The Lost Pictures of Spring Break - part 2 of 2

I bring you the last installment of the lost pictures of Spring break!!!! Can you hear me cheering about from where you are? I'm surprised if you can't because, as I stated previously, I was devastated by the thought that these pictures had been accidentally deleted forever.

Anyway, where we last left off, we were on the western side of PA starting out our Spring break. For these pictures we trucked it all the way across the state to the eastern side where my family is in the process of building a vacation lake house.

In the five years (so far) of the building process, the house really has come a long way! But despite this, the walls are still waiting to be completely finished and the claw footed bath tub that my mom got for "a steal" is still sitting up in the kids' loft area waiting to be moved and installed. *shrug* Until then we all just pay no mind to the patchy looking walls and we bathe all of the little people (read: Miss A) in the deep country kitchen sink instead of showering them in the "big people" shower. To say that Miss A is deathly afraid of the whole experience of stand-up-showering would be the understatement of the year. Good thing she's such a tiny thing and looks so cute bathing in the kitchen sink to begin with because it makes the whole process far from painful - and also provides lots more fun (and funny!) photo ops!

I just love this picture below. She looks like she's doing a shampoo commercial or something...

And the next picture is so classically Miss A with that expression! She's all about the big gaping open mouth smile when she gets REALLY happy about things. Looking at the picture I can almost hear her squeal of pure delight that was likely emitting from her mouth at that moment.


And then right before bedtime, D decided he needed a snack and because popcorn is one of Miss A's favorite snacks, I couldn't bring myself to keep her from it. She likes it so much that every time we go to Target she asks for some to eat while we shop!!! I just love how serious D and Miss A look about eating the popcorn. And also note that they both have the exact same expression on their faces. Like father, like daughter for sure.


And then (just because we are all about doing things purely for the sake of a good picture) we handed the whole popcorn bowl over to Miss A to indulge herself to her heart's delight.

And did she EVER take advantage of such an opportunity!!! Look at her go!!! In our house we call this "piggy hands" and "piggy mouth"!


And now for what might be one of my top favorite pictures of Miss A of all time. Technically it's a picture of only part of Miss A but it's something that captures a memory of a lifetime for the way that I will always remember her at this stage...


This is Miss A's hand holding her precious security blanket! She attached herself to it when she wasn't even six months old and despite the fact that I'm sure that it harbors all kinds of germs and carries more grime with it than probably the dog himself, I can't bring myself to try and break her of the habit of carrying it around all the time.

The way it works, wherever Miss A is, the blanket is sure to be somewhere close. The most recent development is documented above with her lacing her fingers with it in a very specific way. She will hold it (with both hands) just as pictured above. She goes through this process of fluffing it so that it created these nice folds and then she will stick her pointer finger into a fold and then take the rest of her fingers and wrap the fabric around her pointer finger. I just noticed that she has started doing this during this very trip and in the time that I noticed it to the end of the trip, she's become so quick with lacing it through her fingers that it's hard to even watch her go through the steps/motions to do it right because she's just that fast!!! It's a small thing but I think it's so sweet and I love it and it will surely be one of those things that we will tell her about when her blanket gets so old that she can't do this anymore.

And that's it! Hope you enjoyed these lost pictures. I'm off to bed now for hopefully a much better night's sleep than last night.

The Lost Pictures of Spring Break - part 1 of 2

I know that I shouldn't measure my life in what I have but when I thought I lost these pictures I was pretty crushed. I'm naturally a visual person and though I have a great memory because of that, I really like having the tangible images created from a camera. (Funny how what is tangible now is digital and is actually not really all that tangible in the physical sense but that's another blog post right?)

Anyway, what once was lost has finally been found. OH amazing grace how you work in wonderful ways when my ability to multi-task fails to coordinate with my memory of what I'm doing when and where! I apologize if they aren't in the correct chronological order - I'm all out of sorts now that I feel like I completed the Spring break series. Without further adieu... I present to you the lost pictures...

PapPap is legendary for his love for all of the little ones. I can't tell you how many times I was told (during pregnancy) that "PapPap LOVES babies!" Woo! People were NOT kiddin' about that! Here he is with both V and Miss A. I only wish that I had a picture of them all dancing with the side-stepping frog as well...

