Boogers on the Wall

It seems like everyone thinks they are a professional photographer these days. And I’ll be the first to admit I’d really like to be one too.

I’ve loved taking pictures ever since I could remember. Pictures have always been an important part of the way I like to remember things – birthdays, vacations, milestones even everyday life. I love to capture it all.

But I am far from a professional. I am a hobbyist at heart – a hobbyist who loves to take pictures of her friends and family.

Several years ago, after I spent way too much money on a studio session with one of my young boys who wouldn’t cooperate, I decided to try my hand at taking my own pictures.

I borrowed my dad’s Nikon and hit the streets with my beautiful little boys. It was a lot of fun (for me, not them.)

I have dressed them up and propped them together many, many times since. They usually are really good sports – except the one time I made them sit on a blanket in the middle of our snowy backyard in order to take winter pictures of them outside with a white background. Or the time I wanted to get pictures of them by the pond near our house when all they wanted to do was explore – I think all three of my boys, and then I, ended up in tears that day.

For the most part they let me snap pictures of them every once in a while. And I have learned a lot by photographing them.

I saved my birthday and Christmas money for a couple of years to be able to purchase my own Nikon. I’ve had it for a year and a half and have taken thousands of pictures with it – partly because I love taking pictures and partly because I have to take dozens of really bad photos in order to get one good one. Ha!

Someday I’d love to spend more time and money learning the real way to do things – lighting, staging, balance, f-stop, shutter speed, etc. I’d love to learn how to spend more time behind my camera taking the pictures and less time behind my computer screen editing them.

Last fall I looked into enrolling at a local photography academy but the timing wasn’t right.

So for now I keep dabbling and practicing unprofessionally (in the little spare time I have). I keep taking pictures of my kids and occasionally friends’ kids when they let me.

Here are some of my favorites from over the years.

My three-year-old adores his great grandpa Deon. He loves to cuddle to him and watch movies together. He loves to help him in his garden. He loves to sit on his countertop and drink orange juice with him.

He has spent many, many times giggling with my grandpa. They have enjoyed some good times together.

Yet this week, for the first time in his life, my son noticed that his Papa Deon was different than him. That he only has three fingers on each hand – not five.

I watched in awe as the discovery played out. My beautiful little boy rubbed his soft chubby hands over his great grandpa’s rough palms while studying each detail of those unique hands.

Hands that lived though a horrendous explosive accident while my grandpa was in high school.

My grandpa and his friend were playing with dynamite one Sunday afternoon. They would light a stick, shove it in a bottle, screw the lid on then toss it into a nearby pond. My grandpa’s friend couldn’t get his bottle lid on so he handed the bottle – with it’s lit dynamite stick – to my grandpa. It exploded in his hands.

I can’t imagine what my grandpa lived through. Along with four of his fingers, he also lost sight in one of his eyes.

He was forced to learn how to live a new way. And that’s exactly what he did. He learned how to do everything all over again, despite his injury.

Which is why it doesn’t surprise me that it took more than three years for my son to realize his papa was different.

It melted my heart to watch my little boy look at his papa with love and intrigue as he turned over each hand for inspection. He didn’t run away scared or disgusted. He didn’t whisper behind his back and point a finger at the difference. He faced it head on with respect and curiosity.

Then he giggled as he realized, “You have three fingers (on each hand) and I’m three. That’s like me.”

Instead of pointing out how they were different, he relished how they were the same. Then he held his hand up proudly as he gave my grandpa a high “three.”

I’m going to try to remember this discovery as I embark on a new year. Instead of being scared and pointing out how others are different, I’m going to reach out with respect and curiosity.

I’m going to try to relish how we are the same – inside and out.

Better yet, I hope I can live without needing to even notice the differences. Like my son lived for three years before ever noticing my grandpa’s injured hands.

Here’s to embracing others for who they are; injured hands an all. Here’s to hoping others will do the same for me.

