Photo 365 #43

September 19, 2014September 19, 20144 Comments

Cricket and I were looking through some of my Instagram pictures tonight. He kept asking who the people were in the pictures on my feed, so finally I flipped over to my pictures and asked him who the people were in the pictures I’d posted. He did pretty well, though I think sometimes he answered wrong just to be silly.

Cricket’s nothing if not silly.

But then we came to this picture:

And when I asked him who was in this picture, without missing a beat, he said, “Um, that’s my godfather and his princess.” 🙂

Cuz it’s a bittersweet symphony, this life…

January 4, 2013January 4, 20138 Comments

We undecorated our office today at work. It looks so barren without all the Christmas things up! Despite being unable to find my Christmas spirit this year, I hate taking the decorations down. It’s always struck me as a sad act. Lights and garland and fancy colored balls are so cheerful that one can’t help smiling, and Christmas music almost always brings a smile to my face at some point during the season. Putting everything away feels like mourning. I suppose that, with Lent and Easter coming up, this feeling is perhaps appropriate, but I still hate taking everything down.

Also, I may or may not be given to occasional bouts of laziness. I suppose that could also account for my dislike of undecorating.

Speaking of things that are bitter sweet, check this out!

Happily Ever After

January 1, 2013January 1, 201415 Comments

Photo by Kay Kauffman

The pretty princess
In the beautiful ballgown
Waltzes down the aisle.

The pretty princess
Holds court with friends both old and
New on the big day.

Baby blues sparkle
With mischief and merriment
As she plots her reign.

The pretty princess
Did not expect a handsome
Prince to thwart her plans.

But now the pretty
Princess has her prince, and they’ll
Live for each other,

For now, for always.
At last, the pretty princess
Has her happily

Ever after. The end.

Merry Christmas!

December 26, 2012December 26, 201211 Comments

Merry Christmas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know I’m a little bit late, but I hope you all had a very merry Christmas! I don’t know where the time’s gone, but I really hadn’t intended to go so long without posting. Then I started cleaning and my computer took a three-day vacation while I spent time with family and friends (and kleenex and cough syrup). I still seem to be under the weather – I don’t know why I can’t shake this bug – but at least I found a little of my Christmas spirit before the big day rolled around. After three days spent celebrating with family, I spent all afternoon yesterday sleeping in a feeble attempt to recover. I desperately needed the rest, but I would have liked to get a few more things done around the house (like the mountain of dishes sitting in my kitchen).

Hopefully the end of the holiday season will mean a return to normal blogging for me, but possibly that will not happen till next week. I’ll be hitting the road Friday with the fabulous Miss Tara for a mutual friend’s wedding festivities in the Great White North, also known as the Land of 1,000 Lakes. Then it’s another family Christmas celebration on Sunday. After all of that, I think I’m gonna need another three-day weekend just to recover! Sadly, I’ll still have to work on Monday. *sigh* Something tells me I won’t be staying up to watch the ball drop this year.

So in case I don’t see you before then, I hope you all have a terrific rest of the week, a wonderful weekend, and a fabulous start to the new year! I’ll see you all in 2013, if not before!

Mawwage is what bwings us togevah today…

October 26, 2012October 28, 20126 Comments

I said in my post yesterday that twenty-four was a banner year, but twenty-five ranked right up there with it. We spent the better part of the year planning the wedding and the honeymoon, getting details worked out and being generally happy and excited and everything else that is good. At Easter, I was confirmed in Seymour’s church after completing the RCIA program. That was one of the biggest decisions we had made thus far in our life together; his family is devoutly Catholic and mine is Presbyterian. My family didn’t seem very happy about my decision to convert, but it’s not like I was changing religions or something. I simply changed my denomination. After all, Catholics and Protestants do worship the same God, do believe in the same afterlife, do read more or less the same Bible. It’s not like I joined a cult or something.

However, the difference did pose an interesting question…

Onward and upward!

October 25, 2012October 28, 201218 Comments

That’s right, things started looking much better for me in my twenty-fourth year. Much better, as a matter of fact. The whole year was pretty stellar, really. See, my birthday is at the end of January. Shortly before my birthday, I signed up for Yahoo! Personals. I had gone to a wedding a few months prior for a couple who had met on eHarmony.com. The groom and I had gone to high school together and I thought, “Hey – if Seth can meet such a nice girl online, maybe I can find a nice guy myself!”

I had a few first dates, but nothing that really went anywhere. Then one day, I was scrolling through matches in my area and came across a guy who was a few years (okay, six) older than me and hailed from my hometown. I had no idea who this guy was. My hometown has a population of 1800 people, so everyone pretty much knows everyone else. The first thought that ran through my head was, “Who is this guy and why don’t I know him?”

I clicked on his profile and read through it. That was when I had my second thought: “I need to know this guy!” He was a former military officer and a single father who was “not looking for a mom” for his daughter. He was also a self-professed Star Trek freak. Could this guy be any better?

So I sent him a message.

Twenty-two

October 22, 2012October 28, 20125 Comments

Photo by Kay Kauffman

When I was twenty-two, my marriage was falling apart. My life was a shambles. But even as my marriage was ending, my brother-in-law’s was just beginning. As my twenty-second Christmas approached, he and his fiancée asked that I take their engagement pictures, which I was happy to do. I love photography and at that point in my life, I hoped to be able to earn a little extra money from doing something that I loved. It didn’t work out, but maybe that’s all for the best.

Be orange!

October 19, 2012October 28, 201227 Comments

My first year of college was an eventful year in more ways than I had ever anticipated. I was the only kid in my class who dreaded high school graduation; though I was excited about the new opportunities I would have in college, I was terrified of leaving my friends behind and starting over. A few people from my school went to the same college I chose to attend and, as a private college, it was much smaller than the state universities so the class sizes were comparable to what I’d experienced in high school.

But I was on my own, for the first time.

Love-Me Plant Lady

October 12, 2012October 28, 20123 Comments

I’ve been trying to get a bunch of things done today, so I’ve been ignoring my computer. When I finally took a few minutes to check my email, I noticed I had a new one from my aunt with some information about where I could view my cousin’s wedding pictures online (I posted a few of them back in July when I wrote about the wedding – you can read that post here).

I just finished looking at the pictures. They were awesome! Aaron Borchers did their wedding photography and he did an absolutely fabulous job. But that’s not what this post is about. As I was looking through the pictures, one member of the wedding party stood out to me (and no, I don’t mean the bride, though she was gorgeous, or the groom, who looked quite dashing in his tux).

More memories from the year I turned twelve are this-a-way! Follow me!

Troublesome Threes

October 3, 2012October 28, 201210 Comments

My grown-up guy
Photo by Kay Kauffman

When I was growing up, my aunt used to babysit. She watched a little boy who had the same name as my cousin, right down to the middle name, so my cousin became Big D. and the boy my aunt watched became Little D. That kid is now in his early twenties and, last I saw him, taller than me, but he’ll always be Little D. to me.

Anyway, my aunt watched this kid when he was a toddler, and I remember her talking about the terrible twos and the troublesome threes. I didn’t really understand what she meant at the time and since I was a kid myself, I didn’t really care, either. Now, though, I know exactly what she meant and boy, do I care! As I recall, Tomcat’s twos weren’t overly terrible, though Cricket’s twos have thus far fit that bill, but boy, were his threes ever troublesome! I suspect Cricket’s may be the same way, but I’m hoping they won’t.

When Tomcat was three, our lives were in a state of upheaval.