Few little things

This little face was sun-drenched last summer. Andrew attracts light like (oh bliss) nectar attracts bees.

you are the apple of my eye


Now this winter, cooped up and (yeah) a little cabin feaver.

beep beep

Baby face

This past Friday on the Baby Love Letters blog this question was posted: "Tell how you felt the first time you saw your child's face."

Well, when I saw Jen's I was speechless. It's how you are a little when you're presented with your first baby and you feel the weight of her in your arms and see her face the first time. Jen's birth kind of roughed her up (9 lbs. plus) and I caressed her little face. The rosiest! And velvet hair! She squinched her eyes up most of the first day and I loved it as she opened them and really looked at me. I couldn't stop touching her. We did it, Bucky, I remember thinking.

With Erin I giggled, excited to have a girl again! Remember back in the seventies you didn't know what you were having til they were born, and you adjusted on the spot. A girl, I said, awed. Her hair was jet black and standing up. Poofy little cheeks. She was a solid 8 lbs. plus, and I called her 'squee bit' cause she was little. The nurse brought her to me after her bath with a pink bow pasted in her hair, probably with Karo. Funny. I remember how soft Erin was.

Brad was a surprise from the get go. From day one - that I was pregnant, and that he was a boy. I was amazed to have him. You just feel, like, wow! Brad was tiny, 6 lbs 14 oz., and with tiny, twiggy little legs: his socks wouldn't stay on! How could three children be so different I thought, watching his little face. Is this my baby? I didn't really wonder, but the thought goes through your mind. He had white-blond hair and little bags under his eyes when I first saw him, and a broad nose! A stunner really, but not quite in his element. My little Bubba. Felt like I was starting over with this child. We were more at home with each other in a few days.

Dan - here was a child who, from the womb, I felt I knew instantly. That didn't happen with any of the others. "I know you," I said as the doctor handed him to me. (I really said that. I was delirious.) "You look like all the rest!" He did, or I thought he did. There was something uncannily familiar to me about Dan, having nothing to do with his face or body probably. I was instantly attached to him. He reminded me most in looks of baby Erin, was her same exact weight and length at birth, and coloring. He watched me while I held him, and was serene. For a minute, then he yelled!

When my fifth baby was born I was on pins and needles wondering: would it be a boy or girl? You could have knocked me over with a feather when Scott was delivered. Boy! Boy!!! (??? I am a mother of girls. Surely, in my mind's eye, the mother of many girl children to come.) Not. When I saw Scott, 8 lbs. 14 oz., I fell instantly in love. It rushed in, unlike with my first children. Like the others he was filled out and rosy, not as blonde as Brad and nowhere near Erin's black or Dan's brunette baby hair. Most like Jen I think, weight, gustyness, color, face shape, velvet hair and skin. He might be my last (I thought) and I soaked him up. He was in my hospital room long stretches (a new thing) so I had time with him. I sang to him.

Do I say here enough how I love my kids? I doubt I can say all I feel for them. Ever. Maybe if I wrote a book. When I was young I didn't know I'd still way love them and want them when we were all grown up. I thought they'd go away - I don't know. It wasn't scripted. I love that we're friends still, more than. Bound (as when they were born to me) a tribe, family - you know? Can I ever say all I feel for them - I think not: You had me at "hello," and it just gets better with time.

Your face

I love, love, love this photograph of Brad and Dana - a goof-off picture I took in 2005 when I was experimenting with my camera, probably something Brad will think is stupid 'cause he's got goo-goo eyes for Dana; I've loved it and wanted to scrap a page with it.



Sometimes journaling or an element like paper or even a wizardly template is the inspiration for the next scrap page, whatever, but this time it was this picture. So I scoured layouts until I found something that went ping, this is how to scrap it! The exact mood, though not exact colors and journaling, etc. By "scoured layouts," I mean looked online for pages others have created; in this case, layouts featuring one photo (color or black and white, doesn't matter) and whimsey.

I found it: two European boys. Their picture was taken close up, heads together, all smiles and teeth (he he), at the beach probably. Neutral background, doodley border. Photo mounted on the page (as you see here) suggesting the perfect use for my Brad-Dana picture from now three years ago.



When I borrow a layout someone else has done that inspires me, use it to guide where I place the picture and elements, etc., that's called "scraplifting." This is done I would say by the majority of scrapbookers; most of us are not artists, though there is the genre of scrapbooking that's way artsy, originals. Impressive. I can't, won't, don't create from my mind. I see it done first. The "picture" of what I want just isn't in my brain or mind's eye. Is not. I've tried. As Mark Twain says, my head is full of blank cartridges. You have to be bona fide to create that way. Van Gogh or Iriz Aagocs (http://artistamuvek.blogspot.com/, delicious, ooooh so), first a seer of things beautiful, then pretty crafty at getting it on the page.

Nope. I borrowed. But it turned out, yeah?