My two oldest boys looking through my parent’s house after it was burned by a fire.

Sometimes it’s still hard for me to believe that my parent’s house burned down. They’ve settled into a new place now and have begun to rebuild their lives.

It’s been seven months since the flames ripped through their home destroying much of their belongings.

I went into their new garage recently to walk by the boxes of stuff that was rescued from the place. I found my box of childhood pictures. The photos were untouched by smoke and fire but sadly many of them still got ruined.

The water used to put out the blazes seeped into the plastic tub filled with photos, sealing many of them together into a giant wad. If you know me, you know I love pictures. I worked for a long time separating several of them, then had to put them aside for a while.

For me it’s just pictures. For my parents it has been much, much more.

This past Sunday my 9-year-old was asked to speak at our church about how he helped serve his grandma after her house fire. It was tragic for my boys to watch someone they love go through something so hard.

I’d like to share with you the talk that he wrote himself. It has been a reminder to me that we can make a difference even when things seem dark – even when it seems like there is nothing we can do to make this world a better place.

Because there is always something we can do. My kids have been great examples of how to be there for someone in need.

This spring we got the opportunity to help someone I never expected and in a way I never expected.

 In May my grandma’s house had a three-alarm fire. We arrived at about 6:30 p.m. We were among the first of the family to arrive.

 We sat there and watched as the flames tore at the house and blackened it by the second.

 There wasn’t any way that I could save her house but I could serve her in another way.

 I could comfort her. I hugged her, held her hand, and cried with her. Over the next few weeks a lot happened. My grandparents needed a lot of love.

 We had some stuff from the house that we had borrowed such as clocks, movies, knives, somehow we had one of their spoons and a lot of other junk from their drawers. That we would give back as presents.

 We visited them. Ate dinner with them. We did not know what exactly would help. We couldn’t take away their trial, but we knew we loved them and wanted to serve them.

 I would like to close by saying one of my favorite scriptures.

Mosiah Chapter 2 vs. 17

And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.

I don’t know how much my service helped my grandma but I know I felt close to my Heavenly Father.

Hate grocery shopping? Then I may have found your new favorite free online tool: Walmart Grocery.

I hate grocery shopping. I have lamented about it a couple of times on my blog.

From nearly running over my own kids when they dangle from the side of the kiddie car carts, to watching my 3-year-old hit every single elderly person who shares the same aisle as us to running to get all the food our family – between scouts, baseball practice, PTA meetings and nap time – it’s never easy. It’s never convenient. And it’s never over. Inevitably I’ll get home and realize I forgot one, maybe two and sometimes even three or four things on our list.

So when I got an email last week for $20 off at Walmart Grocery, I was sold. It was payday anyway and I needed to go shopping.

I made my list like I normally do. I planned on how many dinner meals we’d need in the next two weeks, made of list of food for those meals, wrote down the things we needed to restock our food storage and then added the usual staples – milk, toilet paper, diapers, etc.

Then I logged onto www.walmart.grocery.com

I plugged in my area code to see what stores offer the free pick-up service near me and then logged into my Walmart account.

Then I began my virtual shopping trip.

At first I used the blue drop-down menu and searched for items by category. But that was time consuming and tedious. So I started using the search tool bar at the top of the webpage. I’d enter the name of an item from my grocery list, select what size, brand or type I wanted, then add it to my cart.

It was magical.

I loved that I didn’t have to walk back and forth from aisle to aisle looking for the right brand, size or quantity of something. I love that I didn’t have to drag my kids along while wandering aimlessly for the one thing on my list I can never find.

I am a bargain shopper who claims that the same food resides in the Great Value boxes as it does the name brand ones so I love that I could choose value brands when shopping.

I love that I could see a running total of my trip (I never can seem to keep a tab in my mind while wandering through the store in person.)

I love that the service is free. Yes, FREE.

