree is the very first navy wife i ever met. although, at the time neither of us were navy wives. we were navy girl friends, to two fine sailors. both from colorado, who met on their way to bootcamp, and were station at their first squadron together. i think the very first time we met was at a denny's-style restaurant near the base, where the four of us pooled together for a cheap dinner. there goes that time again. ten years later, we're both moms of sweet little ones, laughing as we look back at our old (young) selves. it was a good day.
thursday i couldn't seem to decide between two pictures, again. since i'm the boss of my project, i chose two! i love being the boss. even if it's only of picture-choosing. lol. the top one i caught as torrey was reading after school, and the bottom one i caught of emma when she donned a hat just as we were leaving before school. it just sort of defined them both so well i had to choose two.
hurray for late-start wednesday. i'm not sure why that hour and twenty minutes feels like it adds hours to our mornings, but it does. we had enough time to make a couple of hairdo how-to videos. the girls have been wanting to tape more of them for weeks. torrey taped emma's hairdo with generally decent results. emma's video was a little more on the ultra zoomed in, blair witch project side. so we'll have to have a redo on that one.
as the world keeps spinning around, and as the time keeps slipping by... we try to remember to treasure each this and that, then lock it away in a special place to remember for always... or as best we can, anyway.
so here i am behind on posting again! so once again, i'll do a quick sum up of our week with project 365 pics...
spent most of the week just keeping busy with daily life... scrapping, family time and the lot. we're down to the last few weeks of having stan at home, so we've definitely been packing in every moment of family time possible. playing yahtzee, having breakfast together, reading together, wrestling around... you know, just the perfect little moments that make everyday life wonderful.
saturday we all slept in & stan made one of his yummy breakfasts. lucky us! we never eat as well when he's away! after breakfast emma and i headed downstairs to brush our teeth. while we were downstairs i checked her little wiggly teeth. those babies were definitely ready to come out. so i pulled them out for her & she ran upstairs to show daddy her new toothless smile. there are a few more shots here. good thing the tooth fairy had some cash on hand for her visit.
after the toothy excitement had waned a little, we pulled out our boxes and boxes for christmas decorations. yes, i know it's not even halloween yet, but well, we're celebrating christmas a little early this year. on deployment years, we always put up our christmas decorations before stan leaves. by the end of the day the tree was up & decorated. by sunday we had most of the garland up and ornaments hung from the kitchen ceiling. it's beginning to look a lot like christmas here! all of this early decorating does add to the sadness a bit... knowing that it's all up because stan's not going to be here. still, i'd rather decorate and celebrate together. just something magical about the whole thing.
with the tree and lights up, i figured it would be a good time to mess around with my lensbaby & the creative aperture star-shape thingy. (it's a cool little disk that slides into the lensbaby and changes the lights into star shapes.) the picture above is an ornament my great grandma made for me when i was in junior high. when we were decorating the tree together, i was telling the girls where all of the different ornaments came from... i was thinking, man, i'm the only one who really knows where all of these came from! note to self: take pictures of ornaments & tell their stories at some point.
well, i'm now all caught up... well at least for another 29 minutes until the clock strikes midnight & i'm behind again! lol.
