Family, what are you thankful for today?
Highlights from this week:
Mac n cheese
Design Star
Milk and chicken and ketchup and apples and milk. And ketchup.
Splash pads
Superheroes
Birthday runs
The “Scenic loop”
Nightswimming
Halloween costume catalogs
Long weekend
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Sunday Grace, our family gratitude journal, is updated weekly.
Read the entire series here.
As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.
~A. C. Benson
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Dear readers, if you liked this post, you are gonna love this one!
Know what’s adorable in the 8-going-on-9-year-old set?
Their smiles change almost weekly.
I know…it’s so sweet I need to go floss now.
A parenting fact: If you happen to lie belly-down within 20 feet of your children, there is no escaping the inevitable.
I’m not sure this photo is worth a 1,000 words, but I’d say at least 800…and right now I’ll take all the words I can get.
I’m suffering from serious writer’s block these days, but not the “oh hell, what am I going to write, what am I going to write, WHAT AM I GOING TO WRITE???” kind of block. It’s the other kind: the inability to carve out large blocks of time to write.
So in the meantime, you get the photo.
And I’m going to work on the 1,000 words as soon as I can!
The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
~Julia Cameron
Be still my heart.
Keep your eye on the prize.
As if you haven’t already guessed, we Austinites get a little light-headed and giddy when actual winter weather arrives. It’s all so exciting and rare.
“Look Mom! The thermometer dipped below 70! And it’s FEBRUARY!”
So naturally, last week’s icy and snowy conditions were especially thrilling. The day off from school was great and all, but what really got my kids amped up was a little undertaking Rascal called Freezing Everyone and Their Aunt Rita in Carbonite Just Like in The Star Wars Movie That Mom Always Calls Number 2, But Really is Number 5.
It. Was. Awesome.
When I look back at these photos, I am tempted to put a philosophical spin to the whole endeavor…to compare it to the flood of feelings and memories I have been desperate to freeze in my mind. To wax on about the exit of winter and the onset of spring. To recall the inevitable thawing that follows any intense experience. To consider the beauty and harshness of something so lively and fluid being altered overnight by a force larger than ourselves.
But I’m not going there. It’s too much for me right now. And maybe that’s ok. Instead, I’m going to remember this little project as nothing more than a couple Star Wars fans parading in and out the back door, spilling drops of water along the way, scheming, laughing…all so they could relive the power of an unforgettable scene in a favorite movie.
Come to think of it, maybe they were trying to freeze memories as well.
