Photo Challenge: TEXTURES and PATTERNS

After many months of not participating, I am jumping in again. Brenda's Photo Challenge theme this time was chosen by Donna: textures and patterns. I have a few to share that I've taken in the last month.

A pile of knotted-blankets: A box of bizcochitos:

A night-time drive on a busy highway:

An unhappy boy in the shower:

Yes, they are some odd photos, but they were some extras. In an attempt to capture my life in photos and improve my photography, I started a project at the beginning of the year. Like many others, I am simply calling it my 365 Project. My goal: to take a picture a day for a year and capture my "everyday." Some days it's hard to pick "THE ONE" and other days, it's a challenge for me to find my camera and make sure the batteries are charged. A few of the photos are also on this blog, but my 365 Project is going in a regular scrapbook -- and yes, it's mostly up to date. I just put the photo in a photo album and print the journal tag. Done. I plan to post those pictures weekly -- if nothing else, you might get an idea of what "normal" is around here.

Photo Challege: YELLOW

I am really enjoying Brenda's Photo Challenges. When the theme is announced, it is a mad race against time to find the photos that I want to use. I know we have about two weeks, but that isn't very long to go through years of photos and still keep up with the regular things I must get done around the house. This week, the theme is YELLOW!

I don't really have a favorite color, just several that I really like. Although you won't find me willingly wearing yellow, I love the way it makes me feel. It is such a happy color. Maybe it is just that as a kid every smiley face sticker was yellow, but maybe it's because it's the color of sunshine and daisies. Whatever the reason, it make me warm on the inside and smiley on the out. I couldn't narrow it down to just a few, so here are my yellows:

This may have been the first time Will ate a banana whole and in the peel. He is 18 months in this photo. For a long time he called his favorite fruit a "nana" then it was a "bamama" (pronounced like banana but with the Ms). This was pretty cute and I didn't think much of it; it was just how he said it every morning when I gave it to him for breakfast. One day, Allen gave him the banana and Will gleefully called it a "badada!" We realized he was calling it based on who gave it to him.

Almost exactly 3 years later, this is Will with his new haircut. Somehow this picture makes me happy. It was taken the day after I gave him his first buzz-cut, not under the best of circumstances. He had decided to try to cut his hair himself and I had to even it out. This was the best I could do, and it turned out okay. It makes me happy just because it is Will. He dressed himself the morning I took this, deciding that overalls were just fine without a shirt. The yellow sunshine is shining on my yellow-headed son. In the background is yellow -- I like it so much, we had our kitchen and living room painted yellow.

You may have seen these already. They are photos of Maddie (in orange) and Jon (in yellow) playing on a yellow ball at a sprinker park this summer. Such happy kiddos, with yellow, such a happy mama.

And finally, here is a picture of a beautiful yellow daisy. These are such happy-types of flowers! I caught this on the camera when we were in New England earlier this month. I am still learning how this camera works, but I was happy that I got a picture of a little yellow friend in the center of the flower. In the closer shot, you can even see his wings! . . . But, I must admit, I am happier when they are flying away from me.

Photo Challenge: CHANGING SEASONS

It is Photo Challenge time again and the theme this week is Changing Seasons. As I mentioned before, I use the challenges, not necessarily to take new pictures, but to have fun going through my older ones.

Changing seasons. . . I have always loved this time of year -- the "in-between" season, not quite summer, not yet fall. If only I was able to I would bottle the smells of September with the freshly-mowed grass from summer mixing with the crunchy, colorful leaves of fall, the morning dew, and all of it so much fresher just because the air is crisp. I can't decide whether to light the berry-scented candles or go with the cinnamon scents, so I often light both and that adds another unique autumn-scent to our environment. For my "obvious" picture, here is one I took a few weeks ago on our trip to New England. There were some leaves starting to change for fall, but we were there at the end of summer, so we enjoyed the colors of the wildflowers, too.

Another change of seasons for our family is represented in this photo.

Know what that is? That is MY view of my tummy when I was 4 - yes, FOUR - months pregnant with the triplets. Allen insisted my feet were attached, but I never saw any proof. The seasons were changing then, all right. We were on our way from being a family of 3 to doubling that to 6. Will was on his way from being an only child to being a big brother. Many events happened just before I delivered the babies that represented change of season, but the most difficult was that my grandmother passed away. Because I had such a high-risk pregnancy, I couldn't travel, I couldn't see her that one last time, I couldn't be at the funeral. And just like seasons, . . . one left as another came to be.

This time of year, I sleep well and have a little more bounce to my step. I enjoy the lazy weekends when I can grab a book and cuddle with my family. I am excited to see the apples, squashes, and pumpkins taking over the produce section. I like to watch the leaves change color and float to the ground when the breeze catches them.

For now, I take pleasure in the little things of this "in-between" season: delighting in nature's symphony of scents, sights, and flavors; cherishing the memories I have of loved ones; and experiencing the joy of family.

Photo Challenge: THINGS WITH WINGS

You know what I really like about the photo challenges? I love going back through all my older photos . . . reliving the moments that were captured in the picture. Some of the memories have been sweet, some sad, and many just bring tears of joy. I am sure the challenge was originally intended to get me to TAKE photos to signify the theme word, but I have had so much more fun going through my collections with a new eye.


So, here is my collection of photos that fit the theme: THINGS WITH WINGS. And since my fun is in reliving the memories, I'll share some of the story that goes with each photo.

