Sleepy time
I know it was Mother’s Day today, but I saw this Father/Son duo and couldn’t help but snap the photo.
Is it awe…or ahhh?
My son and I went for a hike Monday and we had a great little walk and talk. I have to admit that I’m more out of shape than I’d like to be, but I am working on it.
My son, however, kept telling me how tired he was, but spent the entire hike swinging a stick at everything and taking three steps for every one of mine. He exerted himself far more than I did and then came home to jump on the trampoline. I came home and sat down on the couch.
The photo above is him checking out our local cedars. They’re always beautiful and smell so great. He was ooh-ing and ahh-ing over their height.
Lime Cream Cheese Tart
This was what my daughter wanted for her birthday cake. She and I have been cooking together for a long time. She is turning eleven in a couple of days and since she was old enough to help, she’s been my assistant in the kitchen. I had her smelling spices and stirring batter and cracking eggs at age three.
So when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday cake, I should have expected her to say something like this. What I wasn’t expecting was how long it would take to make it. It was worth it, though. It might be the best “birthday cake” I’ve ever made.
I realize this is not my best photo ever posted, but it certainly is one of the tastiest.
Washing by hand
Do you still wash your pots and pans, maybe even dishes, by hand? I seem to have some kind of block in my head when it comes to the dishwasher. I don’t like to put my pots and frying pans in there. I have this idea in my head that it doesn’t do as good a job as I do. Plus, I learned something last night.
After making dinner, I moved the pots and frying pan to the side of the sink and ran a sink of warm/hot water, dropped a bit of soap in and then washed the dishes. And I enjoyed it.
When I was young, we didn’t have a dishwasher, so there was no choice about how to was the dishes. My mom did most of the washing, but when were deemed old enough my sister and I started washing the dishes on a regular basis. We fought over who would wash and who would dry. I hated washing back then, but I love it now. In fact, I look back on that time pretty fondly. Stupid, I know, but nostalgia fogs the mind.
COOOOOKIEEEEES!
My friends at Mennonite Girls Can Cook posted a recipe yesterday that caught my eye and the interest of my stomach. They posted a recipe for crispy jumble cookies (click the link for the recipe). I asked my kids if I should make them and my son pretended to pass out and my daughter was quite excited so I figured that’s pretty solid approval. While making them today, I documented the process. Here it is:
So that’s the sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla.
There’s the big mess of chocolate chips and rice krispies.
Here’s a batch on the baking stone. I like to use stones when I bake – we have a bunch of them – because they are hot when they come out of the oven and start baking the cookies when they’re still sitting on the counter.
10 minutes in the oven and then…
That’s how they turned out. At dinner, the entire family tried them at the same time and the verdict…they were great.
Crispy. Chewy. Chocolatey. Yummy.
Thanks Mennonite Girls. Oh…and Mennonite boys can cook, too.
The non-Christmas Christmas post.
With the house in disarray, Lego and clothes all over the place and the family all happily lazy, I figured I’d post something peaceful. This photo sums up the way I feel right now – placid.
Thanks, Christmas, for the peace that is existing in my house and heart right now.
Snowflakes + Star Wars = AWESOME!
I love Christmas Holidays. It gives me time to “craft”. And…
Ha! Hahahahahaaaa….no seriously. I don’t “craft”. I take photos. That’s my hobby. But when some evil genius designs Star Wars snowflake templates, I jump into action. For my son…yeah…not for me…my son.
Here’s the details. Anthony Herrera, a graphic designer, has designed a bunch of snowflake templates that appeal to the Star Wars geek in me. If you want to download the designs and spend hours meticulously cutting them out with a scalpel and a self-healing cutting mat, here’s the link: Star Wars Snowflakes.
BTW, if I’ve not said it already, Anthony Herrera is AWESOME!
Here’s my NOON hour food prep
I roasted a turkey today. My family was coming over and my parents are leaving in three days for Guatemala for six months. They started working there years ago and have formed their own missions organization, Love Guatemala, wherein they show love to people through meeting practical needs – housing, water filters, clinics. We (kind of) had Christmas today, as they’ll be away when Christmas actually occurs. I’ll miss them a lot, so it felt right to do a big family dinner. I made roasted potatoes, carrots and parsnips, stuffing and gravy.
So, I roasted a turkey today. I like to cook and doing a turkey is fun. I know, that makes me weird. What you see above are the herbs that were combined with garlic and olive oil and then massaged into the bird, under the skin and then over. The oil adds a nice golden-ness to the turkey. The herbs are Italian parsley (I’m not sure what makes it Italian), thyme, rosemary, and sage. I love fresh herbs and the chopping is particularly satisfying. Something about wielding a big knife that appeals to the neanderthal in me.
Oh, and this week’s Photo Friday Challenge is “Noon“. Seeing as I was chopping these around noon in order to get the turkey ready for dinner, I thought this might meet the challenge.
Why is it that a day off is more exhausting than a day at work?
Seriously. Is it because I’ve been holding on all week, only to crash on a full day away from work?
Is it because driving from the library to Future Shop to the produce market to the supermarket is inherently tiring?