Anyone who has a participating store nearby can use the website to shop for their groceries. Once you submit and pay for your order you select a date and time when you want to pick it up. Then a Walmart employee will do all the legwork for you. They wander through the store finding all the things on your list. What if something is sold out? They substitute for a bigger version at the smaller cost.

About 15 minutes before I was to arrive at my pick-up store I called the pick-up number and told them I was on my way. Then I called again when I got there.

Less than a minute later an employee walked out pulling a cart loaded up with my groceries.

I felt like royalty.

She helped me load my goods into my car and I was on my way.

This is going to change my life.

I’m not saying I’m never going to go into Walmart or any other grocery store again – heaven knows I end up picking up extra things a few times a week sometimes. But for the big, pay-day I-need-enough-food-for-my-family-of-6-for-2-weeks trips I am going to use this service.

I’ve tried something similar with Sam’s Club. But it’s not nearly as convenient. If you order online and choose to pick up your stuff in the store, you still have to go inside, log in and head to a check out stand before you can get out of there. And they never have the ground turkey I like available for in-store pick-up.

Tired, crazy, stressed out moms are not the only ones I can see benefiting from the new Walmart Grocery program. This would be a huge help to anyone who is short on time or who may need help getting around a store.

There are a couple of drawbacks to Walmart Grocery. One is there is no way to price match. That’s something that I have done for years. I won’t be able to scour other ads and have Walmart match other stores’ extremely low prices.

Second, there’s no way to use coupons – for now at least. Another thing I have done for years.

But when it comes to convenience and timesaving versus a few dollars I could save with coupons, I’m going to go with the former. I can always head to Smith’s or Fresh Market with my coupons for one or two things if it’s a killer deal. (Or send my husband. Ha!)

When I was a little girl my mom used to drive an extra 10 minutes to shop at a store that would load all her groceries in the car for her when her shopping trip was done. I never understood that until now.

This is even better.

I’ll never forget my overnight stay in the hospital the night Luca died. I opted to move to a different hospital floor to avoid other mothers and babies. It was late when we got moved and I had been up for nearly 24 hours.

I was exhausted but sleep didn’t come easily. My mind wouldn’t, couldn’t shut off. Fears, regrets, sorrow and despair engulfed me. If I drifted off the nightmares quickly woke me up.

At one point I woke with a start having just relived his lifeless birth.

I sat in my hospital bed and sobbed. It was dark, I was alone and I let his death sink in.

Then I promised myself I was NEVER going to let this happen again.

The next morning my doctor came to check on me and I asked him a dozen questions about what actually happened to our baby boy and what the odds were of it happening again.

He reassured me that knots in umbilical cords are rare, and knots that result in infant demise are even more rare.

But that was little comfort to a mother who it just happened to.

Gradually my heart softened and after several months I was willing to risk it all again. Willing to try to have another child. That’s when the long road to our rainbow baby began.

It took us a year to get pregnant and it was a scary, stressful time. I knew that at any moment I could feel this baby stop moving. I knew that there was no guarantee that this child would be born alive. And I knew what it would feel like if I had to deliver this baby stillborn and then bury it.

Yet I took a risk. And I thank heavens every day that it paid off.

I faced one of my darkest trials and I lived. And so did my beautiful rainbow baby.

I have spent the past few weeks playing with my two youngest babies. I have helped my T-Rex boy hatch from a cardboard box egg. I have cuddled stuffed snowmen with my baby girl.

I have snuggled to them on our beanbag and read them Christmas stories. I have chased them around our house while they growled and panted like dogs.

I spend most of all of my time caring for and playing with these two amazing humans.

And I keep asking myself what my life would be like without them.

What if I truly had given up? What if I had kept my promise to myself and NEVER delivered another baby?

I have been extremely blessed with two beautifully happy babies since I made myself that pact.

One is now three years old. I swear he was born laughing. He loves to smile. He loves people and I have yet to meet a person who doesn’t love him. He often plays with my hair and strokes my cheeks. His dark brown eyes melt my heart and I can’t imagine my life without him.