Timeless

Started reading "Pilgrim's Progress" last night after Kent whizzed through it last week. He was sick so he's done nothing with his spare time but read. Now he's on to the autobiography of Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery. Both from the library, a place that heretofore this man has not been. It was Scott giving him an audio book for Christmas in 2007 that's gotten Kent looking in libraries for more audio books and, besides, titles from a Top 100 list he found on the Internet weeks ago.

While I fiddled around here making this layout last night Kent read me passages from it - Booker T. - great stuff. Good writer, tough subject: slavery. The deal is, Kent will hand books off to me when he's done (hence, PP) and I shall be well-read this year.

Okay, I'm done here now and getting back to Pilgrim. I'm following a character named Christian who is carrying a great Burden on his back



and himself following a fellow, Evangelist, on his Way out of the City of Destruction toward the Wicket Gate, beyond which is the Shining Light. This is a wonderful curious story written by a man (John Bunyan) baptized a Christian sometime after 1647 and thrown into prison twelve years for preaching without receiving permission from the established Church of England. Written from prison. Timeless this is.

So, I've done a few major housecleaning things already and studied and made phone calls and all the stuff a person has to do before she can go away and loaf with a good book. Put her feet up. This is a great read and to me worth every minute of working hard to get to it.

Noah's first months

Sunny Day

A day off Seminary! And another tomorrow. The children don't come for a solid week.

I had a power talk with Jen yesterday, kind of laid my head on her shoulder and cried. It's done, (she's the best listener) and today's different - sunshiny, more hopeful some way. When you're a girl it's beyond helpful to talk and be listened to. You need a girlfriend, right? Kent is a fab listener too but not my girlfriend. Remember the number one item on my short-list for marriage? Repeat after me: Kent is not my girlfriend. Pau. Sounds like "pow." Hawaiian for 'done,' or 'finished. ' Well.

A sunny day goes a long way. I'm even considering . . . well, I was going to say going walking. Getting outside. That'd be like, good grief, committing if I say it here. It's almost like I'd have to be putting on my tennis shoes next; but no, I remember now. Vicky Sperlein  (whom I visit teach) called a while ago to ask if I'll take her husband's 88 year-old aunt to a doctor appointment. Neurology. Vicky's husband is ill and she's taking him to his doctor this morning, maybe the Emergency Room at the hospital, I don't have details. So if she calls me to take Aunt Ag, I can't have my tennis shoes on and be out and about can I? Better to lounge on the living room floor and stretch while I watch What Not to Wear, huh. And I shall not get into the chocolates left here by accident Friday after Seminary.

rockin' it baby girl - shayla


dan dozing


jen - captivating

Lazy day

Would you be bored at my house I wonder... as I watch a bird sitting on the back fence and another flying to the bird house to perch. A father bird I've been watching (I assume it's a "him") peeks inside the bird house. Surely the mother is on her eggs. Every year. He pecks at the hole and looks in. It's what I think he's doing. He flies off. There's blue in his wings. Hardly another thing is moving outside, only water drops off the eaves. The back porch is wet. Not much to say.

Joseph computing

Deadsville

Stayed home from the temple this weekend - should of gone to work two days but we both are sick. Deadsville around here. Kent checked out Pilgrim's Progress and Up from Slavery from the library and besides is listening to Puddin' Head Wilson (Mark Twain) on audio in the car. Not to mention he just finished Sterling W. Sill's "The Three Infinities" and Life on the Mississippi, another Mark Twain audio. I'm working on Spence and Lila by Bobbie Ann Mason, local author and associate of Mary Key's (Terri's mother), light enough reading and it's pretty good. Makes me laugh - local anything around here makes me chuckle. That, and Millenial Messiah, very extremely amazingly good and thought provoking and needs red pencil markings. I keep bookmarks in both but haven't moved a page for days, sick. Just stayed plopped in front of HGTV. Well, and time here to make easy-peasy scrap pages with templates and most recent pictures.

beautiful andrew 


landon christmas day 2008


amy faces

Sickie

oh sickie sickie sick sick nose running eyes watering coughing sore throat go away. michael buble making it oh so betta' and now katharine mcphee somewhere over the rainbow.

if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't i?

joseph baby eating peaches


stills of garrett, 2008

Dad and me

Agh! No time for more! Gotta run.

Abbie and Mike on the playground, September 2005

Power to save

It’s hardly insignificant that I had a near-drowning experience at ten, and another at twenty.

It’s hardly been significant until today though, when I taught in Seminary about shipwreck. Though I’ve used being in over my head as an object lesson plenty of times in teaching and have personally (for very long years) steered clear of water over my kneecaps, I’ve not given my drowning much other consideration. These events though, singular for extreme fear at the time, welled up in me this morning after I said to the class pretend we’re going on a trip to an archaeological dig for several days in Central America. Here are things you should bring with you. What will you put at the top of your list?

Oh, and did I mention we’ll be traveling by boat and that the ship will sink in the Gulf of Mexico? (Which is exactly where, by the way, I nearly drowned 2x.)