Is it that I have much more time to over-think things to the point of exhaustion?
Here’s a photo that has nothing to do with what I’ve written. Ha! Take that, logical sequences of thought.
Here’s my son, in colour this time (and yes, I’m Canadian)
I was asked yesterday what the photo of my son would look like in colour. So I processed one of him, intently checking out a Star Wars/Transformers toy in his hands while sitting on a dock at Cultus Lake. I had to monkey with the contrast in curves and definitely played with Burn and Dodge because I really shot this with black and white in mind. I hope you like it.
p.s. It occurred to me that my horizon was totally crap yesterday. I don’t know how I missed that.
p.p.s. Also, we add a “u” to a number of words here in Canada, hence the “u” in color. Colour. Same word. Different spelling.
One: Photo Friday Challenge
Why is it that a photograph of one person immediately draws to mind the song “One is a lonely number”? I only ask because my first inclination with this photo was to give it that title. My wife, son and I went for a walk a couple of days ago and Ben decided that he’d had enough walking so he sat down on this dock. Despite knowing that there were three of us on this walk, and that this is not a photo of some lost boy on a dock, my feeling was one of loneliness.
Maybe it’s his posture. Maybe it’s the coolness of black and white. Maybe it’s a psychological projection on my part to believe that when one is alone, one must be lonely. But there doesn’t have to exist that connotation, does there? Alone, oneness, does not have to be lonely.
“Look what I can do!”
I took these three photos and stitched them together. The vista of my backyard, the mountains in the background, the umbrella on my deck were too tempting to resist. I snapped a good number of photos while on my deck, admiring God’s handiwork. It’s like He came down on Sunday night and said, like an excited four year old clutching a crayoned piece of paper, “Look what I can do!”
Pretty cool.
Please feel free to click on it to see the full size version in detail.
Beauty in Decay
A couple of days ago a friend of mine came to speak at my school. She was awesome. She said a lot of things our girls needed to hear. When I was saying farewell to her, a cool breeze blew through the school’s parking lot and thousands of leaves all flew off the surrounding trees. Kate looked at me and said, “I think Fall just started. Right now. Right here.” I laughed, but since then the leaves have been falling off all the trees around our house.
The leaf in the photo above comes from the park across the street from our house. The kids rode their bikes while I ran. At the end of our time in the park, we walked through all the fallen leaves. As we walked, we quietly listened to the crispy and crunchy leaves under our feet. It was a great zen moment. There is beauty in the decay of Autumn.
WordPress Photo Challenge: Faces
We did not go to the Buddhist Temple this summer and I kind of miss these guys. The face above belongs to one of many statues depicting the “Lohans” of Buddhism. My kids love going to the temple and it’s a cool way to experience a culture outside our own. But there are lessons to be learned in a temple that go far beyond culture.
A couple of summers ago, when we took the kids to the temple in Steveston, BC for the first time, my son was doing his best to exercise self-control. He walked instead of running. He spoke quietly instead of excitedly shouting. He kept his hands behind his back. To this day, when I need him to exercise that same restraint, I say to him: “Ben. Buddhist Temple.” And that’s all he needs. Buddhist Temple.
Oh, and this week’s photo challenge is “Faces“.
Weekly Photo Challenge, part two: Up (in the air)
When we bought the trampoline last summer, my son was at times curious about it, at times petrified. The most he would do was bounce and only when no one was on with him. This summer he seems to think that he’s Dick Grayson (the original Robin in the Batman comics) of the Flying Graysons. He’s gone from terrified to a holy terror on the trampoline.
As a kid, I never had a trampoline, so watching my own kids is full of terrifying excitement for me. I’m always curious to see what they’ll do next, with my thumbs ever-ready to phone 9-1-1.
Weekly Photo Challenge: UP!
The kids and I had a wonderful weekend, with a lot of activity. This is but one. It’s not the most beautiful photo from a technical standpoint, but it’s one of the most beautiful photos I’ve taken because it’s my daughter executing a possible broken neck over a sprinkler shooting through a trampoline. Not a great backdrop, nor is it in the best focus, but it’s fun.
Oh, and she’s UP.
Beach + Children = fun parenting
This was the most fun aspect of camping in Oregon. My kids love the beach, the water, the sun so camping on the Oregon Coast is dead easy. We spent most of the days running in and out of the surf, lying on the sand, building sand castles and flinging floaty pieces of wood into the waves. There was no need for discipline. There was little need for parenting skills. The kids never fought as long as they were on the beach. It was awesome. I need to somehow move a beach into my house.
Parenting takes love and courage
“In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck – and, of course, courage. ” – Bill Cosby
Above are my two beautiful children. I love them more than my own life. But they have spawned in me some complete confusion and inspired love. Let me give you a couple of examples:
1. When we were traveling to Oregon only a scant two weeks ago, my children made me so proud. The happily dealt with a full day of traveling, followed by five days of bliss. They got along. They saved small aquatic animals from death. They found utter joy in throwing a stick in the ocean, only to chase it down the beach, rescue it from the surf and throw it right back in. They comforted me when, in a fit of stupidity I thought I was younger than I am, I hurled myself into and over a railing, leaving a sizable dent in my shin. They were stupendous. And for a brief and amazing moment, I thought, “We’re amazing parents. We should write books.”
