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.

Our Week in Photos: Sprinklers, Dandelion Wishes, and (of course) a couple more trampoline pictures

It has felt one-hundred percent like summer lately. Which with school still in can be interesting, but we have just had a few wonderful afternoons, pretending.

One of the greatest perks of living where we live is the friends we enjoy nearby. Our kids run back and forth (even when told not too...) riding scooters, raiding freezers, makin' their own fun like it's 1976 (or what I imagine 1976 would be like-- basically, only slightly more free than my own eighties childhood). 

I know there are tons of blog posts and articles out there romanticizing the good ol' days of childhood and parenting, before soccer became something you signed your 3 year up for, instead of something your kids played unsupervised at a nearby park. I get it. But I also think we can still give our kids so much of those nostalgic memories....just turn on the hose right? This morning Levi wanted me to make him a kazoo...so I dutifully unraveled half a roll of toilet paper (now on my bathroom counter) so we had a roll to make it out of. He had a blast, got the pots and pans out for his baby brother and sister and they rocked out. Wait? Why did I start thinking about this....

Oh ya. Because I have thought a tone about the parenting side of it. Why does it seem so much more stressful and hard? There are a ton of contributing factors to this, but I've found it very interesting that when I've asked moms from just one generation back,  what's the main difference between when they raised us and us raising our kids today (with the implied, how the heck could you have 8 kids and 2 or 3 is making us feel totally overwhelmed?), so many, without hesitation answered, 

"Oh, we just helped each other more."

"We didn't expect each others houses to be spotless...there were kids there! We didn't want to take our kids along with us for everything and neither did our friends, so we would just drop em off and let them play and take other's kids for them. And we never kept track."

It's something, that even though I truly believe it, in our current culture it can be challenging to put into practice. I can't wait for my copy of "Mothers of the Village" (I ordered myself for Mother's Day!!!) to get here, all about this idea of woman supporting each other.

These sprinkler pictures came about because my baby was sick. I'd finally decided to take poor miserable Enoch into the doctor but of course the time the clinic had a available was right as the kids got out of school. Now, I could drag all my kids to the doctors, it would be a nightmare and we'd probably come home with more sicknesses than we went in with, but instead I asked if they could play at my friend's house. The trick is, when your friends with someone, you know their life is crazy, you know a bit about their struggles and stresses and the last thing you want to do is add to it! And maybe she played it real cool and in reality having my kids over was actually the last thing she could handle that day, but she didn't make me feel like that. 

I went to the doctor, and the kids had a blast playing in the sprinklers. I brought back a couple boxes of popsicles with me that all the kids devoured for "dinner".  

I hope I can be as helpful to her as she always is to me, but we aren't keeping a balance sheet. Ya know? 

Anyways, I sat and chatted after the appointment all the while noticing the way the sunlight was making Hadley's piggy tails glow, seeing McKye make the best over the top expressions when he'd plasmacar down the driveway,  and Levi making awesome power poses as he jumped through the sprinklers until I couldn't stand it! The summer time childhood good vibes, in the lovely light were begging to be captured, "I gotta go get my camera!!!" So I did, brought it back, realized the battery was dead, debated all over again whether to run back to change the battery... 

In the end, I'm very glad I did. Cuz I really love how some of these photos turned out. 

McKye is starting to think it's funny to try and mess me up while I'm trying to take his photo...
I told him if he keeps it up I'm taking away his college fund.

So I can remember Mckye's awkward adult teeth growing in

He thinks he is soooo funny

These two are beyond cute

Get off! My turn!

I don't even like this photo, shoulda took a video of this,  cuz her little diaper bum waddling while she pushed her big brother was so  darling.

Took this one on May the 4th:)

Lawn lovers, be warned....these are gonna make you cringe. 

Are my kids' faces ever clean?????!?!?!?

I wanted to get some of Hadley, but we were late for something...who knows what, that was a whole week ago, might as well be a life time!

Soooo I took some of her yesterday after church instead....

I promise it's just really this one corner of our yard that's this "bad"... I love it. Soemone said to me once,
"You don't want a lawn, Chelsea, you want a meadow!", and it's soooo true!

And one again, trampoline pictures.