merry Christmas in September

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

down by the river

some "practice" pictures i took while we were at the greenbelt today. i hope you'll bear with me while i'm trying to improve and i'm inundating this blog with photos. now, if we could just get charlie to smile without scrunching up his entire face!

priceless conversations

On Friday J. was having a hard time treating his sister nicely. He decided to pray and ask for the Holy Ghost to help him be nice. After he prayed he went to talk to his sister.

J: S! Guess what! I got the Holy Ghost!
S: Where?
J: In my heart!

wabi sabi photography

wabi sabi, originally uploaded by jowrites365.

i've been thinking a lot about photography lately, and why i'm drawn to it, and what kind of pictures i want to take.
at millie's ballet dress rehearsal i worked really hard to get some decent pictures of her dancing on stage. i turned off the flash and cranked up the iso (because the pop-up flash on cameras can be so icky.) after her part of the rehearsal was over, she and her classmates leaned against the wall of the orchestra pit, watching the older girls with a little bit of awe. i saw millie standing there with her legs crossed, and i saw her more petite classmate standing on her tippy toes, trying to see over the partition, and it looked so sweet, like one of those moments you can not plan but they mean so much when they come around, y'know? so i pulled my camera out and quickly took off the lens cap, and not wanting to miss the moment or mess it up, i switched the setting from manual to auto, and i pressed the shutter release, and the flash popped up, and this is the picture that resulted.
i can see why a lot of people wouldn't like this picture. there are no smiling faces in it, it isn't very well composed, i had to use a flash to take it, the list goes on and on. but i LOVE this picture because it says so much about the moment in which it was taken.
and now we come to wabi sabi photography. i was reading this post (i love that blog!), and when she mentioned "imperfect beauty" i thought, "THAT'S IT!" that's what i love but i never had a term for it. imperfect beauty. that's what wabi sabi is, the japanese concept of beauty that focuses on the imperfect, the unfinished, the asymmetrical. those are the kinds of photographs i like.
and i decided right then and there, if i ever start a photography business, it'll be called wabi sabi photography.
the end, thank you for reading my rant.

p.s. this concept goes along so well with the lyrics from one of my favorite songs, by leonard cohen, that i've shared here and on facebook so many times before. but it bears repeating:

ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

the dance

millie on stage

(my pictures never look right on blogger. does anyone know how to fix this?)

sometimes, when i forget how lucky i am to be a mom, i feel like motherhood is a series of breaking up arguments, soothing away tears, diffusing tense situations, and disciplining when things have gotten out of hand. sometimes it seems as though there aren't a lot of heart-swelling-with-joy moments, even though i know there are. i got to have one of those moments on saturday.

millie has been taking ballet for the last year, and saturday was her first performance. when i first talked to her about performing, back when she started to take ballet, she said she didn't want to. she said she wanted to take classes but she didn't want to get up in front of people on stage. i signed her up for class anyway, thinking she would be fine with it as time went on and she became more confident.

for two weeks before the performance, millie was telling me how nervous she was and that it was giving her a stomachache. i was worried that she would put up a fight and that it might come down to me saying, "you have to do this." but she kept going to practice, and rehearsal, and dress rehearsal, and she kept telling me how nervous she was, but she kept going. on saturday we were at the auditorium for three hours before the performance even started. i took lots of pictures and video of the run-through and i talked to millie before she went backstage. she seemed excited and not nervous at all.

when her part of the performance started i had planned on taking a lot of pictures, but i decided to put my camera down. i just stared at her like i was witnessing a miracle. anyone who knows my millie knows that she is usually very quiet, even shy. but on stage her smile was bursting from her face and she performed like it was the most natural, easy thing on earth. i found myself getting all teary at the sight of her, soaring on that stage, doing something that she thought would be too hard for her to do.

is there any prouder moment for a parent than being witness to your child excelling at something they were afraid of? there might be, but right now i can't think of any. :)

oh what do you do in the summertime? seriously.

a couple of summers ago.

no. really. what do you do in the summertime? when all your kids are out of school?

don't get me wrong. i love my kids. so much. and i love the summer. but sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming to try and think of ways to keep them entertained for hours on end.

i was making my own list when i saw this great post on sugar city journal with a lot of great tips. check it out if you want. i put up my idea in the comment section, if you're interested!

nine years later

IMG_2895, originally uploaded by jowrites365.

this is my husband, standing a few feet from the spot where he proposed to me nine years and a few months ago. on this day nine years ago we got married. about this time we would've been taking pictures, deliriously happy and smiling so much that our faces hurt. it was a good day. and we've had so many good and bad ones since.
but honey, i'm so glad that i picked you to spend them with.

