Resolution

Proverbs 31:25-30

Strength and honor are her clothing;

She shall rejoice in time to come.

She opens her mouth with wisdom,

And on her tongue is the law of kindness.

She watches over the ways of her household,

And does not eat the bread of idleness.

Her children rise up and call her blessed;

Her husband also, and he praises her:

"Many daughters have done well,

But you excel them all."

Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing,

But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.

I long to be just a little like the Proverbs 31 woman. Probably I won't plant a vineyard and probably I won't consider a field and buy it. I also will not likely stop fearing snow for my household. But oh how I hope that the heart of my husband will safely trust me. May I never take off the clothing of strength and honor. May I always be a woman who fears the Lord.

Weeks 26, 27 & 28

Week 26: An Old Friend

I wracked my brain on what to do for this picture. I live in Utah, about a million miles away from all of my old friends so it wasn't like I could call up a pal and have her come over for a photo shoot. I considered things like a tub of ice cream or a book I've liked for eons. In the end, it suddenly came to me and I knew exactly what I was going to take a picture of.

Meet Rainbow.

I think I got Rainbow when I was five years old. I can still vividly remember settling into bed with him (yes, for some reason Rainbow has always been a he) on the night that I received him from a neighbor. I remember my mom lying there with me and asking me what I was going to name it. I couldn't decide and she prompted, "Well, what does it look like?" And then I replied, "A RAINBOW!" 

His eyes are yellow and the plastic has caved in because I used to pop them in and watch them pop back out and then, one day, they just stayed indented and I was sad for awhile. He's faded into very muted colors and one of his arms is barely hanging on. But, for a twenty five-year-old bear, I think he's doing alright.

I slept with this guy from the age of five until the age of 17 with nightly regularity. During the summer after my senior year of high school I "weaned" myself off of him because there was no way I was taking a raggedy old bear to college. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't sleep with him when I came home from school. That bear knows more secrets and has caught more tears than any one living, breathing person. He is truly an old friend.

Week 27: Diptych

I didn't even know what a diptych was and totally had to rely on a series of websites to explain it to me. "A diptych is a photograph that uses two different or identical images side by side to form one single artistic statement. The two images can literally be in contact with each other, or separated by a border or frame."

So, the other day we were outside playing with a slip and slide. Our yard is pretty flat so I decided I'd set the slide up on our actual play yard slide and pray against broken bones. I rapidly shot as the boys slid down the slide. Then I put together this diptych which caught Garrett in the act of sliding and then his face post slide.

Week 28: Weather

We've been experiencing thunder and lightning storms in these parts. The other night, on our way home from our Community Life Group, we saw some fantastic lightning. When we got home, Troy jumped out of the car and took the boys inside to get them ready for bed and I drove up to the top of a hill by our house. I had our good camera but I don't know how to use it beyond pointing it and snapping some shots. It didn't have anything to focus on so it just kept flashing but never taking a picture. Apparently I need to learn how to use it in a manual setting. Well, quite irritated, I drove home and switched out the good camera for my every day, cheaper one.

That camera has a delay and I was unable to get any picture with lightning in it. I would see an incredible flash bolt through the sky and I'd snap only to look at the picture and see nothing but black. So I just started taking dozens of pictures of the black sky hoping that, eventually, a lightning bolt would occur.

And that's exactly what happened. Except it was way off to the right of the frame. So I kept taking pictures but never getting anything but the dark sky. Eventually, it started pouring so I drove home. I was pretty disappointed. Until I loaded the one picture that I did get onto my computer.

Just an ordinary, tiny, point and shoot Canon photographing the extraordinary. I'm pretty happy with the results.

Weeks 23, 24, 25

Week 23: The Good Old Days

You know, the days when Utah was just a place I visited to hit the slopes. Just kidding. But little did I know when we spent all those winter weeks in skiing at Brian Head that I would live just three and a half hours north one day. Those were the days when it was my own mom who spent all the time bundling us up just to have us need to go to the bathroom ten minutes later. 

That's my brother--boy did growing up do him some good. (Just kidding, Jon. Mostly. Of course you're still in the habit of calling me Hose Head and throwing me in pools so I really don't feel the need to flatter you.) I thought about not addressing the third person in the shot and waiting to see how many people inquired about the sister I've never mentioned.

In reality, that's my cousin, Amanda. She's all grown up now and we tried to go on the Amazing Race together but never got called. CBS has no idea what they're missing. Seriously. We'd make good TV.

Week 24: Black & White

Hi Babies! I love you so much you make my heart hurt. This theme was posted while we were in HI and I declared, "Oh, so I'll just post a picture of my kids." Although, really, in this house, we generally refer to people as "peach" and "brown" because that's what Garrett starting saying and we're letting our kids take the lead on when racial lessons are appropriate. I've had a question or two regarding this approach (i.e. what if something happens and you could have prevented it by talking about racial issues earlier?). But I am not going to be able to prevent race related issues from happening simply by talking about them. While I agree that we need to prepare our kids to deal with them, I've read several sources written by African Americans that suggest that the best approach is a kid driven one.

This picture was taken one of our first days on Maui. Garrett had a tattoo on his chest which came off in the waves only after he'd tanned around it. Thankfully we were there long enough to fix that bizarre tan line.

Week 25: Rise & Shine

Hi again Babies! How long will you let me call you that? What's that you say? That was so two years ago? Well, tough. As long as you're living under my roof I'll call you what I want to, Babies.

We took this picture in our hotel at Disneyland last summer. They were very tired from their festivities. Garrett still sleeps with that blanket and an elephant which might be the blue blob by his hair. That green blob on the right side of the shot is Franklin, who lives at Grandma and Grandpa's house and is one of Garrett's favorite things in the entire world. Matthew still sleeps with that blanket and that monkey. I am pretty certain that both boys are going to be packing blankies and stuffed friends to take with them on their honeymoons.

Week 21: This Is Where I Live

So in the picture that I actually posted to the photo project page, my address appeared in this shot. But I removed it for blog purposes. It's not like some creepy stalker person couldn't find me if he wanted to. And, really, who am I kidding? I don't think most people out there stalk mommy bloggers with less than 150 followers. There's nothing particularly stalk-worthy about me.

And I'm okay with that.

But, still, I don't think it would be particularly difficult to find me without the numbers of my address if someone wanted to. So, I figured, it's probably best not to just hand out my precise location.

Anyway...this is where I live.

When I'm not at church. Or the pool. Or in my car. This is where the boys grow. This is where the unstalkworthy blogging happens. This is where Troy writes most of his sermons and where we're growing tomatoes and zucchini in an old plastic pool in the backyard. This is where we, more often than not, play music after dinner and sing and dance like a quartet of undignified street performers. This is where we laugh and cry and discipline and love. It's a rental but, since we've been in it for 3 and a half years, it feels like it's ours.

Except we get to call the landlord when the water heater goes out. That's sure a nice feature. I also started composing an email last week when Garrett screamed that our dishwasher was on fire. Smoke was billowing out and Troy and I thought for sure it was going to be deemed unusable ever again. So, armed with the fire extinguisher, we opened the appliance. I flipped open the laptop and began writing, "Today, while using the dishwasher, it began to smoke..." but before I could finish, Troy brought my attention to a plastic sippy cup which had fallen out off of the rack, landed on the heating mechanism and burned to a melted plastic crisp. So I stopped writing.

Yeah. This is where I live.

Week 20: A Place of Solitude

When I first saw the theme for this week, Solitude, a nearby mountain resort, immediately came to mind. I wanted to grab my camera and drive up there and see what we could find to take pictures of. So that's exactly what we did. On Wednesday I packed a lunch and the boys and I set off for Big Cottonwood Canyon.

It was gorgeous that day and, when we got up to Solitude, I realized that the winter ski season is over and the resort has not yet opened for summer. When we got there, a few people were having lunch but they left just after we arrived and we were, literally, left in solitude. This is the picture I used for the official photo project shot.

