I recently read this and this, which you should definitely read as well, especially for the next portion of this post to make sense.
I resonated with both posts. My mom was much like the mom mentioned in the second link, not being one bothered with vanity, but rather more concerned about comfort and practicality, and who held on to the crafts I made her throughout my childhood, because they were treasures to her, not the junk that I saw them to be. But despite my mother's influence, and my own tendency to be practical, I still find myself challenged by the first article. I shy away from the camera all the time, especially because of my dingy and tired state and post baby body. But now that my mom has gone, the pictures of her, especially the old ones are treasures, to help me bring back childhood memories of her. I hope my girls have strong and postive memories of their childhood, and I want to give them the gift of having pictures of their mom to remember. So as the first article said, I will also try to be the mom in the pictures.
With that in mind, here are some silly self portraits and a video I took with Emeline over our recent trip to Oregon. We were driving to the airport to head home, and I was smashed between two carseats in the back. I pulled out my phone to entertain Emeline with the camera. Enjoy!
P.S. I grew up listening to lots of the Beatles, as it was one of the few cassette tapes that we listened to on road trips. And for a long time, I thought the words to the chorus of Penny Lane were "and Elaine is in my ears and in my eyes". So I still sing it that way from time to time, because it is after all, my song :).
After a long day of travel back from Oregon, where we had a wonderful time celebrating Wes' sister Jenn's wedding, we were exhausted. One of the things Wes and I love to do to relax is watch a movie together, but with kids, this rarely happens. Emeline is now old enough to enjoy some kids tv shows, so we decided to pick a fun kids movie, and have a little family movie night. We had both been wanting to see The Lorax, a favorite book of ours, so we took the opportunity to rent it, and let Emeline watch her first full length movie.
We ordered some pizza, got Emeline set up in her high chair with some grub...She clearly vegged out ;)
Set up Kate in her bouncer facing us...
And sat down to enjoy!
Kate did sit with Papa for a while, but I'm not sure she knew what was going on.
It was a beautiful movie, and fun to give Emeline a treat. She kept saying, "more pizza" or asking for "more movie" if we ever paused. She also loved all the songs and really enjoyed dancing to them. Here's a little clip of her dancing to the final song of the movie. She even insisted on wearing her skirt!
The flowers for Jenn's wedding, just happened to come from the flower farm just across the street from my dad's property in Corbett. So the day before, we had the task to pick them up. It was such a treat to have a little mommy + Emeline time, it doesn't happen to often that we get an outing without Kate. And it was also such a treat to see the beautiful flowers Jenn picked out, as well as to get a close up look at the flower farm we've peered at across the way all these years. Just beautiful!
Here's some landscape pictures of the farm. Lots of dahlias right now.
When you walk down the farm a bit, you can see my dad's house on the left in the distance.
They gave Emeline her own special flower.
We tried to get a self portrait with the flowers behind us, but the sun was too bright! Crazy Oregon sun!
Emeline's preschool had a fun parent appreciation lunch at Emma Prush Farm Park in SJ, where they were also having a harvest festival. We got to join her teachers, her classmates and their families for lunch and a fun morning.
We had burritos...
Got to see animals...
Watched some dancers...
Played with pumpkins...
And Emeline got her first face painting. We weren't sure if she'd like it or want to sit still, but she was really exited, waited patiently, and sat very still for the painting. She got to choose between cherries and a frog, and as you can see, she picked cherries.
And she just loved looking in the mirror admiring herself afterward.