hiatus OVER

so i haven't been doing any blogging lately, or any checking on anyone else's blog (for which i apologize for being a bad blog friend.)

i thought i was done with rough patches. but what i've come to learn and accept is that the rough patches are never over, and that's o.k. when they come i just have to slow down my personal growth for a while, like a tree in a drought.

but i want to get back to blogging! i've missed it! and i just got a new camera and i'm just testing it out and trying to figure out all the manual settings, but that will be good incentive to start blogging a lot more and putting more pictures up.

if anyone is interested in buying my old camera from me at a drastically reduced price it's this one right here. i also have a nikkor AF 50 mm f/1.8 lens that takes great portraits. the nikon d40 is a great beginner dslr, and i learned a lot with it. let me know if you're interested!

j. tonight

tonight j. ran down the hallway and crashed into his sister. when i was putting him in bed i told him that he could pray to Heavenly Father for forgiveness, and that He can forgive our mistakes. he told me he would say his prayer after i left the room. this is what i overheard:

"Heavenly Father, please forgive me for hurting my little sister. i'll say sorry in the morning. please bless me. in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen."

lovely love quotes

on valentine's day, i find myself thinking about love, about what it means to love people and especially what it means to me to love my husband. here are some quotes that i find resonate with me more than any others. and happy valentine's day.

"To love is not a passive thing. To love is active voice. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so love I am freed, at least a little, by the outgoing of love, from enslavement to that most intolerable of master, myself." » Bernard Iddings Bell

"being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage." -lao tzu

"love is what you've been through with somebody." -james thurber

the csa: or in other words, how not picking out my own produce helped me plan meals faster than usual

ok, so, joining a csa is one of those things i've been meaning to get around to for about a year now. and last tuesday i finally remembered to make my bountiful baskets order, and nate brought it home yesterday. what a thing of beauty. we chose to get an organic basket which was ten dollars more ($25) but still a great deal, and in our box we got:

a bunch of spinach

a bag of carrots

some broccolini

a bag of yams

a bag of pink lady apples

some blueberries

a bag of celery

2 red peppers

some haricot vert (green beans)

fennel

a really unripe spaghetti squash

grape tomatoes

at first i was like, "whoa. fennel." i've never cooked with fennel before. and i have to admit that i didn't recognize the spaghetti squash as a spaghetti squash until i saw the sticker on it. (i knew it was a squash, ok? i just didn't know what KIND of squash!) after looking at everything i started to feel kind of overwhelmed. but then i decided i paid 25 bucks for this stuff, hence, my goal for the next couple of weeks is to not let any of it go to waste. so i hit my recipe books and the internet and i came up with this menu for the week:

monday: fried rice (to use up leftover rice and ham) with chinese celery salad.

tuesday: tuesday is sometimes taco night around here (partially because it's fun to say, "TACO TUESDAY!" and partially because it was suggested in my new favorite cookbook, the family dinner, which i must post about later.)so we'll have tacos with our leftover meat from last taco tuesday with some black beans or pinto beans mixed in.

wednesday: baked rigatoni with italian sausage and fennel, but instead of using the jarred marinara sauce the recipe calls for, i'm going to make a sauce by roasting the csa grape tomatoes using this recipe. on the side: sauteed broccolini. (i'm so excited because in this one night we'll be using tons of our csa produce! all the fennel, one red pepper, all the grape tomatoes, and all the broccolini.)

thursday: breakfast for dinner, buttermilk pancakes, bacon, and green smoothies (using our csa spinach.)

friday: ginger-carrot soup with parmesan-herb pan biscuits

saturday: invite in-laws, make italian-style meatloaf muffins, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and green beans with bacon and crispy garlic butter, which is a menu completely from rookie-cookie's blog, which i highly recommend (every recipe i've made of her's has turned out great--so maybe i'll make one of her dessert recipes and make it a rookie-cookie night!

sunday: sunday is nate's cooking day, hooray for a night off!

wish me luck! although it's quite simple this is a pretty ambitious menu plan for me considering i haven't been feeling amazing lately. but family dinner and making good quality food for my family is one of my highest priorities lately...maybe i'll tell why in a future post.

what are you making for dinner this week?

i can't believe...