It had been in the 60s down in the valley so I'd thrown in light weight jackets as an afterthought. Despite the fact that there were very few clouds, it somehow managed to start snowing on us. It was really more like flurries and they were thick chunks...almost like light, soft, balls of hail. It was fine when the wind wasn't blowing but when it blew, it was freezing!

The boys desperately wanted to eat there but it was so cold that we only managed to eat our sandwiches before I ushered them back to the car. There were patches of snow and the boys wanted to stay and play forever but I was cold to my bones so I ended their fun, promising that we'd make a lot of stops on the way back down the canyon.

I pulled over four of five times during the 12 mile drive out of the canyon. The boys wanted to touch the water but I had to find really gradual shores because the water was raging. I had visions of both boys being swept down the river and that is just not a party I want to be invited to.

While I was helping Matthew touch the water at this location, I looked up just in time to see Garrett taking his first steps out onto this log.

Now I'm as adventurous as the next mom and, really, more than most so I know where he gets it but sometimes I think I gave birth to a reincarnated Evel Knievel. Except that Evel Knievel didn't die until after Garrett was born and I don't believe in reincarnation.

Normally I would not freak out about him crossing a river on a log but the water was cold and the river was fast and when I checked the log out myself a few minutes later it was not sturdy at all.

See what I mean?

Just kidding. That's totally not the same log. 

We explored. We did a little walking around a picnic area. We had a blast. And I was reminded that I really need to haul myself up into the mountains a little more often because this picture...

was taken about thirty five minutes from my front door.

Week 19: A Sunny Day

We were supposed to try to get a picture of a sunburst but every time I thought about taking a picture, it was cloudy. Or pouring down rain. Or night time. So there will be no photo of a sunburst.

I went to the archives and found this instead.

Last summer, Troy and I celebrated our anniversary by having fish on the pier in San Clemente. We walked down the pier once we were finished eating and this guy was there, harassing the people who were fishing.

It was gorgeous that day.

Although, I can't really remember a time when I didn't think that Southern California was beautiful.

Week 18: A Bug's Life

When I first saw the theme for this week, I immediately thought of a picture. The photo will be two years old in September but I love it.

My brave, bug loving, all-boy offspring certainly gave this praying mantis a day to remember.

Week 17: From the Hip

Our associate pastor shoots from the hip all the time. He catches me in all kinds of hideous poses and faces. It's the most thrilling thing that's ever happened to me, really.

I, myself, have no talent for shooting from the hip whatsoever.

After about fifty shots of just pants, or grass, or the tops of trees, I finally got this one.

Week 16: Our Planet, Earth

It seemed a broad subject to me. One could take a picture of anything, really. Mountains, clouds, dirt, waterfall, landfill. You name it.

I was working out in my garden on Saturday. A ghetto garden. Seriously. A white trash garden. An old kiddie pool filled with dirt. An old tub filled with dirt. We're going to look like a bad episode of Hoarders. But anyway.

Bees were buzzing all around. It is the Beehive State after all. 

So I grabbed the camera.

And I captured this.

Week 15: In Flight

When this week's theme was posted, I thought I'd see tons of helicopters and airplanes. I guess that growing up in the home of a helicopter pilot just naturally makes my mind go to aviation places. But when the pictures started rolling in, they were mostly of birds. And by birds I mean actual feathered birds, not helicopters.

We live pretty close to a regional airport so I parked on the side of the road and just started snapping shots of helicopters and planes landing and taking off. The weather was perfect--super cloudy--so I didn't have to contend with glares or weird shadows.

This was my favorite picture of the bunch. I love that both the helicopter and the flag are flying.

Week 14: Softness

Our dear friends were here with us in the Salt Lake valley for the first year and a half of our ministry. Just after Matthew was born, they moved to the Cache valley. We see them as often as we can which is never often enough.

