Jack and Jill and Their Mother

There's a story behind this picture, as well as several behinds in this picture. Occasionally I get one of these really bang up ideas that turns out really great in my head but falls short of expectations somewhere between the thought process and the execution of the genius idea. This is one of those. Imagine a picture of the back yard hill with all of it's teeny tiny spring flowers (weeds) blooming and my children and I running hand in hand toward our home in the background. Symbolic of where each of our hearts should yearn to be, this would be a picture for the mantle. So, I position Jake way up the hill so he can get the whole thing in the frame. I take a hand of each child and say, "ready set go!", and we run like mad. Well right before that nostalgia and symbolism garbage kicks in, Lucy loses a shoe and goes down like a rock. I still had a firm grip on her hand so she set my balance off too and all my focus went from "run without falling, try to look graceful, run without falling,try to look graceful, run..." to "don't squash your kid! Don't squash your kid!" Well, those who know me best know that I'm not known for my physical prowess, so much as for the length of my limbs. I start to stagger with all the grace and elegance of a drunken elephant and each step is an intense concentration on not bringing one of my giant size nines crashing into Lucy's head. I'm still dragging her through the grass at this point, and she's yelping, "ooh! oh! no!" Just as my brain is frantically screaming, "let go of the little girl!", Tate decides that running next to me isn't dangerous enough and darts in front of me. At this point, Jake decides to finally push the button, thus capturing forever the grace of Alison and her posterity. These other pictures are just some of the fun from the week.

We are lucky enough to live within very short walking distance of a little road with a small grocery store, post office, dry cleaner, and bank. This is a very tiny cemetery (maybe nine or ten graves) just plopped in the middle of a neighborhood.

That's our garage behind Tate, our house is on the right, and our neighbors garage on the left.

I don't imagine Tate or Lucy will do well on their driver's exam in 11 years.

Jake took this and it would be a perfect picture if it weren't for the giant bruise on her cheek. She ran into the corner of the kids' art desk while fetching a stray crayon.