one of the joys of a mac is photobooth and when you add unattended children to it, you get GEMS like the above.  love them.

(and... due to the resolution available through photobooth i think my kids look like muppets, which just adds to the fun)

it's been a loooooooooong time since we played a little giveaway game here at the ole bloggity blog, so it's high time we have a grand one.  jolie found my blog a few years ago and i was immediately won over by her candid artistry and personality.  she is true, in every sense. and she's an amazingly dedicated artist, painting EVERY day, much to YOUR benefit.  recently she did 100 daily paintings, selling them for one dollar per day. and right now she's doing a summer sunshine series, painting en plein air 5 times a week, AMAZING this girl is.

her own bio: 

Creating something everyday. It's how I stay sane and how I connect with my Creator.

Also, I can wax nostalgic for hours, so without my paintings, I’d just be a person who spends too much time and money on toys from eBay.

I try to live and paint like this.

starting tomorrow she will be doing a *name your own price* deal if you sign up for her newsletter. (i love getting her daily paints in my inbox, serves as daily inspiration for me!)

and right here, we'll be giving away one of her prints, worth $35 a pop.  to play, leave a comment about what is inspiring you today (and make sure you put your email address in the proper field) by friday, july 30 at 11:59 MST. also, if you facebook or twitter this giveaway, let me know and i'll enter your name twice.  come now, tell me what is inspiring you right NOW.

i love when i find surprises on my camera.  john took these shots and as i reviewed them this morning huge tears burst right out without warning.  the realization: my children are people, albeit tiny, they are their own people with huge futures unfolding before them. and they are growing up faster than i realize.

these moments RIGHT NOW are their childhood.  and while i have my own thoughts and needs and frustrations, it's my job to cultivate  THESE moments for them.  good things to store in their memory banks that they can call on when life weathers against them. the joy that they feel feeds me as well and it deserves to be captured so that they can call on and remember these moments with their siblings.

whenever we go out i still get asked if they're all mine and how close in age they are... but it's now followed by, "good for you!  you can tell how much they love one another."  i am one lucky mama.

lately john and i have been discussing love languages again.  we both took the test and we were both pretty surprised to find what has changed over the years.  the first time we took the test (about 6 years ago) words of affirmation was my number one. when john saw that he laughed and said, "that's the stupidest thing i've ever seen!"  which of course made me dissolve into tears. haha.   now, the tables have turned.  it's now his highest rated love language followed so closely by touch. 

when i went into this whole marriage thing nearly a decade ago i thought we had it all figured out. love was easy. love swirled alll around us. love was tangible in every act.  then entered a parade of moves, children, years, trials, blessings... and we sit in a very different place.  love is an act.  love is a movement, beyond ourselves sometimes.  it's something thought out and moved towards.  and yet, from my memory, i love my husband more fully now then i did when we married. his love for me has better taught me to love myself.  the love we have for our children unites us as i see his smile, his order, his eyes smiling back at me through them.  it's not in grandiouse sonnets or in dozens of flowers, it's now shown in folded laundry, dinner steaming from the oven, midnight grocery runs, holding hands under the table, emails of simple adoration, stolen dates, time snuggled on the couch... now love is truly tangible in every act.

looking at my test results now: words of affirmation and acts of service match perfectly, just two points below that time and touch weigh in equally... way below that, gifts.  when john saw how close all four of them are for me he commented, "When you think about it, all of yours, except the “gifts” are pretty close. Which could mean that you’re happy with whatever you get (except gifts)??"

i responded, "i am happy with gifts too.  i'm just a big fan of love, in general. ;-D i love to be worshipped and adored which in turn, makes me want to worship and adore others."

his response made me cry, "I guess “worship” says it all—heart, might, mind, and strength."

i do think i feel deeply, probably more than most people, probably more than is necessary or required or even considered normal.  but it's through this that i live and love to my greatest potential, with my whole heart:might:mind:strength.

turns into this:

to see more of our days (and the other kids too)