Last Thursday I made the drive up and met them at a working farm that was hosting an event called Baby Animal Days. The boys were able to hold baby chicks, ducks, bunnies, and turtles. They pet baby goats, lambs, and calves. They also had the opportunity to see a colt, cats, chickens, and even baby bears.

This week's theme was softness and I had my choice of several pictures that I'd taken that day. Matthew was leery of actually holding the animals but Garrett would have gladly lived in this moment for the rest of his life.

Week 13: Messy

These boots are one of the best purchases I ever made. I got them last year after the boys begged and begged for them. I finally silenced them by asking if they wanted them for Easter. They said yes and, aside from a few pieces of candy, that was what they got on Easter morning.

They love them. They wear them all the time. Especially Matthew. But that's not Matthew. That's Garrett. Playing in the mud. As my sons are both apt to do.

This is the part of our yard where the boys have "Ant Wars" on an almost daily basis. If there isn't mud, they make it. And you know what, I so don't care. If it keeps them busy and it keeps them outside and I know where they are, by all means, make mud. The brilliant thing about kids is that they wash off.

Garrett knows that he removes all muddy footwear and clothing before entering the house. Matthew, well, he's learning.

So thankfully, as I said before, this particular boot belongs to Garrett.

Week 12: Spring Has Sprung

When I first saw this week's theme I kind of rolled my eyes. Our trees are still bare. There are very few flowers. This is the time in Utah when the weather can be 70 degrees on Monday and it can snow on Wednesday. Ridiculous.

I had no idea what I was going to post. I thought about going to the archives and finding something nice and springy from last year. But then...

Garrett ran in from outside. "The Ice Cream Man! He's here! He hasn't been here since last summer!" He got his own dollar out of his own jar to purchase his own ice cream.

And at 7:00 pm it was warm enough for him to eat it in the backyard.

Spring has sprung.

Week 11: Night

Since we weren't anywhere spectacular at night last week, I had to go to the archives for this one.

It was taken near the entrance to Tomorrow Land last summer. We spent three nights and two days at Disneyland and California Adventure with my parents. My boys loved watching the fireworks, Matthew from my arms and Garrett from his grandpa's shoulders.

Week 10: Guess What?

This week we were supposed to photograph something that would make everyone have to guess what the picture might be.

Any ideas?

Week 9: Eternal Love

When I first saw the theme for this week, I instantly thought of wedding pictures or shots of me with my newborn babies. I even thought of a beautiful picture I have of Matthew's mother snuggling him. But when I really began to dissect it I had to remember that the theme wasn't "Love" or "Long-lasting Love" or "Deep and Abiding Love." 

The theme was simply (and infinitely more than simply) stated, "Eternal Love."

Eternal: [ih-tur-nl] adjective. Without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing.

Our love for our children, while intense and without end, has a clear beginning--even though we can rarely remember a moment without them. Our love for our spouses certainly originated somewhere, sometime, long after we came to be. This left me with the realization that eternal love exists solely in the character of God Himself. Since fallible human beings all have a clear beginning, we are not capable of eternal love.

So, what to photograph? 

Christ's love for us had no beginning. It had no end. It's been there eternally. Before God created the heavens and the earth, His Son knew He would die for us. The timeless plan was finished on that day on Calvary but the love goes on. It will exist when there is a new heaven and a new earth. It simply is. And was. And will be. For eternity.

John 15:13--Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Week 8: Rule of Thirds

Check out the giveaway!

************************************************

Rule of thirds? I had no idea what the heck this even meant. Any artistic bone I have in this old body is purely theatrical. Thankfully, when the topic was posted, there was a little message attached that instructed us to Google it if we had no idea what it was.

So I did.

"The rule of thirds is a 'rule of thumb' or guideline which applies to the process of composing visual images such as paintings, photographs and designs. The guideline proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines, and that important compositional elements should be placed along these lines or their intersections. Proponents of the technique claim that aligning a subject with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the composition than simply centering the subject would." Wikipedia

It's a little challenging when your subject keeps wiggling off of your imaginary line, but I did the best I could.