...i was ever afraid of having a boy.

charlie,

thank you for making my life silly, snuggly, exasperating, loud, and so much fun. when i saw you for the first time, and they put that bright red hat on you (only for babies born around christmas time,) i fell into so much love that it caught in my throat.

today is your day. today you can drink pop and have more than one treat! i hope that it is so much fun for you, and i hope that someday you understand how special you've made my life.

love, mom

my 4 year old

today my little boy turned 4. yes, this one:




how can he be 4?



wasn't this yesterday?



and now he's into buzz lightyear



and planning his astronaut career.



happy birthday to my precious, smart, handsome, wonderful, sweet boy.

the doing

(little c. asleep on the couch.)

"but the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. this is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. there is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. and I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."

anna quindlen

quote via hula seventy

some things

halloween was short and sweet for us this year. the kids wanted to go to the school carnival without costumes, and i was fine with that. we went to the trunk-or-treat our community did and ran out of candy in about 15 minutes. it was our first trunk or treat and i loved it because we were done so quickly, and the kids got tons of candy without having to go a million different places. wait, is tons of candy a good thing or a bad thing? :)

the best thing to me was the awesome trick-or-treat bags that my mom made for the kids. (isn't she amazing?) i love those bags to death. she also made m.'s costume, the pinafore and the shirt that goes underneath. (thanks mom! you rock!) we lucked out and found sparkly red shoes at target.

this is sufjan stevens. last monday i got to see him live, in concert with my hubby, nene (co-author of this blog,) and nene's husband. it was amazing. it's really hard for me to describe my feelings about this concert in words, but let me just say my mind was blown. it is still being blown. i usually have reservations about using the word "genius" but i have no problem going there for sufjan. he is a genius. the concert was crazy, inspirational, loud, strange, beautiful, fun, enlightening, and haunting. i loved every minute of it and i'll always be glad i got to be there. it was seriously a privilege.

to the rescue

this morning could have been disastrous. j. woke up grumpy again and was refusing to go to preschool and refusing to wear his yellow shirt as well (they are doing colors this month). i was trying to make french toast and calm the chaos, but heading for frustration central. instead my husband saved me and helped us all laugh. he made goofy faces and got j. dressed and soothed a meltdown when j. freaked out over cutting his french toast. then we got into the car (on time!) to take j. to preschool and CCR was playing on the radio and we drove down the street singing "I WANT TO KNOW, HAVE YOU EVER SEEEEN THE RAAAAAIN." and everything was all right again. thank goodness for this man.

at the park

we went to the park yesterday evening. it was 92 degrees out, but luckily we went to a great park with tons of big trees. it didn't seem very hot at all.

i love how kids get so excited to play and how lost they can get in it. it's so fun to watch them enjoying such simple things as slides or climbing over and over. i have fun just watching them have fun.

the innocence mission

have you heard of the band the innocence mission? if you are a kid of the 90's, such as i, then you might remember their song "bright as yellow" which is one of their only tunes to really hit the main stream.

the innocence mission is one band that i feel safe recommending to anyone. teenagers, people who aren't all that into music, my parents who are in their seventies (hi mom and dad!) that's how good this band is. peaceful, lulling melodies, and sweet, meaningful lyrics.

they penned my favorite lines in all of song lyric-dom, (which, if you know how jam-packed my brain is with song lyrics, you know is saying something):

let's get up early now, dive clear into the day

let's get out of the car with open arms, not wait to be embraced.

-from the song "when mac was swimming"

isn't that such a beautiful sentiment? and isn't it just put so well?

this is my soul music. if i could make music, i'd want to make music like this. plain and simple.

so, why all this gushing about the innocence mission? they have a new album out today! it's called "my room in the trees." isn't that a great image? and if you click here you can download two of their new songs, "the happy mondays" and "god is love." also visit their website to hear "spring," which sounds just lovely.

i can't wait to get my hands on the entire album.

p.s. if you're just being introduced to the i.m. try "the lakes of canada," "sweep down early," or "beautiful change."

p.p.s. if you don't like them after listening to those three songs, i'll give you a hundred bucks. just kidding.

before church

here are some pictures i snapped before church today.

question: do i usually have time to take pictures before church?

answer: no, no i don't.

p.s. sweet m. completely dressed herself AND fixed her hair today. i smoothed out the bumps in her hair a little, but otherwise, that cuteness? all her.

my sweet seven year old

my sweetest of sweet m.'s,

i can't believe you are seven now. what a great year you've had. first grade, lots of new friends, you were super girl for halloween, you got so sick we almost had to take you to the emergency room, you played t-ball for the first time and started ballet.

i love how kind you are, how attentive you are to your teachers and coaches, how you really want to do your best and please everyone. you try so hard, and i love that about you. i love how much you tell me you love me. i know you mean it.

this year let's have so much fun we just about burst, ok?

love, mom

and one of you today, on your birthday: