Jumping Daisy

Of nostalgia…another gem I came across.

http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com/

This is amazing, and just what I love about photography, true captured moments.

Our family makes a lot of trips up and down twelfth avenue and years ago I noticed the big abandoned white house. It stuck out in an area ripe with 1950s block like ranches. It looked like a stately old farm house that had probably once known the laughter of lots of children, running in and out, letting the screen door snap shut behind them as they bound down the porch stairs and out to explore. The house has several porches, including a huge second story porch. I could picture the woman of the house resting in an old wooden chair, gazing at the stars and feeling the cool evening breeze while enjoying the silence as her children slept off their exhaustion from the long summer day.

You could say that I had invested something of myself in the house, and I would have jumped at any opportunity to explore it. Last summer, I got that opportunity, though I have to be honest and say that it had lost some of its appeal. Over the past few years I have seen a lot more activity at the house, and as it turns out, it was being completely restored. You can learn more about the house here: http://www.bigwhitehouse.org

Leila and I made a trip through the house on the 4th of July. I wish I could say it was everything I had dreamed of, but of course it wasn’t. The memory of the way things might have been was too far removed, but it is still a beautiful home.

I thought of the big white house this week when I came across this: http://www.100abandonedhouses.com

How amazing and sad and beautiful. I flipped through the pictures wondering how this could have happened. When did it all go wrong for these beautifully designed homes. What happened to the people that lived here? I guess you could say, I have a thing for Abandoned houses. I want to know what went wrong and I want to imagine them at their best, happiest times. I really want to fix them.

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On our walk back to the car after leaving the birds behind Leila yelled out, “Hey! Look, its a big butt tree!” She pegged that one.

>I feel like it has been a long time since I have really put anything on this blog. Winter has been a dull season of cold and I haven’t felt too inspired lately. With the great thaw starting to set in I am happy to post about a fun adventure that we went on today. I love free fun, and the raptor center was definitely worth the trip, even after our long walk and cold noses. And the beautiful sunshine made 45 degrees feel pretty nice.

One of the owls!

The cutest of all of the owls.

Tired baby

Never tired baby

Leila really enjoyed the birds. Tonight when I laid down in bed with her and asked her about the best and worst part of her day, she told me that the best part was seeing almost all of her family, and the worst part was feeling sad for the birds with hurt feet and wings. She is such a sweet little thing.

My high for today? Getting to enjoy the outdoors in reasonable temps. The low – Had to be when at dinner with Grandma Sandi and Papa Ed Leila said that she still didn’t know how babies get in their mommy’s tummies. I told her to ask me again later and I would explain, lets see how long it takes for her to ask.

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This is how I feel lately too. Maybe it is cabin fever. Maybe it is just me, but lately it seems that every evening is filled with never ending choirs of whining.

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>It seems like everyday I see something on TV or on the internet that makes me question myself. Am I feeding my family the right things? Are we all getting the amount of activity that we should? Do we watch too much TV? Am I giving my kids ADD by letting play video games? And then things like this make me realize that trusting my instincts will always be worth more than the advertisements I have been fed. And I didn’t even have to douche with Lysol with come to this realization.

>I remember quite vividly from when I was a child, thinking about what I would do when I was grown up. I had a couple of requirements that stick out in my memory. No pantyhose required and no early mornings.

Someone once suggested to childhood me that maybe I would enjoy being a teacher. At the time I must have had a teacher who liked to wear skirts because I knew right away that it was a no go. Pantyhose.

I currently own no pantyhose, but I do get up earlier than I would ever choose. Lately I feel like every morning I wake up tired and rushed. We hustle out the door as soon as we can get all the teeth and hairs in the house brushed and we are off to the races. A rushed drop off at daycare, a day spent watching the hours creep by and 4:30 hits and we are running again.

I miss the sun, I miss friends that I can’t work up the energy to seek out at the end of the day. My kids go to bed, and I fall in right behind them, dreading the alarm clock in the morning.

Sounds like life to me. But at least there are no pantyhose.

>I added a quote to the sidebar of my blog a while back. Sometimes I read a quote that just strikes me, and this one did.

“We are not put on this earth for ourselves, but are placed here for each other. If you are always there for others, then in time of need, someone will be there for you.”

— Jeff Warner

It’s the kind of quote that you could base a whole life on. And just think of what a wonderful world we could live in if everyone did?

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