And I kind of love the shot. I'm not thrilled with the lighting but I love that he looks like he's going to float away. I love that he's wearing his beloved rain boots. I love him. And I love that I took this right after his third birthday, so "rule of thirds" kind of took on another meaning.

Week 7: Taboo

Once again, I have to credit my husband (and Shel Silverstein) for this one. When I initially read the topic for this week, my mind went to 31 different places, all of them highly inappropriate. And, yeah, the subject was Taboo but there are places a pastor's wife just isn't going to go on her Facebook page or her blog. Trying to come up with an appropriate taboo was proving to be a challenge for me.

Troy wrote down the words to the Silverstein poem "Hat" on a napkin yesterday morning and I ran with it.

HAT

Teddy said it was a hat,

So I put it on.

Now Dad is saying,

"Where the heck's

The toilet plunger gone?"

-Shel Silverstein

Here's what I used:

To capture the shot, I first had to locate the plungers in Walmart because, let's be honest, there wasn't any way in the world that I was going to let my sweet babies put our eight-year-old plunger on their faces. I thought I'd find them in the bath aisle but I was wrong. Apparently, toilet plungers are in the home improvement section. This makes sense if you don't live with two little boys who make use of the plunger so frequently that it's a prominent feature of your bathroom. But for us, it's practically part of our tour when we have guests. "Here's the kitchen. The boys' room. The playroom. The plunger."

My sons simply could not have had more fun with this photo shoot. It took me a minute to get them to stop sword fighting with the plungers.

Once that was accomplished, they really settled into the shoot. Faces. Heads. Torsos. They were absolutely not particular.

I like to imagine that whoever was in charge of monitoring the security cameras was dumbfounded by this situation. "Sir," he'd say to his manager, "we have a situation in home improvement. Some lady is encouraging her kids to play with plungers."

With all the merchandise cluttering up my shots, I decided that I'd need to really get into my role as a serious photographer. So, I did what any serious photographer would do. I climbed into the back of the cart. Suddenly, there was a full fledged adult balancing in the back of a basket on wheels, forcing her sons to play with plungers. And, because the scene wasn't crazy enough, I then told my children to lay down on the floor. In Walmart.

They didn't really seem to mind. And they thought it was utterly hysterical that mommy was standing in the back of the cart trying not to die.

If they form a band together when they grow up, I'm totally making them name it Plunger Heads. And I'm going to force them to use that as their album cover.

Week 6: Finding Beauty in Unexpected Places

We were in the car, on our way home from California, when I asked my mom, over the phone, what this week's theme was.

"Something like, Beauty in the Unexpected. Or Beauty in Unexpected Places. Something like that," she'd said. 

I repeated it and chimed in with something like, "What the heck am I going to do for that?"

My husband immediately replied, "Take a picture of flowers in a toilet bowl."

Oh yeah. I went there.

I like to call this "Flower Pot" and Matthew took a great deal of joy in helping me capture the shot. I tried whole roses floating in the bowl. I tried yellow petals with a single red rose bobbing in the center. Eventually I settled on using just a plethora of petals. Then, unsure as to whether or not these would flush without clogging my toilet, I fished them all out. That was fun.

Week 5: Shades of Yellow

We've just enjoyed a whirlwind two days in San Diego. We leave tomorrow for two days in Anaheim but we crammed a trip to my dad's work, a visit with my three great grandparents, a visit with Troy's sister's family, time with my brother and sister-in-law, and a trip to the zoo into our two days.

I received yellow roses this week and photographed them. I fully intended to use them for this week's theme. However, as my family wandered through the reptile enclosure at the zoo, we happened upon this guy. Or girl. But I'm gonna go with guy because I'm of the mindset that all snakes are male until proven otherwise.

His shades of yellow sure stand out. At the zoo, I didn't even notice that he was resting on another snake. It took a good looking at the picture to see that his vibrant yellow was striking in comparison to the camouflaged  brownish gray of the other one.