I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no photographer. I have a wonderful camera (thanks to my wonderful Mr. Fix-It!) and I’m learning a lot just from experience–but it’s on my to-do list to actually sit through some classes (even online) and tutorials. I want to do better.

And here’s one reason why…As the Momma, I have the opportunity to catch the best moments! The moments full of their quirks, their laughs, their attitudes, the essences of them. And every picture I get that I love, I know could be just a bit better. (And yes, I’m a INTP, so I’m also a perfectionist.) But we almost never buy school pictures because they rarely capture them, the way I know them, the way I want to remember them as they grow.

So every picture day we take a few minutes for me to grab my own shots at home as well. These are the ones we got a few months ago of the Ladybug.

After seeing these, even though they’re not perfect, I just couldn’t bring myself to pay for the school photos. They were so…flat.

I see these and I think…if you want to know my girl, just study that face…

The actual smile…the smile just as her nose starts to wrinkle…the I’m-over-this-momma smile…

I have a lot to learn about lighting and F-stops and lens types…but I know my subjects. {smile} Inside and out.

Happy Monday!

We had a challenging weekend around here. Speedracer was under the weather so I had to add being up all night and going to Urgent Care to our routine. He’s doing better now with the right medicine, but the Momma (and Daddy!) are a little worn out.

We also got a call from one of the local animals shelters with a request to help out with some confiscated chickens. That’s an interesting turn of events that I’ll be posting about later this week, but in summary, we had to drive over to the city, “adopt” a couple of homeless chickens, bring them back to the farm, and integrate them with our layer flock. Also not originally on our to-do list.

And we had to pick up a load of hay–which was on our list. Where things went off kilter was when the rear end in the Dodge blew out while hauling. Um, here’s a call no wife likes to get…”Jamie, I need you to bring me the GMC. The Dodge just blew the drive shaft.” Now my dad spent a lot of time fixing cars in our driveway, so I know just enough to know that’s bad. But I have a Mr. Fix-It, who knows a lot more about this stuff than me and is cool as a cucumber in this kind of crisis. So we had both the hay and the truck back in the driveway within about 3 hours, with parts ordered for the first steps in the repair. The Ladybug said to me, “Momma, we should pray for Daddy shouldn’t we?” I said, “Oh yes, honey, we should.” But first we took a moment to count up our blessings and get our hearts right.

No one was hurt. We have other vehicles to meet our needs while that one is down. We got the hay we needed. We have a garage and tools to work with. And we have Mr. Fix-It, who knows what he’s doing. We have the means to get the parts we need (even if I was envisioning using them for a trip to Charleston in the spring…sigh). God is meeting all of our needs, even if the situation’s not very fun. Honestly, compared to some of the situations I remember our family being in when I was a child, we are abundantly blessed.

And somewhere in between we also got a lot of laundry done (the Ladybug and the Cowboy were a big help there!) and Mr. Fix-It and the Cowboy helped with a prescribed burn at the tree farm. Whew…after writing it all, sometimes I wonder how it all fit into only 2 days! Always an adventure, friends, always an adventure!