Sep
14
2010735. Charlotte Returning to hang out on our porch this year
736. Having Derek home with us for 9 days
737. Taking the girls for one of the last swims of the season (the pool is chilly!)
738. Bouncing on inflatables at Monkey Joes
739. Bronwyn’s open mouthed face of delight
740. Aeralind’s going down the slide face
741. 7 meals worth of food stretching into 2 weeks with the addition of milk and some baby snacks and birthday party food
742. Making it through 2 more sleepless ear infection nights
743. The power of Tylenol and Benadryl 😉
744. Spending a day with my sister
745. Buying fabric for Daylin’s Birthday Dress
748. Derek giving me his $10 worth of Swag Bucks earned Amazon Gift cards to spend on fabric
749. Babies sleeping well all week
749. My parents playing with my babies
750. The presents and the new fall wardrobe
751. Nana given snack cups with goldfish already in them
752. Little Converse Sneakers
753. Chacos! For the Babies!
754. Despite the drama of rain and no clubhouse/pool and moving the party to our house at the literal last second: a party that had what matter most: friends celebrating with us
755. Girls literally diving into their cakes
756. Kissing and cuddling my babies the moment that they turned 1
757. A 3.5 hour birthday recovery nap for my sick and exhausted little girls
758. Laughing as a family
759. Temperatures dropping to feel like fall
760. Sleeping with the windows open
761. Rocking Aeralind while she sings Mum-mum-mum-muma to me
762. Early morning snuggles with Bronwyn
763. The most amazing husband and babies (almost toddlers) ever 😉
Sep
12
2010One Year Ago I became a Mother.
That day still blurs for me.
- 3 hours at the doctors.
- 30 minutes at the library.
- 1 hour at Panera eating and reading.
- 1 hour reading laying on my left side, laying on top of Aeralind, agitatedly kicking me.
- 5 minutes of having rolled over to my right side, on top of Bronwyn, to ease my soreness from Aeralind’s kicking.
- A frightening gush of fluid.
- Panicked phone calls
- 20 minute preordained car ride with Diane
- 2 hours of surgical prep, fears, “Man Eating Fish”, husband in scrubs, flying down the hallway out of control
- 2 minutes of tearful prayers
- 30 minutes with the spinal craziness
- Derek rejoining, stroking my hair, and timelessness ensuing
- “It’s a Girl!” and breathlessly waiting for cries.
- “It’s a Girl!” and hearing the cries.
- A baby in nervous daddy’s arms (Bronwyn?)
- A baby in mommy’s outstretched arm and chest (Aeralind?)
My life changed in a moment. Richer. More Beautiful. Full of Laughter, New Insecurities, Sleepless Nights, Cuddlings, and the Blondest Hair I Have Ever Seen.
Little Girls, I love you so much!
(notes about each girl are on their brand new pages at the top: Aeralind and Bronwyn… pictures coming soon)
Sep
02
2010Three Thanksgiving’s ago we were invited to “the farm”. A sweet lady named Carol and her husband Larry at our church host Thanksgiving and Easter meals for anyone who doesn’t have family in town. The numbers range from 50-100 each holiday.
There’s such beauty at the farm.
Children cuddling ever present kittens (and me too)
Music and songs.
Tasty Food.
I had to capture all that beauty and all those relationships and all that laughter and joy.
So I brought my camera. After Easter I decided those captures needed to be shared. How could I keep all that joy to myself? So I made Carol and Larry a little photo book of Resurrection Day 2010.
The captured joy was treasured so much that when Larry and Carol’s 31 children and grandchildren held a week long family reunion they asked me to photograph their families. It was a whirl wind evening of taking photos of 8 different family groups and a giant group photo. I can’t begin to express how much personality those families had 🙂
A couple weeks later I was talking to my friend Tamara about how much fun I had taking pictures at the farm. Over the course of the conversation I asked if I could take photos of the little bundle of joy she was expecting in a couple weeks time. Delighted, Tamara agreed.
I posted a few of these images on Facebook for Tamara and within mere hours an acquaintance asked how much I charged for my services. Suddenly, Quiet Graces Photography was born.
So what have I learned? Well, a good God requires obedience. He wants me to do what he asks because He knows what’s best for me. He sent me to North Greenville to major in Outdoor Leadership (a field I didn’t know existed!) in order to grow me into someone more like His Son. I could have gone to a different school and become a better photographer, but that didn’t have eternal significance.
Yet in obedience, joy is found. Our wild and good God loves giving wonderful unexpected gifts to His children. In following Him and learning more about Him, I learn to appreciate these gifts more and to see His hand in everything.
I’m excited to see where this wild path in photography takes me.
Sep
01
2010My girls devoured this and Derek and I love it too. It was pretty easy to make and sort of cooked itself 🙂
Butternut and and Ham Pasta
Ingredients
- Butternut squash, peeled gutted and cut in uniform cubes
- Leftoever ham pieces, cubed
- Bowtie Pasta (cooked according to package)
- Olive Oil
- 3-6 cloves garlic, minced
- Rubbed sage to taste
- salt and pepper to taste
- Chicken Broth
- Corn or Arrowroot Starch
- (Onions sauted with the garlic or peas or spinach added in the last few minutes would be amazing too)
- (Parmesan if you’re not dairy free)
Instructions
- In a saute pan, heat the oil and cook garlic and sage until garlic browned and aromatic. Add squash chunks and cook for a minute or two.
- Pour in enough chicken broth to not quite cover your squash (our squash was huge!). Bring to a boil, cover and simmer. Stir now and then. Cook until squash is tender.
- Add peas or spinach, if desired.
- Using a slotted spoon scoop out squash into a container with your pasta and ham chunks. Turn the pan back up to high.
- Mix about a tablespoon of arrowroot or corn starch with about 1/4 cold chicken broth or water. Add to the boiling chicken/squash broth. Stir til thickened. (Repeat with more starch if necessary).
- Enjoy and feed to happy babies who like to mousse their hair with the broth.
Sep
01
2010I remember my first camera. It was 3rd grade and I had a broken arm. I took pictures of my sister taking pictures of me. The rest of that roll of film contains creative images of tissue paper flowers that my parents bought us in Carowinds.
A few years later, I received a Kodak Advantix camera. I remember taking black and white pictures of an opossum caught in our trash can and a street flooded to the bottom of a mailbox after a hurricane.
I couldn’t stop pressing down the shutter.
Around my Sophomore year in high school, I received the best present yet: a fully manual film camera. I was giddy with excitement! I took tons of photos and checked out every book in the library on cameras.
Winter of my junior year, the camera was stolen from my driveway. I can still see images recorded on that lost roll of film: Seth Thomas at 14 months playing with the stuffed football and Olivia, Sam, and Hannah bouncing on a trampoline. I was devastated. More for the lost film than the camera. My sweet sweet sister replaced my camera for my 17th birthday. I could have cried with joy.
That spring I blundered into the darkroom at my high school. I spilled chemicals everywhere, but I learned to process film. I even managed to learn oil hand-coloring of my images. Senior year I spent an entire 90 minutes every day alone in the darkroom listening to Jars of Clay. It was a small piece of heaven. I looked at two schools for photography: one in Atlanta and one in Chicago. I wanted to capture images for the rest of my life.
But God intervened.
A full scholarship to a school in state prompted me to stay. I knew God was calling me to attend North Greenville, but they only had two courses in Photography. Photo I and Photo II. I gave up the dream in obedience. I entered NGU as an Early Education Major; I left with a Degree in Outdoor Leadership and a sweet husband named Derek.
Four years of marriage and twin babies later, I had almost forgotten the dream.
But God had not.
