Tag Archives: photos

Weekend Snapshots 16

We drove up to Arlington on Saturday. My husband is taking two of the children to England to see their grandparents. Because the flights are so expensive, we decided our twelve year old, who got to spend an extra week in England the last time around, would stay home with me.

Future Geezers In Training

I had made all kinds of rash promises to The-Son-Who-Got-Left-Behind to spoil him rotten, but as soon as I got back from dropping off the traveling trio at Dulles Airport, I was taken down by a nasty bug I’d been trying to fight all day. I collapsed in a feverish, headache-y heap at 6:30 pm and didn’t wake up until the next morning.

I woke up to this texted photo of our travelers on their long layover in Brussels, where they got to hang out with my husband’s cousin…

I was still feeling weak and wobbly, but it was clearly time to up my game. The spoil-a-thon had obviously not panned out on Saturday, but maybe I could make it up to my son by taking him on a trip of our own to an exotic locale…

We ended up at Tyson’s Corner. We sampled French cuisine at La Madeleine. We elbowed our way past the hordes and multitudes to visit the Apple Store shrine so he could get his laptop ministered to at the genius bar. And then he got pampered with a massage at that Wonderland, otherwise known as Brookstone:

OK, so maybe the spoil-a-thon will officially start tomorrow.

Brother & Sister

November 2009…

This Boy

My dad was working in Korea when my first child, his first grandson, was born. He was finally able to meet him when we all converged in Minneapolis to celebrate the wedding of my brother and sister-in-law.

All weekend long, as soon as my dad would spot us, he would scoop his grandchild from my arms into his own.

“You look tired,” he’d say, “I’ll hold the baby for you.” Or: “He must be really heavy for you. Let me take him.”

Because I can be astonishingly dense, the first time I said, “I’m OK, Dad. I can hold him.”

“Nah,” he said gruffly, “You need a rest. I better hold him for you.”

No one else got a chance to hold the baby that weekend…

The words “I love you” have never once fallen from my father’s lips, but that weekend I heard those unspoken words when he gazed upon his grandson and said wistfully, “You won’t believe it, but in the blink of an eye, he’ll be grown up and out the door and you won’t even know how it happened.”

Dad’s babies

Here’s that baby fourteen Novembers ago…

November 2000

I blinked and this happened:

November 2014

Today my son was wearing a t-shirt my husband used to wear when I first met him. Today we measured him, and the boy who, I swear, was a baby only yesterday, is now 6 feet tall!

Oh, Time, our greatest friend and foe! May I remember that every minute of this precious life, even in the most challenging of times, is a gift of immeasurable value. May I not squander the days that I have with these beloved children under my own roof. And when they eventually do go out that door, may they fly back home now and then to my loving arms.

Pumpkins!

We carved out our pumpkins tonight. My oldest son is going to take his in to carve at school tomorrow. For the first time ever, the two younger children carved their own pumpkins all by themselves.

Someone was totally grossed out by the pumpkin guts…

FINALLY! I’ve waited YEARS for someone else to have to deal with the pumpkin dismemberment!

My son’s pumpkin:

My daughter’s pumpkin:

My son thought his sister’s pumpkin resembled someone we know…

Happy Halloween!

October Babies

Fabulous Fall

It’s my favorite season…

Minor Hall at UVa
The walk to my parking lot
Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow…
A walk around the lake
Taking a break
Skipping stones
The Two Ts
Two Ts

Little Pumpkin

Some photos taken on a beautiful October day a while back…

School Boy Fantasies…

My twelve-year-old son just made a rather exciting discovery. As he flipped through the pages of a catalog that arrived in our mailbox, he gasped in wonder and amazement.

Every now and then he’d whisper, “WHAT?!”

At one point he turned to me and asked, “Does this always just come in the mail?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“And you never showed it to me before?!” he asked in an accusatory voice.

And with that he said, “Goodnight, I’m going to my room. Is it ok if I take this to bed with me?”

Sure, kid. Go crazy!

Hang on

It’s been a rough week, here in C’ville. On Monday, my daughter fractured her foot. Yesterday, we got rear-ended by a teenage girl on her cell phone. And on another order altogether – the unthinkable has happened again. Another teenage girl, a student at UVa, a beloved daughter, sister, and friend has gone missing.

It’s scary out there…Hold hands with the people you love and hang on tight:

Life can be scary
Grab a friend’s hand
…and hold on tight
Don’t let go.

Human Family

This Saturday we went to my friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah. For the longest time I debated whether or not to bring the kids. I knew it was going to be a long service (two hours)!, most of which we would not understand. I knew with absolute certainty that we were going to have tortured negotiations about what they should wear beforehand. “No, you can’t wear those cargo pants.” “Or that lurid shirt.” “You call this lurid?” “Yes. Yes, I do.” “Sneakers are not appropriate.” “Black socks, not white socks.” And I knew they would not be thrilled about having to miss their soccer games. They would have to miss their studio piano class too, though I was pretty confident they would find this far less devastating.

It was a beautiful and deeply moving service. There was much that was unfamiliar, and much that we didn’t understand. (The biggest shocker for my sons might have been the silky turquoise yarmulkes they were asked to wear)! But the bar mitzvah is all about the universal human experiences of separation and connection. The boy’s individuation from his parents is acknowledged and celebrated with their loving blessings, and in the warm embrace of the community that binds them together. I too left the synagogue feeling connected to a larger community of faith, and to a larger human family.

And since we were all dressed up…