I can do better by you, dog. Really, I can.

And then she lets me rub her belly, and all is right with the world.

I love photographing little folks' milestones ... like First Year Photos! There's always a little frosting involved. As there should be ... for the first and each birthday thereafter.

One aspect of photography I've been the most grateful for, is when my friends ask me to capture pivotal events in their family life. The decision to add a new member to the family, and then to see the fruition of that -- well, it's pretty special.

A big thank you to Molly & David for letting me capture newborn images of Miss S.

The 4th of July is a magical holiday, and for me, it gives Christmas a good running. It's not that I'm overly patriotic, I just like sparklers.

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

 

from New and Selected Poems, 1992

 

This was pretty awesome last night. Probably the nicest night we'll have all summer in Kansas City. Good beer, funny film shorts, and a great date to hang with on a blanket.

One of the aspects of my life I'm most grateful for is that I love to cook. And, I only started cooking about four years ago. Prior to that, I knew how to make two things well ... banana bread and manicotti (random, I know).

Nowadays, I'm always on the hunt for new recipes and am willing to simply be "inspired" by a recipe ... which is code for "I don't actually have any of the ingredients for this recipe, but it's inspiring me to make something with, say, pasta in it." ... All this used to be much to Owen's chagrin, a man who will go out in a blizzard to get that missing Italian parsley if that's what the recipe called for. Now, he just says, "That smells good," and stays away from the kitchen until he hears all the pot-banging stopped. 

What has made cooking so appealing to me is that while there are techniques, such as multi-tasking and time management, which must be learned to be a good household chef, there are innumerable opportunities to be creative. And perhaps most importantly, there are so many things in our adults lives that we don't want to muss up, we're cautious, we don't go out on the limb because there's something to lose (at least, that's how I am).

With cooking, you seriously can go gang busters and the worst thing that can happen is that your meal is inedible and you have to order take-out pizza. I love that. Naturally, I do have a fire extinguisher in the pantry, you know, just in case.

I LOVE, seriously love, butternut squash. Here's a great recipe for Butternut Squash Lasagna I came across today. This is not for calorie counters.

PHOTO: Five lovely shells that were left on my desk this morning by a coworker. Just because.

I've been very tempted to try a 365 project like many other photobloggies, but I've always known I didn't have the dedication to capture an image every day for a year. This morning, I came across someone who started her 365 project with a Month of Gratitude--capturing just one month's worth of photos of things she was grateful for.

I barely realized that today is the start of a brand new month, and maybe I have it in me to capture a month's worth of images.

Finding things in my life that I'm grateful for ... that's something I really need right now. So, let's begin, shall we?

I met Leann and her son, D, through mutual friends. I wasted little time in contacting her to see if I could photograph her son for the project. She was game, and I took the opportunity to also create some family portraits for them.

This is one dynamic duo! They official became a family within the past year, and as many people know, adoption is close to my heart. I know what it's like to live in foster care and I also know how hard it is to wait to have a mother of one's own -- and how great it is when you do get that family.

Owen and I met Leann for drinks earlier this week to get her scoop on what it's like to suddenly become a parent to child who's had this whole mini life before you. We learned a lot about the expectations, the process, and were pleasantly surprised that there's a lot of support out there for adoptive parents. While we are working on a biological child, we also intend to adopt -- this was a discussion we started early on in our relationship. Yeah, Owen is pretty awesome.

A big thank you to Leann for helping us get our toes wet!

“My mother sat me down and said, 'You are beautiful to me but must know that you are beautiful for yourself. You should also be aware that true beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which means that how beautiful you are to other people is always going to be subjective to who is looking at you at that time, and since you will always be looking at yourself first, you should find your own beauty and feel good about who you are.' She went on to tell me that I needed to take the time to identify those things that I found to be beautiful about myself but also celebrate what I thought was weird or unusual because those were the special things made me different from everybody else."

I mean, seriously, I have funny ears, overly fuzzy hair, and bad breath. But each day when I look down at my reflection in the water bowl, I remember to tell myself that I'm rather beautiful.

I do believe that if her dad, Howie, has anything to say about it, he'd insist her favorite props were her Jayhawk socks! Congratulations to her mum and da!