And what Easter celebration would be complete without a visit with a bunny! Thankfully, Grandpap and Grammy have a REAL bunny and nobody was walking through the door in one of those creepy Easter bunny costumes with the weird giant heads. (Seriously? They are creepier than some of the mall Santa Clauses out there!) Miss A was all about the "bunny Bunny BUNNY?" during the whole stay and frequently asked if she could go downstairs to see it and tell it "Hi Bunny!" Too bad her enthusiasm wasn't a little more on point when Grammy brought it up to sit with her and Little V for a traditional Easter portrait. *shrug* Oh well. Can't win 'em all...

And, finally, my favorite series of pictures of all that I was most heartbroken over possibly losing.

Miss A is a very demonstrative little lady when it comes to showing her affections. She rarely dislikes anyone but when she loves you, she is completely forthright in showing you just how much love that is! I can't remember what happened exactly but I think Little V took a little bit of a tumble in his "new walker" ways and he was very upset. His mother (Aunt H) scooped him up right away to comfort him but something about it all prompted Miss A to step in and try and take over for Aunt H. Why? Well because (OF COURSE!) NOBODY can be a little love and comfort like Miss A can, right? I was lucky enough to have my camera in hand to be able to catch the beautiful and tender moment as it unfolded...





I took some serious artistic license to digitally manipulate the colors, contrasts, lighting, and focus of the above but that was only to enhance what was already there to begin with and emphasize how my heart saw it as much as my camera. I tell you... there is nothing quite so heartbreaking (in a GOOD way) as seeing the above take place. It's like it's pure validation as a parent of what you're teaching and doing and showing your child in how to be towards other. If this is how Miss A does unto others for the rest of her life, I'm thinking that D and I will have few problems at all. What a little heart of gold she has.

And there is one more round of lost pictures but I'm going to have to save that for another time because I'm late as it is leaving work and I gotta get to the store to buy diapers and food!

Cabin fever

After our stop in Pittsburgh, we headed over and across PA to the Pocono mountains where my family has been diligently building a vacation "lake house." It's in an area that is almost a reasonable halfway point between my brother and his family up in Massachusetts and my parents who are in the southern most point of Maryland. It's also very close to where my grandmother (so, Miss A's GREAT-grandmother) lives with some of my extended family. The last time we were able to see my brother, sister-in-law, and grandmother was probably over a year ago so it was really nice to have time to spend with them during our last leg of the trip.

GG (as she is known on my side) came up with my mom and had a ball getting reacquainted with Miss A and all of her toddler-ness. Miss A entertained GG with all of her antics including telling her multiple times, "I'll be back!" and asking her "How ARE you?" but not waiting for a response. GG had a great time with it all.


In the midst of the week before my brother, sister-in-law, and the boy cousins showed up, we took in 18 holes of mini-golf. GG basically schooled us all with her amazing putting skills and never failed to put the ball exactly where she want it and in less strokes than we all did. I had no idea she was such a putt-putt shark!!! No wonder she was all ready to go when we pulled up to the place with intentions to only get some ice cream and insisted that we get out there and play!


Miss A was almost as much of a pro at the golfing except for the fact that after all of the work with the drivers and irons at Grammy and Grandpap's, I think her long game is a lot better than her short game. D tried to help her work on her swing...


...but ultimately? She insisted on just doing it HER way! *shrug* Can't say I blame her! I mean, three of my hits ended up going straight into the water and look at where hers end up!


Toward the end of the week, my brother and his family showed up and and we were able to round out things with doing the traditional Easter egg events. We colored eggs and Miss A diligently worked on doing one all. BY. HERSELF!!!


Coloring with crayons is more her kind of coloring than anything else but she even joined in on the egg dying process!


Of course, she also couldn't resist seeing if her crayons could be dyed like her eggs...


Ultimately she turned out a gorgeous piece of work and if eggs didn't do things like get old and rotten and stinky and gross, I would most definitely have saved hers forever and ever like the proud mom I am.


