This is My Forties

Saturday, January 6th - Started the day with a rainy memorial, ended it with a homecooked meal and a game of Wingspan with good friends. Sunday, January 7th - Brennan was in a baking and cooking mood so he whipped up a layered dessert. He even made the pudding from scratch. It was delicious. Monday, January 8th - I thought this bell pepper looked like a nose so... why not. It's Monday. Tuesday, January 9th - I work in the environmental field so I do a lot of site visits for my job. Mostly for erosion and flooding issues. It happened to be right before a big storm so I was able to snap a lot of photos to include in our grant proposal that justify the need for a shoreline project here. The storm eventually came through and flooded the entire area. We also lost power for about 4 hours. We had plenty of camp lights and hobbies to get through those hours. Wednesday, January 10th - The only aftermath of the storm at our house wa...

On my last birthday I decided to do another "365 Challenge" where I take and upload at least one photo every day.  I managed to come through the year having only missed 7 days!  DANG!!!  That's pretty impressive in my opinion :)  I think for my next challenge I will attempt to do a photo + blog every day... and I'm thinking of coupling it with my upcoming year-long fellowship.  We shall see.

I was reminiscing about our time in Spain, looking at old photos.  I realized I haven't tried to do a photo a day challenge in quite some time!  Back when I did them I believed they were all boring, but now I love them all.  So, time for another 365 challenge. Now that I have a great phone camera I think I will make it to 365, as it will be far more convenient than the old SLR to RAW to editing to converting to uploading route I used to have to take.  In 2013 I was able to get 308, so let's see if I can top that.  The start date doesn't matter much to me, so why not begin on my birthday ;)

creativity [kree-ey-tiv-i-tee, kree-uh-] 1. the state or quality of being creative. 2. the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination 3.the process by which one utilizes creative ability I noticed I haven't been taking many photos or writing as much as I used to (especially now that I'm in college).  Well... I have issued myself a challenge to remedy that since I know how important creative outlets are to my mental health.  Starting on October 1st I am going to create at least one thing every day: photograph, sketch, poem, prose, painting, sculpture, spoken word, music, wood burning, journal entry, a hypothesis, invention, an original idea... it doesn't matter what it is as long as it wouldn't have existed if I hadn't brought it to fruition.  A creation. My goal is to just keep on going.  I'm s...

Right around dinner time it started to pour down rain at my house.  We watched it while we ate and decided splashing in a few puddles would be the best dessert ever!  So, out we went.  Just as I was grabbing my camera the sun came out, but it was still raining.  Rainbow?!?!?!?!!  YES!!   Josh called on his way home from work and said "go up the driveway, I can see a double rainbow right over our neighborhood".  And here I was excited enough about the tiny bit I caught from the house. Josh pulled onto our street so we turned to head back to the house and just then the sky opened up and rain poured onto my kids as they were running down the driveway in the setting sun.  It was so beautiful.  I have never been so sure that God is in the rain :)  I was also reminded of a Bob Marley quote "some people feel the rain, others just get wet".  We definitely felt the rain today! Apparently I was supposed to see all this because...

I love this time of year!  The dragonflies, cicadas & butterflies are all out in full force.  The weather is still pretty bearable and the parks aren't packed with summer crowds yet.  We've been spending most of our time outside exploring.  I've got yet another new park in Southern Maryland that is officially on my top five favorites list now: Flag Ponds Nature Park .  The beach here is amazing!!  That's not all, though.  There are the woods packed with gigantic old sweetgum, oak, pine, and maple trees that you can tell have been alive for centuries.  The trails wound their way through ponds and swamps as we crept closer towards the Chesapeake Bay.  To me, it resembled scenes from Lord of the Rings. We arrived with the intent of hiking and flying our kites, and we did that indeed.  We had such an amazing adventure!  We found a cactus that Tristan and Brennan tried to pick up and bring home, which resulted in a lot of pain ...

Generally speaking, when our children learn a new game it becomes an obsession for a bit of time.  Monopoly is one of those games to which Mommy and Daddy say "yeah I'll play" fairly often so it's gotten even more attention from the wee ones. Our random snow day last Wednesday (apparently an inch of snow followed by tons of rain constitutes a snow day) we dealt Tristan in for his first ever Monopoly game.  He was so stinkin' happy!!  He was paying rapt attention during our other games and required very little direction.  Of course,  he can't add, subtract, or read yet so I don't know how much you can really credit to him as far as "playing" is concerned, but he counted those dots on the dice and moved along the corresponding number of spaces like a ninja warrior. He was filled with pride for every purchase, regardless of not knowing the property names or their worth.  He was ecstatic with any change he received from the bank, not realizin...