Photo of the week – Page 12

Photos of the Week: December 16

December 16, 2023December 15, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged photographs, whidbey island37 Comments

“If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.” – Toni Morrison

Cooper’s first vacation. I think he enjoyed it – and the rest of us did too even in windy and stormy conditions!

Cooper – wondering what to pack. And the cat showing that she might have even missed him just a little bit.

How is it that Mr. D can look pensive about chocolate chip cookies but enthused about worms? I’d question his taste…but maybe it’s just some sort of wormhole effect. (To the extent I know about wormholes, it’s just enough to know that there’s no relation to real science or astronomy in that statement.) 😉

The latest grocery store soda display and the sign of the week. Seems like with inflation, the charge should be higher.

Photos of the Week: December 9

December 9, 2023December 8, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged happiness, life, love, photographs, relationships37 Comments

“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it. – Soren Kierkegaard

Ice cream and worms

Puddles and singing holiday songs in jammies with candles

Bouncy houses and pile-ups

Eye glasses and looking through the key hole

Hearts and signs. Eat the cookie before you read the sign.

Photos of the week: December 3rd

December 2, 2023December 1, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged photographs39 Comments

“All of life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The pets seem confused this week. The cat is sleeping in the window box planters. Cooper is an English golden retriever in an American house carrying a Canadian flag. And Cooper also thinks the Christmas tree is a self-service chew toy stand.

Making Gingerbread Houses with my friend, Jill. Weird how no licorice actually made it ON to my house. Or, given my sweet tooth, it’s probably no surprise to anyone.

Not sure whether to caption this science week or eye-wear week but either way we seemed to find pouring and pounding a lot of fun.

We made it to the finish line of a 5k that Miss O had been practicing for. Mr. D did 4k of it running in rubber rain boots without any training which was almost as impressive as Miss O pushing him for the other 1k. Running isn’t my sport but I was glad that I secretly trained enough to be able to make it through. We all felt like super heroes in the end!

The heart and the sign of the week, because who doesn’t love quoting John Muir?

Photos of the Week: November 25

November 25, 2023November 24, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged photographs40 Comments

“Bless our house as we come and go. Bless our home as the children grow. Bless our families as they gather in. Bless our home with love and friends.” – unknown

Sometimes it takes out-of-town friends to remind us of the places in our own city. In this case, Pike Place Market which has the famous fish throwers. See orange circle in third picture which, now that I look at it, likes kinda like flying squirrel. No, I promise it’s a fish. But now that I’m thinking of it, catching a flying squirrel would be pretty impressive too.

Mr. D and Miss O at the Market do their best fish, pig and cute impressions.

Cooper graduated from Puppy Kindergarten and now thinks he’s ready to read. And also to make slime with Olivia and friends.

Rock ball star? And Miss O and Mr. D doing “pad” at night which is when she helps him write downs his thoughts and feelings before bed.

Leaning in to the holidays. Everyone and the dog is so helpful!

The sign of the week (also from Pike Place Market) and a found-in-a-bike lane, but still very cute and soft, heart.

Photos of the Week: November 18

November 18, 2023November 17, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged photographs, seattle43 Comments

“Life is a canvas. It’s up to you, what colors you choose to paint this canvas of life into a beautiful Masterpiece.” – unknown

Ah, the joys of learning to roller skate.

We got a new boxing toy. Anyone want to guess how many times we played “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor this week? Exactly right — enough to make you want to go out a punch something!

My work colleagues were in town this week. Seattle did a great job showing itself off with spectacular weather.

Thanksgiving theme for the neighborhood skeleton and soda display! It’s been a while since we’ve had a good soda design.

Cooper and his puppy kindergarten posse.

Heart and sign of the week. I selected this sign for its straightforward approach to letting customers know what to expect from their local coffee shop.

Photos of the Week: November 11

November 11, 2023November 10, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged photographs46 Comments

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, ‘I’m with you kid. Let’s go.’” – Maya Angelou

In a slight variation on the Maya Angelou quote from above, apparently it’s not just life that’s saying “let’s go.” These days when we go on a walk, we have our dog, a snail, and even our cat following along.

I adore Mr. D’s preschool teacher, so I’m prefacing this comment that I’m amused and not bitter about the short notice for “dress your child as a favorite book character” day coming just a week after Halloween. But I do suspect that one day if she has children, she may look back on some of these ideas with an “A-ha, that was kinda of a mean thing to do to those parents!”

But no problem, because Miss O and I just informed Mr. D that he liked Harry Potter even if he didn’t know it yet. Because the only other available costume was silk robes.

We think that if Mr. D keeps getting squished by the bear he might end up looking like the man we found in the ice cream. Someone just wrote a post about Pareidolia, or seeing something significant in an inanimate object, right?

