I love photography and a beautiful moment captured and edited perfectly, but being a Mama means NOT lugging your heavy expensive camera around everywhere you go, and being willing to close your artistic eye to capture the fun messy moments that 20 years from now will no doubt be my favorites. It was hard to leave these alone, I wanted to crop and edit so bad, but mostly I wanted to remember the moment exactly like it was…perfectly imperfect.

When we burned our Christmas tree (and singed a few eyebrows and made some babies cry)

 

When Joel Ezra was born and we marveled at Yahweh’s goodness to us again (and at his size, 10 lbs!)

When Shanna grew some broccoli

When Jude and Ezra became best friends

When the men met at the gate of Tarry Field (did you know that chickens are VERY curious)

When Lydia made a Lego garden

When we had cousin movie night and watched the Lion King (and I cried a little…again)

When we found Pearl like this (and we all let Luke believe that they had become friends when we all knew she just wanted to eat him)

When I FINALLY learned to french braid (shut up, this was my first ever)

When we went to the free zoo (ahem *pet store*)

When Lydia helped make pancakes and invented the best ever strawberry syrup (post coming soon!)

When Mac painted like Andy Warhol at Classical Conversations

When we played a review game with Jenga and we all just KNEW Luke was doomed and he totally didn’t knock it down.

When Rain borrowed his Daddy’s helmet

When Emma took Jonah for a ride after Classical Conversations pajama day (yes, it was a real thing, no I didn’t make it up, yes I wore mine, no it wasn’t my idea)

When we ate Mexican on the Gulf (have I mentioned I love my home…and Mexican food)

When we learned about the Western mountains

When we spent a day at the salon (yep, a whole day)

When we kicked the girls out and watched Spider-Man 2

When we learned our 7s

When Aunt Margie held Ezra on his first Sunday

When Lydia started sewing lessons with the teacher of her dreams

When all 17 of us made a spontaneous late supper run to Corams (and Luke read the Hobbit the whole time and I was so proud I almost cried in my grits)

When Jonah came to play (with everything but toys)

When we took our peppermint tea to the book store

I published this and realized that the photos were all different sizes and started to stress but then realized I didn’t care!

Yeah, I totally went back and fixed them.

Happy February everybody!

love, Hope