And just so you can see that I'm not biased or anything, everyone else there was just as enthralled by her skills as well and THEY thought she was the best egg decorator at the table!


The rest of the week and weekend we spent just hanging around, catching up, eating leftovers and enjoying the weather and each others' company.


The holidays are so nice if only because they make it possible for us to be able to get together with our favorite people in the world (our family!) no matter how far we have to travel.

First stop? Pittsburgh!

D and I are very fortunate to be teachers and what we lack in salary, we are well compensated in the way of paid-time-off (or as most people know it - vacation)!

As it so happened, both of our Spring breaks fell during the same time frame this year. Additionally, we were both greatly blessed by the fact that though we had a full week off because of the February snowstorm, the state granted everyone graces by not shortening the Spring break at all. We had about ten straight days off (including weekends) and it has been wonderfully refreshing for us all to be able to finally return to school/work/daycare tomorrow and finish out the school year.

Last year for Spring break we did not travel and stayed completely local. This year we took things to the opposite extreme and traveled all over creation with our first stop in Pittsburgh to see Grammy and Grandpap!

Surprisingly, I didn't take as many pictures as I thought I did. *shrug* Or at least the other pictures that I took somehow disappeared! [EDIT: I remember where they are! They are on my laptop and I will upload them here in a forthcoming batch/posting]

Anyway, one of our big and fun things from Pittsburgh was visiting the Phipps Conservatory. I've never been one for gardening or pictures of flora but after seeing the gardens? I might be a convert! Never before have I seen such an amazing display of plant life in one place before! It was extraordinary and only further convinces me that the first true visual artist of the world was God himself in the very beginning. I'll even go out on a limb here and say even the Phipps could hold a candle to the Garden of Eve!

Here is just a smattering of some of the beautiful sights that we saw...




And of course Miss A was delighted with the sights just as well. Her joy to partake in was more in the way of any kind of water though. Anything that she can get into and splash around in is her thing these days and there isn't a puddle or fountain that escapes her.


These days it's hard to get Miss A to be still for even a moment but we did at least make a valiant attempt at a quick family portrait...

Perhaps the real reason she was squirming was because she didn't want to be in a picture without Grandpap (who was unable to join us on the trip) and Mama (who is always behind the camera).

Oh well! Next time Grandpap will surely be along and Mama will finally get it together and use a remote shutter release. :)

Yes! I DO!!! (Again!)

I am not a jewelry kind of a gal. This isn't to say that D gets off scott-free from not "spoiling" me with beautiful luxuries since the luxuries that I prefer are far more extravagant since I prefer fine artwork. (Honestly though I'm way too practical of a person to bring myself to own any of the paintings that I'd really like!) Just the same, when I do wear jewelry, I'm very specific about its design and I don't like to take it off. This has posed as quite a problem with my wedding ring set though.

Way back when we got engaged and were planning our wedding and picking out all of those important details like what the rings would look like I was very upfront about it all and admitted that I wanted something unique and non-traditional. D and I designed my engagement ring together so that it was completely one of a kind and then (miracle of miracles!) we were blessed enough to find a ring to serve as a wedding band that was very complementary in design. As it turned out, I would have to wear each of the rings on separate hands (european style) and I was OK with that. Still? Our wonderfully unique and non-traditional idea has turned out to be not such a good idea in the long run.

Since I'm an art teacher and just generally a get-your-hands-dirty kind of a person I'm really hard on most any of the jewelry that I wear. You can just imagine how much of a beating my wedding set has taken by now after only a couple of years! Anyway, to make a long story even longer (but at least slightly shorter in the grand scheme of things), D and I made the decision to retire my original wedding set for something less delicate, more durable, and more (and less) traditional.

I found an artisan jeweler on Etsy.com and then D and I pored over pictures of what we liked and didn't like and then tweaked a design we found to our liking. The beautiful fruits of our labor was delivered to me just today and I'm happily wearing my first (EVER!) piece of custom-designed artisan jewelry. I only have two challenges now - 1) deciding if I should wear the center stone sandwiched...

... or perched on top of it all...


and 2) how I can now convince D that I NEED customized artisan jewelry WAY more often than fine art paintings (which is constantly now).