•  No one else but you can make your marks.  Listen to your bones.  Speak with your spirit.  Edit with your head.  Live with your heart.  ~Susan Holland
• powerful stuff here.
• sleeping in until noon, who knew?!
• i can now officially walk all the way into our closet. in fact, if i wanted i could lay down and roll around just for the heck of it. 6 bags ready for charity.  4 bags of 18 month-2 year old girls clothes sorted and ready for storage.  2 bags of little boy clothes.  and 1 bag ready for the trash.  unbelievable how much junk was in one TINY room and how organized it is now.
• my cousin sariah rocks the casbah
• i'm afraid that wild mushroom is trying to force themselves out of business.  their food is amazing but they're location is disgusting, they don't advertise (even their pizza boxes are blank), and they charge next to nothing for truly incredible pizza and subs.  maybe it's just one of salt lake's best kept secrets, but it's one i would really hate to lose.
• i can blink with one eye, ie winking with no facial movement so that you can only see it from one side.  john thinks its creepy.  i think it's creepy that he can wink with each eye, back and forth.
• blowing raspberries on your spouse's belly is way more fun that blowing raspberries on your kid's belly.
• shouldn't be too surprised: but when i'm not on facebook my house is clean, dishes done, laundry folded and put away, life organized, dates frequent, school completed, shoots edited... life is cheery.  hrmmmmm?
• finding it pretty ironic that ESL is taught on the west side while foreign language immersion is taught on the east side.   
• brace your uterus, then check out these skin to skin pics.
• i've spent the past little bit feeling very raw, very emotional, very exposed.  i'm normally a very face value person willing to share everything so this is new and uncomfortable territory for me.
• pretty sure i just watched the saddest episode of rescue me (season 3, epi 12), and somehow simultaneously one of the brightest.  love me some denis leary.
• OM
• cranky doesn't even begin to cut it as far as descriptions of jenica go. wheee!
• sugarhouse park with my kiddles equals a nap in the sun for me, pics of the kids taken by john, and a redhead with hair so curly and amazing how could i not take pics?
• dinner tonight: 1 zuchinni sliced, 1 onion chopped, 5 cloves garlic pressed, 3 mushrooms sliced... sauteed in butter and olive oil and served over angel hair with fresh parmesan daintly laid about. um.... YUM.
•  "pretty" by katie makkai (warning: does fling the f-word once)

shortly after this i handed her a wipe and asked her to clean up her face.  she laughed, "i'm not dirty!"

we're doing the opposite of hibernating, we're out and about and soaking up every spare second of this glorious summer. see?

over the weekend we went down to library square and soaked up the utah arts festival.  it's one of our favorite events of the summer and i'm so glad we could make it again.  they loved getting their faces painted and were so good and patient through it.  we ate great food and gelato, bought several new art prints, got sun kissed, and the kids did a dada poetry workshop.  my only regret of the whole day was that i bothered wearing a bra.

the dada poetry thing was held at CWC which i'm hoping to start doing more things with in the future.  for the workshop they gave the kids magazine clippings with strips of words, then they arranged them into poetry, pieced together like a ransom note. 

e's: the aristocats, in other words, the aristocats. architects can tilt your car, hard.  bringing the rocky mountains rock and roll.

f's: ask martha, the leader, iguana lady. why trust your cheesecake? nothing is more special betweeen bittersweet stinky pits.

g's: everyone likes whimsy salad with brushes and glue. respect hurray for hamsters! idolized surfer there, i look at the clock. it's 5 am.

dang good day.  even if half of it was spent doing this:

until this last week i hadn't taken photos in months.  sure, a few stray shots here and there, but i found myself shying away from the trigger.  john is becoming a great photographer himself and with only one camera, i've found myself turning it over to him at every major event we attend.  my bag began to feel heavy when i brought it, so i stopped bringing my camera on our adventures.  i simply lost my photomojo. 

on sunday we scouted out a few locations for an upcoming shoot, one i agreed to do but was dreading because i'm feeling so funky.  when we got to the field i pulled e and g out and we stepped just a few steps away from the car.  i took a couple, focused shots but still wasn't feeling it.  then i dropped my camera to my waist and clicked away.  in the end, these are my happiest shots.  the photomojo is returning.

wednesday night was another sleepless one, as in, i didn't get even one minute of sleep.  as the sun came up i remembered just how beautiful and energizing morning light is. i grabbed the camera and my lensbaby and began to experiment with the light streaming in.  the above set is out of focus, but i still love the raw flow of it.

then on friday a cue at shuttersisters showed me another reason i took these pics.  i was craving reality, in that moment i had wanted to fully see myself.  after a night of no sleep and other factors i felt worn down inside and out.  but our physical self is not all that we are, it's not even the only thing other people see.  i needed to see all of me right then, whispy facial hair and grease build up as it was.  and despite feeling so worn down, i can see the strength of my soul in these photographs.

i hope you'll turn the camera on yourself.  it's not vanity, it's not pompous, it's allowing yourself to see what other people see in you. it's about perception. it takes time, it takes practice, it takes trust, and there are many many many resources out there to help you gain the courage and direction to do it. wanna see some oldies? where i started.

 "only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructable be found in us."~Buddha~

for the full set