Photo 365 #113: Triumph

November 28, 2014Leave a comment

I had a great picture in mind for this challenge. It’s a picture of Bubbles when he was little, having made it through the tube on the playground. He emerged from it feeling victorious, and reached to the sky in joy.

Or at least that’s how I remembered the picture.

I dug it out of my external hard drive this morning and discovered that his expression was a little less triumphant than I remembered. Okay, a lot less triumphant – it looked like he was about to cry.

Well, so much for feeling victorious.

“Come here you…stubborn…apple!”

“Mmm, apples!”

But then I ran across these pictures. When he was little, we used to go apple picking at a local orchard every fall. Most of the trees were too tall for him to reach, but there was this one that had some particularly low-hanging fruit. He was determined to help us pick apples, so he went over and immediately began tugging on a beautiful red apple.

It put up quite a fight, but he was victorious in the end. Triumph never tasted so sweet. 🙂

Photo 365 #112: Double

November 27, 2014November 26, 20148 Comments

Don’t let these sleepy expressions fool you:

sleepy

These guys are double trouble. What one doesn’t think of, the other one does.

Photo 365 #111: Edge

November 26, 2014Leave a comment

If the following picture seems familiar, it’s because you’ve likely seen it before in sepia:

edge

I took this picture back in 2007. I was doing someone’s senior pictures, and I couldn’t help taking a few shots of this bridge for myself. It’s an old railroad bridge spanning the Iowa River, but it hasn’t been used for trains in I don’t know how long. I have a deep and abiding love for the relics of my state’s history, a bit of which you can read about here.

How about you – what are some of your old loves?

Photo 365 #110: Glass

November 25, 20146 Comments

Seymour has given me some lovely gifts in the time that we’ve known each other. This is a detail photo of one of those gifts:

bowldetail

For our second anniversary, he bought me a beautiful glass bowl from a local shop, and its beauty never fails to impress me. The glass contains ash from the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens, which appeals to my love of history. It’s just a beautiful bowl, and one of the prettiest pieces of glass I’ve seen outside of a church.

I spent probably a good half hour taking pictures of this bowl back in May as we were packing up to move. I played with angles, lighting, zooming in and out…In short, I spent way too much time photographing this bowl when I should have been packing. Let’s face it – no one likes packing, and taking pretty pictures is much more fun. I love the texture and color of this photograph almost as much as I love the bowl itself, and the thought that Seymour puts into gift-giving (regardless of who the recipient is).

It’s a perfect reminder of the things I treasure in life. Do you have something like that, a reminder of things you hold precious? Tell me all about it in the comments!

Photo 365 #109: Treasure

November 24, 201410 Comments

What do I treasure? Well, I treasure many things, but of all the things I treasure, my family is most important:

family

This is from our annual summer gathering on my mother-in-law’s side of the family. While this isn’t everyone, it is the picture in which my children were at least all looking in the direction of the camera, even if they weren’t all smiling. I love my family, and am blessed to have married into such a wonderful one.

What do you treasure?

Photo 365 #108

November 23, 2014November 23, 20146 Comments

Well, this post is later than I’d intended. I spent the morning moving a pile of lumber from one outbuilding to another as part of a farm clean-up effort. I had two adorable little helpers, though Thumper petered out after about five minutes.

Cricket, though? He was a fantastic helper. He didn’t quit till the job was done, and what a big job it was.

We were expecting rain this afternoon, but it showed up early, just as we were getting started on our project. By the time we finished, we were all soaked to the bone. But the rain really made our one apple tree stand out, and I couldn’t help taking a picture or four. I love the way the colors pop in this picture, a bit of variety on an otherwise gray and dreary day.

Photo 365 #107

November 22, 2014Leave a comment

reindeerbunny Because it’s that time of year, and because I can’t find half the kids’ winter things after moving this past spring, we bought the boys some new mittens last week. Thumper’s mittens came with a hat.

He’s the cutest. Reindeer. Ever. And no, I’m not biased. Not in the least. 🙂

Photo 365 #106: Landscape

November 21, 201415 Comments

I love landscapes. I think the majority of pictures I take are either of my kids or landscapes (49% landscapes, 49% kids, 2% other). Iowa is such a beautiful place that I can’t help whipping out my camera (either of them) and capturing the glories of nature.

quixotic

As previously mentioned, I also love sunsets. The arrival of snow is seriously hindering my ability to capture them through the break in the trees that form the western borderline of our property.

I may or may not have mentioned, however, that I’m not fond of the wind farms that are springing up all over the area (seriously, I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it or not). There’s one that stretches for a good ten miles south of where I live, and the blinking red line on the night horizon is one I find quite annoying. Now there’s another one that mars the northern horizon on my way to work. If this keeps up, I’ll be living in the middle of a wind farm inside of ten years.

Still, I do like the silhouettes these particular turbines made against the darkening night sky. And I love the hint of blurriness evident near the horizon and the edges of the turbine blades; it makes the whole scene feel a bit dreamy and surreal. When I took this picture, I was reminded of Don Quixote tilting at windmills, and I love it when nature makes me think of books.

What do your favorite landscape photos depict?

Photo 365 #105: Swarm

November 20, 2014November 21, 201414 Comments

The first time I met Seymour’s extended family was at his annual family reunion. He has a big family. I know people always think they have a big family (I sure thought so, even though I was including my grandma’s brother’s family in my head count), but Seymour really does – his dad was one of 13 kids. Reunions always used to be held at a nearby state park due to the number of people who’d come and, while it seems like fewer people have come the last couple of years, there’s still quite a crowd.

So we pull into this park and start looking around. There are people everywhere, but he can’t see anyone he recognizes, and the only people there that I know aside from him and our kids are his parents. Finally, he turns to me and says, “Are we in the right place?”

I looked at him like, Really? You’re asking me?

Photo 365 #104: Moment

November 19, 20148 Comments

Life is but a series of moments. Each day I find myself recording moments for posterity, though sometimes my recordings are strictly internal (which means they usually disappear within 24 hours, as my memory is terrible). Still, those little moments are what make life worth living, are they not?

“Peek-a-boo!”

“Raaaaaar!”

These two images are from the first night we spent in our new house. We had no furniture, other than a collapsible picnic table and an air mattress. What we did have were great friends and happy kids, and we made a boatload of memories that night. We’ve made more memories in our new house in the year since these pictures were taken, and the thought of all the memories we’ve yet to make thrills me to pieces.