Wanting to ensure their spots on Santa’s nice list, my niece and nephew agreed to humor me and pose for some festive photos.
Gracie’s cat, Maddie, joined her for a few shots.
Kaden gave me a few goofy grins.
Then they shared a few holiday hugs and a mistletoe kiss.
If these two can stop pestering each other for even just the time it took me to press the shutter button in these photos, then I believe there’s hope for everyone else on planet Earth to put aside their differences for a little while and come together in the celebration of the holiday season. We all could use a dose of peace on Earth and good will toward men.
If you’re reading this, I wish you a very happy holiday season and the good fortune to share it with the people you love.
There’s always something magical about the first snow each year. It’s usually a light dusting that appears one morning unexpectedly, and casts a spell on me. That’s exactly what happened this year, and I just had to bundle up and take a tour of the farm transformed into a bright, white wonder.
The weekend before Justin’s birthday, we took a quick trip to Chicago to celebrate the occasion. We started our day in the windy city with a long walk in the sunshine along the waterfront.
Our destination was the Field Museum, the only major museum in Chicago I had never visited, so I was especially excited to check it out.
The Field Museum is home to Sue the T Rex, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever discovered. She’s mighty impressive, isn’t she?
Before walking back to our hotel, we stopped for a few minutes to admire the skyline as it glowed in the setting sun.
We found it very appropriate that the moon hung in the sky directly above the Adler Planetarium. And the cityscape view from the waterfront just never got old.
I have to agree with Frank Sinatra, Chicago is my kind of town.
With the trees putting on a spectacular color show, autumn is a great time to get outside in the crisp, cool air for family portraits. My sister Sarah’s clan hadn’t had a family portrait since the youngest member of the family was an infant. Kaden is now a strapping three-year-old, and it was definitely time to update the family photo. So we took a walk through the woods to capture the beauty of the season and the personalities of the family.
Silly Gracie hammed it up and then got the giggles. Serious Kaden found it very distracting.
As you’ve seen here and probably know from your own experiences, sometimes kids just don’t feel like cooperating with a photographer. Instead of getting frustrated and commanding a child to smile, I encourage parents to just go along with whatever attitude their kid shows up with that day. The expressions that result, however imperfect they may be, will be a more accurate reflection of your family. Not to mention that they reveal a more interesting story about your family dynamic. I promise you, as the years go by and your kids grow, the memories of those imperfect moments will be the ones you treasure most.
After months of effort and waiting, the time to harvest our garden has finally arrived! We’re pretty proud of what we accomplished with our square foot gardening, and I just had to have a photo of the whole gang – a class photo, if you will. Everything you see here is completely organic, grown without any fertilizers or pesticides. And it’s all really tasty! Even the stuff I don’t particularly like!
I’m not a huge fan of peppers, but now we’ve got a whole bunch of them for Justin to sneak into my food. We’ve got green wonder peppers and red cayenne peppers and both red and green serranos too.
Our white potatoes grew in some really funky shapes and the beets can’t be beat!
We grew several kinds of tomatoes, and I have to say, they are hands down the very best tomatoes I’ve ever eaten. Slice up these chocolate cherry tomatoes, throw on a little salt and balsamic vinegar, and you’ve got Heaven on a plate.
I can eat the grape tomatoes straight off the vine, or by the bagful. And the valencia orange tomatoes are great on a BLT.
The yard-long beans really lived up to their name!
The cosmic purple carrots are really a sight to see! And the spaghetti squashes are bountiful and delicious.
Last but not least, the mini pumpkins. We’ve already used some to make pumpkin soup and pumpkin muffins!
Right about now, you’re probably wondering where those corn-babies I’ve gushed so much about are…
Well, I have some bad news.
Over the summer, our corn was attacked in the night not once, not twice, but three times by neighborhood raccoons! Each time, we stepped up our security efforts, starting with a motion sensor light all the way up to an electric fence. Despite our best attempts to protect it, the wily raccoons ate our corn like they grew it themselves and left us nothing but bare cobs and broken hearts.
But hope is not lost! We’re already discussing ideas to keep next year’s corn from meeting a similar fate. Until then, we’ll have a winter of delicious meals to comfort us.
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