Then there’s my second baby after my loss. She is now one year old. She has been the best baby I have ever seen – ever. She loves to rub her nose against mine and squint her eyes when giving me kisses. She almost never cries. I have never wanted to hold anything more in my entire life than I have wanted to hold her. She was meant to be placed into my arms. And yet I nearly missed the chance to wrap them around her.

I nearly gave up.

The darkness and despair that I felt that night almost won.

I am so glad it didn’t.

We started having our own Thanksgiving dinner when we were first married – back when we could only afford a turkey loaf.

The Sunday or Monday before Thanksgiving we hold a mini feast around our own table. We sit down and talk about what we are thankful for.

Each year we make a bare, leafless, paper tree. As we talk about what we are thankful for we write on small paper leaves then glue them onto the tree.

Usually it’s hard to think of things at first. We feel awkward and the ideas are slow coming. But the more we start listing off items the more the gratitude builds and we end up running out of leaves before we’ve written all the things we would like to include.

Most years the tree ends up looking like a bush it’s so full.

I love to see what my boys think of. I’d like to share some of my favorite leaves written as they appeared on this year’s tree.

– Health

– Unsealed Alien Files

– Warm coat

– No Yankee fans

– One more year of David Ortiz

– Military – Armed Forces

– A TV! – I can’t live without it

– Christmas

– No sience today

– Baseball

– Being Alive

– Fishing

– Fishing line

– Worms

– Tackle

– Bait

– The Ponds

– Hooks

– Studio C

– Lobster Bisque

– Grandparents and great grandparents

– Job

– Music

– A body

– Dino Trux

– Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos, all the itos

– A Family

-Heavenly Father and Jesus

– Pictures

– My Babies

My kids have early out days from school all this week. Which normally would stress me right out. It’s not that I don’t love being with my children, but my boys have always been busy, busy.

I have to be at the top of my A-game to keep up with them. Because of this I have grown to cherish naptime. It allows me a couple of hours to catch up and sometimes even read a few pages in my novel for book club.

Obviously my oldest two no longer take naps. Which means I don’t get any afternoon alone time when they have early out. So I end up staying up really late trying to keep up on housework and any miscellaneous projects on my to-do list.

Normally this makes me grumpy. This week I decided not to let it.

When Monday afternoon rolled around and my two oldest boys came flying in the door I was ready for them.

And that’s when we started working on the wagon.

My oldest has been obsessed with making things for months. He’ll go outside with scrap pieces of wood and hammer for hours with his friends. He has created many things including a tipsy chair and an open-sided boat.

So I wasn’t surprised when he wanted to build something.

We have spent hours this week in the garage working on building him a fishing wagon.

We have carefully picked out wood – out of the scrap pile of old fence pieces that he begged off of the neighbor.

We have measured and drawn lines with permanent marker.

I have cut old fence pieces with a scroll saw – something I never thought I would be able to do.

We have split some of the old wood several times. We have bent up a bunch of aluminum nails. We screwed one wagon side on only to watch it fall off moments later.

We were going to give up when our teenager neighbor came by and helped us hold the sides together while we tried hammering it one … more … time.

Our woodcutting isn’t precise and our angles are crooked. We haven’t used any blueprints and we didn’t search for ideas on Pinterest. This has been a true amateur, build-your-own-idea-yourself kind of project.

And it has been great.

I don’t know if the wagon is going to pan out. We still have to figure out how to hook the sides on and who knows where we are going to get wheels for the bottom. It might fall apart the second we push it out from the garage.

Yet even if all the nails pop out and the wagon crumbles to splinters and we never get to use it to carry our poles, all will not be lost. I have spent time with my boys building something. We have laughed. We have grumbled. We have worked together.

We have made something greater than a wagon. We have made memories – memories that wouldn’t have been made unless my boys had early out this week.