2. My children decided last night that they wanted to sleep in our basement in our original three-man tent. At 10:00, my wife found them lying in the tent with the lights out but their Nintendo DS’s fully engaged when they were supposed to be fast asleep. After a stern, but amused, talking-to, they went to sleep. At 2:00 in the morning, my daughter came upstairs to the living room, where my wife chose to sleep so she could “hear the children”, to inform my wife that she could not sleep. My wife made her way to the basement, where she slept in the tent on the floor so that the children could continue their adventure. This morning, after a dearth of sleep, my children proceeded to fight with each other at such a volume that even I could not ignore it. And for a brief and groggy moment, I thought, “What were we thinking when we thought we could be parents?”
In the span of two weeks I’ve gone from proud and maybe a little arrogant parent to a bewildered and short-fused parent. I love my children, but this parenting thing? Well, I can’t have one without the other.
Whose steps will you follow?
As my son walked across the sand in front of me, I wondered, “Who will he follow?” Will he follow his friends and not make his own decisions? Will he follow his parents into education? Will he put others before himself? Will he lead and not follow?
I think these are pretty universal conundrums faced by parents everywhere. I did not anticipate, before becoming a parent, that I would be that worried about how my children would turn out. But now that my daughter is ten going on fifteen and my son is seven and a perfect combination of anxiety and over-confidence, I think about these things. I think it was easier for me when I was their age because I was in the middle of it. My parents, however, must have thought the same things I am thinking about my own kids.
I guess I’ll continue to influence them as much as I can and hope for the best.
Would you save a starfish?
I teach student leadership. There’s a story that I tell my students when they start to feel a little down about how much impact they’re making in our school. It goes like this: Many starfish washed up on shore. A young boy started picking them up and throwing them back into the ocean. Someone saw what he was doing and told him that it was pointless, that there were too many to save, that it wouldn’t make a difference. Throwing another starfish into the sea, the little boy responded, “It makes a difference to this one.” I’m sure you’ve read this story before, or heard it told by someone who was encouraging you that your small efforts were making a difference. There are also many more elegant versions, but the idea is the same.
While I was watching my kids on the beach in Oregon, I watched my daughter, with all of her innocence and curiosity, trying to figure out what would happen to this little starfish as the tide went out. It left itself stranded in a tide pool and Hannah wandered over to me and asked, “Should I move it?” I told her it was up to her. She did and I hope that she’ll continue to make a difference in even the smallest creatures as she grows up.
Oregon Coast: a love story
I just got back from spending five days on the Oregon Coast. It is the second summer the Family B has visited the Oregon Coast and we’ve fallen in love with it. It is easily the most beautiful, natural area I’ve ever vacationed. The triptych above (just for you, Karina – triptych) shows you the area where we camped. The town of Manzanita is at the foot of Mount Neahkahnie (seen in the bottom right) and the beach extends out from the cliff-sides down to a spit of land that ends where the Nehalem River meets the ocean. Our campsite was about halfway down the beach you can see in the photo on the left.
We stayed in a yurt (Year-round Universal Recreational Tent) that was a five minute walk from the beach. The sand is soft and light and completely enveloped my foot as I walked in it. The ocean gently lapped at the beach all day and night and lulled me to sleep. There is virtually no light pollution, so I got to see all the stars I remembered from when I was a child. I nearly cried the first night I looked up and was met by billions of lights while being serenaded by the constant sound of waves crashing on the sand.
Playing with my kids on the beach and in the water tops the vacation cake. There’s nothing in the world like this.
I love this place.
Oh, and I was so in love with this place that I had to post today, even though it was the second post of the day. Whoo!
Love is so cute…
I visited the Alexandra Bridge on Sunday. It’s about a half-hour drive north of Hope and ten minutes from Hell’s Gate. And, yes, you read that correctly. British Columbia has some funny name places.
While photographing this suspension bridge, this couple came up and paused, nicely, and waited for me to take a photo. I informed them that they were never going to walk across this bridge if they were going to wait until I was done shooting this bridge. I also, in passing, that they could walk on as long as they were okay with being on my photoblog.
They were so cute. They were holding hands and being all googly over each other and making me a little jealous. My wife and I have been married for seventeen years. We have a ten year old daughter, who was accompanied on this trip by a friend from school, and a seven year old son. Marriage and kids are great. I wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. But this couple, walking by themselves, holding hands and canoodling whenever they wanted, made me remember a time when I could grab my wife’s hand and not be joined on the other side by a sticky, melted ice cream covered hand.
Haystack on the seashore: Photo Friday
Photo Friday’s challenge today is “Seashore“.
The family B went to the Oregon Coast last summer and we made the obligatory stop in Cannon Beach. If you’ve ever gone to Cannon Beach, or seen the movie “Goonies“, you’ll recognize Haystack Rock. It’s an incredible geological phenomenon. It’s more incredible to stand in its shadow. If you’ve never been to Cannon Beach, or anywhere on the Oregon Coast, go. Go now!
