Happy Valentines Day!

from the Unlikely Origins crew! (Who are not dead, just really busy!)

Hope your day was wonderful and full of the folks you love!

Simply Saturday

This is a new link-up that Jenn over at A Country Girl's Ramblings is starting today! The idea? "Grab your camera, take a picture of anything that speaks to you of simplicity and home. Your post can be as wordy or as wordless as you like. You decide!"

Jenn is an awesome photographer (you can see her photography blog here  or see some of her offerings on Etsy here.)

At any rate, we'll leave the photography photography to her this week ;-) But here's a snapshot of K that I took today while she was watching Saturday morning cartoons (Dinosaur Train!) that just feels very "Saturday" to me:

 

Toy story couch? Check. Elmo blankie? Check. Kitty jammies? Check. Chocolate milk? Double check.  

 

Click on the Simply Saturday icon below to hop over to Jenn's blog and join-up!

Wordless Wednesday: Arduous Journey (to the playhouse)

Not At All Wordless Wednesday!

Ignore my gross hand, ya'll. Focus on the ring!

Bob proposed on Saturday.

We had dropped K off at his sister's house for her first overnight away from home (our little girl is growing up!) and we stopped at the new house afterward. He said he wanted to check something out in the back, so we walked up the little hill together, where we could look out over the stream and the woods.

Where he got down on one knee. And brought out the (gorgeous) ring.

It. Was. Perfect.

I said yes, then called him a jerk (or maybe it was the other way around?) because he'd done a very thorough job of convincing me that this was actually *not* going to happen that weekend. And because I'm totally sweet and romantic like that. Ahem.

Aaaanyway, post-initial-surprise/stumbling-over-my-own-feet-because-I-was-so-focused-on-the-ring ("I don't think you should drive with that on," Bob said. "You're going to get distracted and veer off the road,") we high-tailed it to Ann Arbor where we had reservations here. (Going to restaurants without a toddler in tow is awesome, by the way. No crayons or chocolate milk in sight!)  We had a table right by the window, and everything was delicious. There was sashimi. There was awesome (cooked!) fish. There was rice in pyramid form. (Bob SQUASHED my pyramid-o-rice, and I was so incredulous over it that the manager brought me another pyramid. "I didn't want to see your fun ruined," he said. Ten points for you, manager dude. No points for you, fiancé!) There was also chocolate-covered-chocolate for dessert. I didn't even think about calories once, that's how good everything was.

And then? Then there was hot tubbing under the stars, complete with cheesy love songs. Swoon. 

Maybe the best part of the night was that we got to sleep for as long as we wanted with NO BABY CRASHING OUR BED. (Thanks again, Bob's sister!) 


Not a bad weekend at all ;-)

(Kind of) Wordless Wednesday

(I know the whole point of "Wordless Wednesday" is to post a picture that speaks for itself, but I'm going to riff a bit here anyway. I'm invoking my "I'm the mom/I make the rules" privilege.)

This was our first "official" family photo together. K was -- as she is wont to be -- a bit of a pill that day. There was an early-morning meltdown. There was a tumultuous car ride. There was the realization in the parking lot that I had totally forgotten to bring the shoes that matched her outfit. There was her refusal to be carried, even though she will normally go to great lengths to avoid having to support her own body weight.

So there we are, walking into Sears with a barefoot baby with a snotty nose and tear-streaked face. I'm feeling harried because we're running late (aren't we always?) and, well, I had just let my temper get the better of me and I'd given K a little swat when she tried to scratch my face in the midst of the walking vs. carrying debacle, so I was feeling less than awesome about my parenting skills. I had become that really classy mom who smacks her poor just-being-a-toddler toddler in the Sears parking lot, for God's sake. Bob was -- I don't really remember what Bob was doing. Probably carrying bags and opening doors and clearing innocent bystanders out of the way before we brought the crazy storm through and just generally trying to keep us all together. I suspect at this point he was also wondering just what he had gotten himself into when he decided to become a member of this family. . .

The photo session itself wasn't exactly smooth sailing either -- it took two photographers, lots of pleading, a twenty-minute detox/time-out/play period in the middle of the session, a bribe of gum (. . . she loves gum), and a threat or two, but then we finally got pictures like this one.

Which I love.

I was going to write that I hope in twenty years, when all-grow'd-up K comes across this in a photo album, that she won't remember the backstory -- that she'll just see the happy end product -- but I'm not sure I mean that. What good is a picture without a story to back it up and round it out, anyway?

Wordless Wednesday

Yesterday Something Awful Happened

My camera broke. Died. Moved on to cheap technology heaven.

I just stared at it when it first failed to respond to my request to turn on. I pushed the power button again. And again. “Come on,” I begged it. “Please?” No response. No flicker of life. Nothing.

Maybe it’s the batteries! I deluded myself into thinking for a minute – but no, it wasn’t the batteries. I knew it wasn’t the batteries. When the batteries get low, the camera lets me know. It tries its best to stay alive – turning on before taking maybe one picture in a painful last gasp, then shutting itself off. This was no battery situation, as my failed attempts at reviving the camera with fresh Energizers revealed.

I even tried putting them in upside-down (negative end where the positive goes) just in case my camera had decided that maybe it liked them like that. It didn’t. It was dead.

We were getting ready to go to the grand opening of a friend’s new paint-your-own-pottery studio when this devastating discovery was made. You can’t do this to me. Not now, I pleaded. Why, of all times, did it have to die right then? We were on our way to an event that promised to combine toddlers and paint! There were going to be so many incredibly picture ops! AHH.

At this point K was standing by the door, shoes on (the right feet!), ready to go, and was looking at me like, enough, mom. Are we going or not? I have messes to make. It was with a heavy heart that I left the little broken camera sitting on the microwave cart as we left the house.

The worst part? I knew I was responsible for this. I’d been letting K play with and abuse it for a long time, just because I always said I kind of hope it breaks, so I’ll be justified in buying a new/better one. My camera – as dependant on him as I was – was slow. He was easily confused in low-light or indoor situations. He caused me to miss more than one shot with his incessant "thinking." He was a little grainy in anything but full sun. And yet, now that he’s gone, I’m feeling a little lost without him. And a little too poor to run out and replace him.

Rest in peace, crappy blue camera from WalMart’s clearance section. The internet will be a (temporarily) darker place without the zillions of daily pictures of K that you used to make possible.