What I love

In the bizarre mix of life, often a potpourri of illustrations surpasses mundane explanation.

Here are a few of the quirky things I love:

#1: I love the chaotic combo of kids and cameras. Invariably, after photographing everything from knee caps to raw blue sky, they turn the camera on themselves. The resulting spontaneous self-portraits are often better at catching a child's true character than the keen eye of a master photographer.

Andrew Lewis hamming it up with Tanner in the background.

Katelyn's self-portrait, taken while modeling the boys' new baseball helmet. Look at those eyes...

Kalli (with tongue in deep-concentration mode), a camera, a mirror and fingers in a peace sign. Enough said.

#2: I love the perpetual motion of small bodies (okay, I love it before 8pm. After that it drives me to expose my mommy claws).

Kalli, Cassidy and Erin rocking out in swimsuits and pj bottoms.

#3: I love little bodies that are still young enough to freeze when an adult, in an authoritative voice, yells "FREEZE!"

#4: I love being on the "adult side" of a middle school science project. I offered many words of encouragement but zero help. Sweet justice. I hated middle school science.

Poor Johanna was going nuts. Hence the crazy shaking.

A short break from the insanity of science for another self portrait. Or is that "selfs" portrait?

#5: I love a boy who weighs only slightly more than the pack he is carrying for his first Boy Scout campout.

That's first Boy Scout campout. Cub Scouts was soooo last year.


#6: I love that my kids are not too old for slides...

...or too old to take a shortcut back up to the top!

#7: I love that Kalli made the family wait to start the game until she was ready. By ready I assume she meant cranally swathed in bubble wrap, a towel and a piece of curling ribbon.

#8: I love that to kids, most everything is multi-purpose. Bubble wrap indeed does makes an excellent (and audible) kitchen rug.

#9: I love that I spontaneously checked the odometer at just the right moment. I have eagerly been anticipating the 100,000 mile mark on my Sequoia for weeks!

#10: I love that there is no law stating that you have to buy the generic pictures taken of every team in every sports league your child will ever play in. I love that you can line the team up yourself against a wall and ask them to be themselves and the result is 100 times more authentic.

Tucker's 4th grade basketball team, with Coach Dad.


#11: I love that my son will still smile at me upon request, even when I'm holding a camera and even when his friends are watching.

#12: I love that the very first thing my kids wanted to do when we returned from Germany was have their dad open his birthday gifts that they had bought for him.

#13: I love the freckle on the tippy-top of Tucker's left ear. I stared at it with laser focus while trying to not barf as the doctor stitched up the wound incurred by a random windowsill in the boys' bedroom.

We've decided as a family that there is a reason we do not wrestle past the hour of 9pm. Late night emergency room visits make for uncomfortable stitches and sleepyheads the next morning.


#14: I love that my kids can stand entranced for ten minutes while watching a gorilla eat it's excrement but cannot stand for ten seconds while I do their hair.

#15: I love Tanner's love of maps.

#16: I love Tucker and Kalli's love of small spaces. And dirt. And bugs.

#17: I love random nature humor. Like this river otter smashing face first into the glass partition. I love even more that Katelyn caught it on camera.

#18: I love wide-eyed wonder. Like when you get to be a human bird feeder and a bird actually lands on you.

#19: I love that the smallest things can give children the greatest joy. Tanner literally can't wait for summer 2010, because that's when the meerkats make their debut at Woodland Park Zoo.

#20: I love that God has given us the gift of love, with all it's many amazing applications.