Tag: photographs

“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?

“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.

“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.

“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.

A perfect fall night at Greenlake. It’s kinda like a fairy tale except our castle is made out of sand and the flag is made of feathers.

A heart made by removing the oxidation with lemon juice on the original copper galley table of an 80-year-old boat. Ahh, our hearts are full.

“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

I love the light this time of year!

From the top left:

Camping under the light of full moon
the roundabout
a doggie playdate as wild as the roundabout
Cooper reminding us he won’t be a baby for much longer
and fun putting up Halloween decorations.

The sign of the week comes from a third grade classroom open house. It’s taken me 50 years to learn this lesson the hard way. I guess I should have paid more attention in class when I was in third grade!

And coming full circle from the top of the post – the heart of the week is a patch of sunlight through the trees on the sidewalk.

“How does light enter a house? If the windows are open. How does light enter a human? If the door of love is open.” – Paulo Coehlo

Miss O loves going to the doctor – a preference she is trying to pass on to her brother.

I’m amused by the different views on hiking in my family. What for Mr. D is “spending time on the mountain” is still mostly a lie-about for Cooper.

Fairy houses, funny faces, going for a swing, and “training” Cooper.

A beautiful heart of the week provided by the delightfully sunny, Julia Preston, of the Voices in my Head blog and author of the incredibly fun, insightful and must-buy book Voices: Who’s In Charge of the Committee in My Head
So the sign of the week is Shakespeare just to try to keep up.

“Keep your feet on the ground and your thoughts at lofty heights.” – Peace Pilgrim

From the top left – turns out the Miss O is very good at winning games at the Washington State Fair. She also likes the rides, ans it turns out that I don’t. It’s as if I needed a reminder that I’m an endurance person, not a speed person. See my expression on the bumper cars. And on the swingy-swingy thing. Ugh! Miss O is the one with her arms out wide. I’m the one with my eyes closed.

Hence the quote selection for this post – yep, keep the feet on the ground. And yes, I’m totally fine with you laughing with/at me. 🙂

I’d entitle this grouping “Mr. Cooper goes to Washington” but since we’re already here, I guess that’s not exactly accurate. Instead, its the Adventures of Mr Cooper: he goes to school, learns to drive, hangs out at the dog park, goes for a neighborhood lie-about, and then decides he decides riding in the car best of all.

The heart and the sign of the week which sums it all up beautifully.