I took this picture in June 2008.
We were headed to Grandfather Mountain from gorgeous Blowing Rock, N.C., where we stayed at the Hemlock Inn for a long weekend that also included a day at Tweetsie Railroad.
I’m so glad there was a pull-off at this rock! The road was much too curvy for us to have stopped for a picture without one.
A brand-new set of colored pens makes grading papers a little less painful. 😉
This is our family as envisioned by a five-year-old Lucas, who is now six. He drew the picture and asked me to write the names he wanted on it.
I’ve spent a lot of time appreciating it over the last year or however long it’s been hanging on the fridge.
The main thing I love about this particular piece of art is that our family is all together. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen very much anymore.
And we all look happy.
We’re not holding hands, but our arms are outstretched toward each other. (One of mine actually is right in front of Atticus’ face.) We’re enjoying each other’s company.
I also notice:
At the beginning of last summer, I went through the artwork box I’ve kept for Ryan all these years, hoping to weed out some things that aren’t so keep-worthy. But it’s so hard for me.
Seeing those little hand-print turkeys and cotton-ball Santas takes me back to a time when my firstborn was my baby. I look at him now and wonder where he went. As much as I love Ryan today, I miss that little kid.
And I know that someday I’ll look back on this picture by Lucas and all the other artwork that he and four-year-old Atticus make with a smile and a catch in my throat.
We celebrated my dad’s 70th birthday today with lunch at The Mayflower, birthday cake, and an afternoon (into evening) of conversation. His birthday was on the 13th, but we couldn’t all get together earlier in the week.
When they went to pick up the cake, my dad requested that they add that “70” to it, although, my mom said, he hasn’t been feeling that great about turning 70. I guess he decided to embrace it in a physical way. I’m all for that!
Notice that the cake in the picture is upside down. Kevin saw it this way on the counter and asked about the “OL,” thinking for a second somebody’d already eaten the “D.” But it’s actually the “70,” upside down.
It got me thinking about how just a little change of perspective can make a huge change in the way we interpret things. Sometimes all it takes is a tiny change of scenery to bring new life to the same-old.
Next time you’re in the midst of something you really don’t know how to handle, or something you’re really bored with, or something you’re totally resenting having to do, take a second to breathe and tilt your head a bit. Try to find a different angle to come at it from.
I think you’ll be surprised at the results.
Woohoo! That kid can really read!
We’d just picked the kids up from the sitter’s house this afternoon.
“This is not the way to home,” Atticus warned us, as Kevin turned the car west, down a state road that would wind a bit through the woods.
“We’re going a different way home,” we said.
As we came upon the still-iced-over pond, I asked Kevin to stop the car for a minute, so I could take some pictures from the open window. The boys both gaped over the frozen pond.
“Is the water stuck, Mommy?” Atticus wanted to know. “Aww.”
Kevin explained how water is more likely to freeze in a pond than a river because it’s not moving as much.
Then, he asked Lucas if he would walk out on the ice.
Lucas said he’d walk out on the edge first to see if it would hold him, and then move out to the center if it did.
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Kevin said.
I explained that we can’t be sure from one solid area that the rest is necessarily solid, as well. Just because you step once or twice or ten times without crashing through to the freezing water beneath doesn’t mean your very next step won’t buckle under your weight.
(This is especially true around here in southern Virginia. My dad has old tin-type photographs of early 19th-century people skating on the rivers around here, but it’s not a normal wintertime activity. I don’t think I know anyone who’s ice-skated outside a rink, actually.)
We talked about what would happen if you were to fall in, too, how the thick ice that held your weight would become your crystal prison from underneath, fighting for air and muscle-shocked, searching for the hole that granted you access to the frigid water. What an awful feeling that must be!
And we talked about George Bailey and his friends sledding onto the frozen pond in It’s a Wonderful Life and how his brother would have drowned if not for George, who ended up with a deaf ear. (They both want to watch the movie now. Yay!)
So Kevin hammered in the lesson (“So don’t ever walk across the water”), to which I threw in a clause (“Unless Jesus tells you to walk across the water”), which he cautioned against (“You better make sure it’s Jesus”).
And then we were off to the house from the back way, through our favorite tunnel and on down the highway.
It was getting late, pouring down rain, and we still had quite a few blocks to go. Ducking in and around awnings, we got a very different view of New York than our usual.
At one stop, with no next shelter in sight, the store sign hit me as strangely funny: “99¢ Dreams.”
Cheap dreams, small ones: a little ole hat or umbrella: just a bit o’ shelter; that’s all.
Nope. All closed. Gate down. None for you.
Tonight’s your night to get soaked.
(Taken July 2010)
This afternoon, Kevin found a wheat penny in his little change thingy. It was from 1918, two years before his Grandpa was born. World War I was ending, and Daylight Savings Time was instituted.
It prompted me to go check the coin collections I’ve been working on for years and years but haven’t touched in quite some time. And it prompted Kevin to find the jar of wheat pennies his dad gave him a long time ago that we’ve always meant to sort through.
I have two Lincoln Cent collections: 1941 to 1974 and 1975 to 2000, both in Whitman-brand folders. I think I got the first one for Christmas way back when, and I must have gotten the latter in 2000 because the same era folders now are for 1974 to 2002.
The coins I still need to complete my first collection, the ’41 to ’75 one:
The “S” stands for San Francisco; the “D” stands for Detroit. These signify the particular mint that produced the coin. Years with no additional letter, in this era at least, were minted in Philadelphia. It makes sense that I would have more trouble finding San Franciso coins than Denver or Philadelphia coins since I’m in Virginia.
In addition to that 1918 wheat penny, we have some other pennies that don’t fit in my folders, some I’ve had and others I found sorting through the jar’s contents. I need the 1909-1940 folder for these, but it appears to be sold out at the company’s site.
There’s been a lot of talk about discontinuing the printing of pennies in recent years. According to a 2006 USA Today editorial by Wake Forest Economics professor Robert Whaples, it costs almost 1-1/2 cents to produce one penny.
Whether that’s the case or not, I’m holding onto my penny collection.
I took one more shot, of my signature on the earlier of the two Whitman folders because it shows (to me and people who know me well IRL) how long ago I must have gotten it.
It was definitely before 8th grade, I know regardless of the handwriting, because that was the year I decided my name would be “Jo.” I filled out all of my paperwork with an “A” for my middle initial, and I introduced myself that way to everyone new at junior high.
This wasn’t taken from yesterday’s snow; we only got an inch. This was from the week of Christmas.
Thanks to Lucas for pointing these out in our backyard. 🙂 I have no idea what kind of tree it is.
I can’t help but edit the books I read. If only my own mistakes jumped off the page at me the way others’ do.