And the heart of the week and the sign of the week kinda go nicely together.

Photos of the Week: November 4

November 4, 2023November 3, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged cooper, halloween, photographs32 Comments

“The secret to having it all is knowing you already do.” – unknown

We spent a lot of time Halloweening last week. That’s a valid verb isn’t it? It should be for all the effort and action put in. As for the late night trick or treaters showing up at the back door (last picture) – I guess they are still trying to figure out how it all works.

Or they were coming up to see the recently finished back deck. And before you think I’ve gone too far with the named chore days with Edge-It-With-Scissors Saturday, let me assure you that wasn’t my idea. Miss O thought that up on her own.

Cooper tries boating and camping. Although the latter was just in the comfort of our family room.

The heart and the sign of the week.

Photos of the Week: October 28

October 28, 2023October 27, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged Biscuit, photography45 Comments

“You can’t stop the waves but you can learn how to surf.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

We found a really fun pumpkin farm for a fall festival. It had a ninja course, zip lines, hay mazes, live animals, and great slides. But the biggest hits were the corn pit (they probably called it something more marketing friendly than that) and the tractor bikes. Every outing with coats on since, I find a steady trail of corn that continues to drop behind.

It’s a good day when you walk down to the lake in a spiderman sweatshirt and find a spiderman figurine wedged into the cracks. A doubly good morning when a heron is there too.

Ear muffs, playdates and signs. Cooper is finding his voice just like his predecessor, the dear departed Biscuit did.

We were having fix-the-deck-Sunday last weekend when the repair went later than expected and I had to put on my headlamp to finish. Mr. D thought that was great fun so every night this week he’s waited for it to get dark, and then asked if we can go fix the deck.

By the third night he asked, I’d figured out that he wasn’t going to be satisfied with my explanation that we try to do these things during the day. I set him loose on a board that I’d already pried up and removed the nails from earlier that day so that we only had to spend five minutes working at night instead of a half hour!

The sign and the heart of the week. The heart is a puddle of water on a slip cover for a boat.

Photos of the Week: October 21

October 21, 2023October 20, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged discovery park, photographs36 Comments

“Children don’t say ‘I had a hard day, can we talk?’ They say, ‘Will you play with me?‘” – Lawrence Cohen

On Monday, four-year-old Mr. D didn’t want to go to pre-school. We got his eight-year-old sister to school and then I figured out that my long list of important work to do wasn’t in fact more important than helping him understand that we can do hard things. Especially when we anchor them to small treats. So we threw rocks into Greenlake instead. And then he happily went to school and I went to work but without that emotional hangover that comes with hard drop-offs.

Later, he told his sister, “You just have to throw rocks into the water and it makes big feelings come back to happy.”

One of the unexpected benefits of getting a real job is that I’ve had to employ my kids on the weekend to help me with my chores whereas I’d sneak them in during the school day before. The weekend before last we had “Oil change Saturday” and we went to Jiffy Lube, the gas station, and got a car wash. Funny enough – they loved it.

And this past week, we had “Seal the Grout Sunday” where they helped me seal the grout on the walls of my driveway that my parents helped me tile. When we went to my brother’s tugboat, Mr. D chipped in with the vacuuming. It’s quite possible I’m raising another generation that chooses projects as their love language.

Riding bikes to school.

We found the perfect climbing tree at Discovery Park and before I knew it, Miss O was almost out of sight. Thank goodness the young special forces dude with us had binoculars and a cute dog on the mission. Fortunately Miss O came back down before I had to call out the rest of the imaginary troops.

Mr Cooper adds to the number of people who move my glasses around here. Oh, and he moves mer-man as well. But he hasn’t found the magic to unlock the friendship with the cat yet, no matter what his puppy dog eyes say!

A leaf-frame provided the heart of the week. I can’t even remember what illustrious establishment had the sign of the week. Fortunately all the staff must have been untrained because I don’t recall any craziness.

Quote from Wednesday’s Child post I Had a Bad Day, Mom

Photos of the Week: October 14

October 14, 2023October 13, 2023Posted in Photo of the weekTagged photographs47 Comments

“Gather the crumbs of happiness and they will make you a loaf of contentment.” – unknown

I sit down to do the photos of the week and most times think that I’m going to have a picture or two at most to go with the heart and sign of the week. Then I look at my phone and am amazed at all our memories from the week. It’s good thing I wrote about time this week, because it seems to be passing at lightning speed.

This first set is training Cooper. When he ate up more of Miss O’s homework, I regretted the word hanging of his mouth wasn’t “sitting” because wouldn’t that have been priceless?

And then we move on to the other animals we found this week. Two baby snails and a worm so long (by the picture, it appears he’s 4 feet long… 🙂 ) . We had to stop, take a picture and lift him into the grass because he was working hard to haul that big body across the sidewalk.