Our Week in Photos: Grandparents, Temple Tulips and a Bright Coloured Umbrella

My mom came over for Mother's Days. She brought me lilacs and rhubarb crisp and reminded me that so many of the things I love, I love because of her.

Including photography. She eventually started using cheaper point and clicks, but when I was little she had a good quality camera and there are a few of those early images (insert here---once I find them!) that became, even in my young mind, the standard. Before I knew anything about depth of field or exposures (still learning!) I always knew those were the kinds of pictures I wanted to take. My mom is actually incredible artistic and creative even though she doesn't think she is, and her love of beautiful things and her belief in me drove every talent I've ever dabbled in. She truly believed in me, trite, I know, but oh so true. She was always so proud of me and willing to help me do and be whatever it was my particular dream at the moment. 

And know she helps me be a mom too.

I love watching my mom with my kids. It's one of my favourite things. Maybe it's rendered even more precious because I know my mom would have loved to watch her mom with us for longer than she got to. My grandma passed away when I was eight,  and I learned so clearly from watching my mom grieve that we all need our moms. While I believe the veil of death is not nearly enough to keep loving mother's from being close to their children (and perhaps in someways maybe it allows them to be even closer) I watched my mom miss being able to cry on her mom's shoulder (which I happened to do on Mother's Day...such a weird emotional day!) or collapse on her coach, or hand off the grandkids and drive away knowing they will have the best time ever, because that's what grandma's do.

I hope my mom is around for a long time, but we just never know and so ever chance I can give my kids to snuggle her and love her and come to know her--I'm taking in! I want their little fingers to remember her soft hands, for them to remember her smell and her voice even if not even consciously. And I want their to be LOTS of pictures to fill in the blanks, to show how much they were loved... and so they can see her goodness and know it's part of them---growing and progressing from one generations DNA to the next--because it's not just eye colour and receding hairlines that get passed down, it's sleeping with one eye open and sticking out your tongue when you concentrate and I believe, all the efforts we make to temper our characters, to be kinder and happier and stronger, bits and pieces of that progression we strive so hard for, it gets passed on too, wrapped in the desire we all have for our children to be better than we are--- to overcome our weaknesses and improve upon our good. I'm grateful for the good generations that I see in my children's eyes, may I help foster it the same way my mom did with the goodness she saw in me. Love you mom!

 Maybe I should save these for Father's Day but we took some with Grandpa too.

My mom brought in my old cabbage patch doll for Hadley. And they changed her diaper together, it was cute.

See that concentration tongue? She got that from my mom:)

Ben went outta town to visit one of his offices and we bunkered down with some lazy, non-structured mornings, to ease into the summer life (it's really tricky that Ben's busy summer starts two months before our kids summer!) They were just reading books but it still made me grab my camera.

 And that turned into hide and go seek in mom's closet...

We went to the temple on Friday and as much as I tried to be cool with my iphone pics of the beautiful tulips in the sparkly snow, I ended up telling Ben to go back, so I could play with my big camera while he caught up on work. So pretty! A little different than my usual kiddo pics.

And finally, no epic puddle pictures, but some other fun rainy day pictures.

And a whole bunch of pictures of Hadley with a bright umbrella...and you just get a bunch of them cuz I just couldn't not decide which cute expressions I liked best.