November 1st 2014
It started like this:
Just me and her for awhile.
And I couldn't resist taking her delicious picture but as I did, I noticed the kindest light hitting the wall in the breezy backyard....
...so I went out to shoot some photos in the newly November sun.
One-by-one the children found me, Erin in my oxblood heels and Ever in her nightgown.
When the baby preferred digging in the grass and drifted red leaves to my lap, and the girls were chasing each other back-and-forth on the swing set, I took a photo of myself because I wanted to see what I looked like on November 1st 2014 when I was thirty-seven years old.
I look like my mother.
In the afternoon we decided to race the rain and went for a bike ride on the Provo River Trail.
It looked like this:
It was so incredibly beautiful I kept blinking as if it reset my reality.
We stopped for awhile to take some photos. Much to chagrin of our children.
Actually, much to the chagrin of ONE of our children.
(He hates taking photos and I love him for it.)
As for the other three, they don't seem to mind much.
And this one has no idea.
We left just as the rain started.
Later that night, Autumn (our babysitter with the seasonal-appropriate name) came over and we went out for a much needed date night at Communal with the Wileys. It was a great meal with endives, beets, chicken and honey butter on warm cornbread. Colton gave us a tub of mustard from the charcuterie board that Christopher has a slight obsession with and sent a complimentary sweet potato gingerbread dish to our table after we had eaten well.
The night ended at Bruges where we ran into my brother and sister-in-law Topher and Lisa with the adorable Connellys and ate the meatiest waffle doused in speculoos. I took a sneaky selfie as Topher was talking about belonging to the Green Party. Don't tell my brother. Or his beard.
When we got home, and it was just the two of us with rooms full of sleeping children, Christopher put his arms around me and said in his gorgeous deep voice, "You looked great tonight." And though we've come to truce in our relationship about compliments based on looks, I must admit it meant a lot to me because I felt like he was actually saying, "You looked like yourself tonight."
Sometimes with all the baby-feeding and the children-raising and body-changing you sorta of start to miss yourself.
So I took a picture, NATURALLY, in our dirty, princess-sticker-decorated hall mirror, hand on hip, cropping off my face on accident, too tired to take another:
It was a nearly perfect day. And I know you don't get a lot of those in this life.
So I'll take it.
Just me and her for awhile.
And I couldn't resist taking her delicious picture but as I did, I noticed the kindest light hitting the wall in the breezy backyard....
...so I went out to shoot some photos in the newly November sun.
One-by-one the children found me, Erin in my oxblood heels and Ever in her nightgown.
When the baby preferred digging in the grass and drifted red leaves to my lap, and the girls were chasing each other back-and-forth on the swing set, I took a photo of myself because I wanted to see what I looked like on November 1st 2014 when I was thirty-seven years old.
I look like my mother.
In the afternoon we decided to race the rain and went for a bike ride on the Provo River Trail.
It looked like this:
It was so incredibly beautiful I kept blinking as if it reset my reality.
We stopped for awhile to take some photos. Much to chagrin of our children.
Actually, much to the chagrin of ONE of our children.
(He hates taking photos and I love him for it.)
As for the other three, they don't seem to mind much.
And this one has no idea.
We left just as the rain started.
Later that night, Autumn (our babysitter with the seasonal-appropriate name) came over and we went out for a much needed date night at Communal with the Wileys. It was a great meal with endives, beets, chicken and honey butter on warm cornbread. Colton gave us a tub of mustard from the charcuterie board that Christopher has a slight obsession with and sent a complimentary sweet potato gingerbread dish to our table after we had eaten well.
The night ended at Bruges where we ran into my brother and sister-in-law Topher and Lisa with the adorable Connellys and ate the meatiest waffle doused in speculoos. I took a sneaky selfie as Topher was talking about belonging to the Green Party. Don't tell my brother. Or his beard.
When we got home, and it was just the two of us with rooms full of sleeping children, Christopher put his arms around me and said in his gorgeous deep voice, "You looked great tonight." And though we've come to truce in our relationship about compliments based on looks, I must admit it meant a lot to me because I felt like he was actually saying, "You looked like yourself tonight."
Sometimes with all the baby-feeding and the children-raising and body-changing you sorta of start to miss yourself.
So I took a picture, NATURALLY, in our dirty, princess-sticker-decorated hall mirror, hand on hip, cropping off my face on accident, too tired to take another:
It was a nearly perfect day. And I know you don't get a lot of those in this life.
So I'll take it.