In my home are three handmade icecream bowls: the results of an afternoon with my son, my dad, and me in a paint-your-own pottery shop. My goal was to get some bowls with Will's handprints, but we each painted a bowl that day. Will was not even two, so it was a little challenging to paint while keeping him occupied. He did paint a little, but it was Dad who really got into the painting. I told him to paint the bowl with whatever he wanted to, and by the time I realized what he was painting it was too late . . . I would have an icecream bowl with a giant fly in it ALWAYS. So, my first photo is an icecream bowl with fly WINGS. I laugh every time I see it -- it reminds me in so many ways of Dad: it's colorful, it has an animal in it, it's made for icecream, and it's just silly.
In October of 2006 life got crazy when we double the size of our family. Although I spent a lot of time at the hospital 100 miles away with our newborn preemie triplets, I tried to keeps some parts of life normal for 2-year old Will. On this day, about a week after I was released from the hospital, Mom and I took Will to the local Halloween parade all decked out as Batman. Will decided to just watch the parade rather than be in it which was a good thing since I still couldn't quite stand comfortably after my c-section. Our little Batman didn't really have WINGS, but the cape was sort of winglike and I love this photo. It is Will smiling and happy to be in his costume. So much was changing in his life that it was great to get this photo with the spotlight on him.
Maddie spend her first Halloween in the hospital, so I was so excited to get to dress her up in her first costume just after her first birthday. (Yes, I had fun dressing up all the boys, too, but there were no wings on them so it is a different story.) Maddie was Tinkerbell -- chosen by big brother Will to fit with Captain Hook, a pirate, and Peter Pan. Unfortunately, I never got any photos of her smiling because she was sick. She really just wanted to lay down and sleep all day, but I couldn't let Halloween pass without a photo of my little fairy with WINGS. (I also had fun playing with PhotoShop with this picture.) Even without a smile, I love this picture of my daughter.
Back in time again . . . in summer of 2005, my parents and Allen and I went to Belize for vacation. It was a place Allen and I wanted to see and when we heard my parents wanted to also, we planned a trip together. I had been to tropical jungles before, but I knew it would be a little different seeing it with my parents. Dad used to catch bats in Central America as part of his job, and he was excited to show them to us up close. In the first picture, we had entered a looted Mayan tomb (creepy sounding, huh?) Hovering in the caves were lots of bats. Since I am my dad's daughter, I climbed in and got pictures of them, but I had to get them ruffled a bit so they'd fly and actually look like bats. The lower photo is dad holding one of the bats, but I forget if it was one he got from the cave or from the nets (he brought a bat net so we could catch-look-release some.) That was quite an adventure and there were lots of WINGS.


That's my trip down memory lane for this week. Check back in about two weeks when I will join the next challenge.

Photo Challenge: SWEETS

It was so much fun going through photos for the last photo challenge, that I am participating again. This time the theme is SWEETS and here are my interpretations:

Scenario: I was pregnant with the triplets and was supposed to eat 4000 calories a day. My daily diet included a Sara Lee cheesecake, but one day I didn't eat it all and the leftovers were in the refrigerator. The next morning, Will, age 2, got up while Allen and I were still sleeping and he made his own breakfast. Who knows how long he was donw stairs, but eventually we awakened to shouting: "Daddy! Daddy, I need help! Help me NOW!" Allen jumped out of bed and ran down to find out Will was asking for help to clean his hands. He had eaten the rest of the cheesecake, most of a pint of ice cream, and whatever else he could find. He was quite proud of himself. We had planned on going for doughnuts for breakfast that morning, but I didn't know how to handle the doughnuts and discipline. In the end we went for doughnuts, and he just watched us eat. He moaned a lot that his tummy hurt, but you can tell in this picture he was pretty proud of himself.

This isn't really one of my SWEETS, but Shadow enjoyed whatever Will spilled on the floor.

Here is a not-so-obvious sweet. When I see this picture my mouth waters as I think of rainbow sherbet. I got this pretty flower picture on my photo flower hunt in Belize.

Back to the edible sweets again. Will's favorite sandwich is peanut butter and jelly. Everyday, he must have one and most days he wants it cut in triangles. Sometimes when I ask him what shape he says something silly like "circles" just to see if I will do it -- of course, I do. One day, I was so bored with the sandwich triangles that when he said, "I want a sandwich cut like me," I was excited to step out of the box. This is the PB&J Will -- the Os are Fruity Cheerios and the hair is provolone cheese. He told me to get a picture, so here is "SWEETS for my SWEET boy."

Photo Challenge: PLAY

I enjoy reading other blogs. One of the easiest ways is to check out the blogs of those who read this one, but I only know about them through comments. Karen told me about a photo challenge, and I had to check it out. Today, the theme is PLAY, and if I understand how it works, I post some pictures that mean "play" to me.


Of course when I think of play, my children come to mind. I decided to choose from photos I had taken in 2008 just to narrow down my choices. Here are my three favorites photos that symbolize "play":


1. Maddie and Jon PLAYing in the backyard. A pretty, sunny spring day. A yellow dump truck. Happy children.
2. Maddie, Jon, and Ben PLAYing in the toyroom one random afternoon. I PLAYed with a bunch of photos taken over a two minute period. These babies love to PLAY and they sure can be busy.
3. Will PLAYing on the porch in February. He played in a bucket, and then I looked out and found him doing this: dunking his underoos in a bucket and putting them up on a stick to make water drop patterns on the concrete. He later told me "It was such a nice day for a swim, Mama."
Why do the kids come to mind with the word play? My life is mostly about kids now, and children are here to play. That is the only thing they are supposed to do at ages 1 and 4.

Ok, that IS a bit of a stretch -- they are also supposed to sleep . . . so I can play. But, I don't have pictures of me playing, and my new camera won't be here until Monday. But I like to play, too -- playing games with Allen, playing with the kids, playing with my crafts. We got Maddie a dollhouse for her birthday, and I really, really want to play with it; however, there isn't enough room in my closet to get it all out, so I'll have to wait until October when she gets it for her second birthday so I don't have to hide anymore.

Now quit reading and go PLAY!