I didn't think about my drowning right then exactly. It was later when we got to the question how is the life raft in our story like the Savior? Because of course I changed what I would put at the top of my list to life raft (see, yellow thing near the bottom) immediately. Not repellent. Not boots, not shovel. Something to float in. One girl offered water purifier.

Little do we know.

I’m a teacher of the New Testament, a testifier of the Savior and His power to save us from – what, we asked in class. Drowning? The effects of the Fall, the time and space set apart for us called earth life, separate from God. It’s hardly insignificant (ah!) that I’ve floundered in deep water, massive waves sweeping me from shore. My God! I screamed when I was twenty, My God! – not just in horror, because I was horrified - but prayer. Automatic and absolute. Frantic and loud while I watched above me the sky calm with white clouds. My God, I said, maybe fifty times. Personally shipwrecked. What I wouldn’t have given for a life raft! A floatie.

Waters are symbolic then of something that separates us from God, sweeps us from safety. As the teacher I’m quick today to draw this parallel. Something keeps us from God here – we don’t see Him or hear Him in the world, and many are quick to turn away from the notion of Him – so I teach the kids why: the Fall, Adam and Eve’s transgression, being cast from the presence of the Lord and the resultant changes to Earth. Mortality, physical death. And spiritual death - sin. Shipwreck. When we got to the question how is the life raft in our story like the Savior and we could exclaim He is what we want most in life - help!, I (probably alone in the room) was seared by that truth. Oh that my students were hungry for this! But they’ve not yet had a drowning experience.

Of Christ’s power to save from unmanageable experiences or just day to day foibles, I have absolutely no doubt. Both times He saved me in the water, and that’s a different story. I’m breathless right now at the gap between helpless and help, fallen man and the Savior Himself to lift us.

Friday Letters

http://babyloveletters.typepad.com/

Run to this blog link above and explore! Let's try it during February - I'd personally love to see what you come up with - I'm going to try myself. How about you post your response and e-mail me to let me know. I'll come running to your blog!

The blog author says: Each Friday a new question will be put up here. Your response to the week's question can stand on its own or be joined together with answers to future questions.

1. Read this week’s question and spend no more than 15 minutes writing your answer. Obviously everything you want to say can’t be said in 15 minutes but this gets your thoughts down on paper and you can always write more letters in the future.)

2. For the photographers of the group, create 1-3 photographs on this topic to accompany your words.

3. Save your letter in a place where you keep important papers.

(Copied and pasted from Friday, January 23rd): Friday Letters 65: The quote: "Hope: to desire with expectation of fulfillment" Webster's English Dictionary "Hope is knowing that people, like kites, are made to be lifted up."

While visiting a dear friend today this precious story of hope was shared with me. It was 1931 and my friend was just a little girl. Still she vividly remembers the call from the town grocer asking if her family could prepare dinner for a couple from Idaho who were sitting out in front of the town store. There, penniless and in total despair, they sat in their overloaded old car with all of their worldly belongings and 4 young children.

Her mom quickly responded, "Send them over." The family scurried around gathering up precious homegrown canned goods from the pantry shelves. And the children were set to work peeling potatoes as they anxiously awaited the strangers arrival. That night over dinner her dad offered a day job to the visitor. This began a friendship and years of working side by side in the family business.

One of the stranger's children became my friend's closest girlfriend. Years later standing with her as a bridesmaid in her wedding.

"Think of the hope that just one free meal kindled and where that generosity led."

----
In an hour and a half Kent and I will be in the car going to church. I love worshiping in our Sacrament meetings. That's changed for me during past years as I've used Saturday to better mentally and spiritually prepare for the Sabbath.

Something I believe completely is that a person is, (IS for a time) what he/she experienced last. Most recently. Like when I see a movie, the whole day after I AM it! I think it, talk it, be it for awhile. You know. When I got home from Utah ten days ago, I WAS the Bradford girl I was being with my family and as I celebrated Grandma. After a few days I was my Georgia self. You get it.

I apply this to getting ready to go to Sacrament meeting. Saturday if (when) I spend part of the afternoon or evening reading from the Ensign or whatever church book I'm in, chapters or stories, or especially the scriptures, I wake Sunday morning THAT. I think it and want it and am eager as I dress and prepare for church. Church isn't an interruption of my real life then; worshiping IS my life, my world - and I park there, enter, sing and pray and listen in it, teach or learn there, commit and promise and engage there. Not, don't misunderstand, for socializing especially. For the covenant-making process, and the sacrament of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The beauty of worshiping is that, it having been one's recent experience each Sabbath, it is carried in us through the days of the week til we come again to the Sacrament meeting. Ideally we BE all week how we have worshiped on Sunday (according to my idea that a person is what he/she experienced last) "socializing" mentally and emotionally and spiritual with the Savior and on high levels with each other; we ARE that way, we just are if we don't go back to our worldly selves once we leave the church building. We really ARE saints of the latter days! I struggle to be so, and for me there's nothing better in my life, really. Except for the wonder of sharing it as I go.