Summer Moments: Toddlers and Cats

I was heading out of the car from a dinner date with my husband just now and a family with toddler twins was on the sidewalk in front of our house, intrigued by our cats.

On Valuing Our Views of Home

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is 

at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” 

– G.K. Chesterton

Summers find me traveling. Last summer, I flew to Alabama and drove with our younger son to Upstate New York.  The summer before my husband and our sons spent time in Lancaster County,  Pennsylvania. This summer, my journeys have included driving to Indiana with my husband and will soon include a visit to Vermont for a family reunion. Every place I visit, I go on long walks. In fact, my husband and I are training to walk a half marathon in San Antonio in December. 

It's easy to see the notice the beauty of  unfamiliar places. The trick, however, is to see familiar places in a new way. Today I took a long (5.5 mile) midday walk with our dog.  I tried very hard to notice the views in front of me.  Here is the photo I shot in a county park in our town, a park where I have spent dozens, if not hundreds, of hours since Greg and I moved here nearly two decades ago. Pretty, isn't it?! 

Thunderstorms and Thwarted Plans

 So yeah. This was the view (don't worry, I was at a red light) on the drive home from the gym tonight. This was a day when everything I planned went out the window.

This Moment: Farmstand Tomatoes, New Paltz, New York

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Walking Over the Hudson River

Once upon a time, the Poughkeepsie railroad bridge was the first bridge of any kind to span New York State's Hudson River from the Atlantic Ocean to Albany. Opened in 1889, its promoters claimed it was the longest bridge in the world.

Now the  Hudson, which flows from upstate New York to New York City, is spanned by many bridges. and the old Poughkeepsie railroad bridge is the world's longest pedestrian bridge.

On an overcast afternoon earlier this month, my husband and I walked that bridge, dubbed the Walkway Over the Hudson. This project is an excellent example of how preserving historic sites can save money and revitalize an area. It would have cost $50 million to tear the bridge down; transforming the bridge into a state park cost $38.8 million.

Princeton's Mountain Lake Preserve: Swallowtails and Stalking a Blue Heron

After dropping our son's bass bow off with a bow maker in Titusville, NJ today, our dog and I hiked the Mountain Lakes Nature Preserve in Princeton. (More later on the bow maker: the man is deserving of a whole post). Even though I drove our sons to private elementary school in Princeton for five years, I never knew about this 74-acre park close to the downtown. I found out about it from a website called bringfido.com, which offers tips on where to hike with your dog. I had several unexpected encounters on the walk.

Missing Our Son, Thankful for Facebook!

Our 13-year-old is spending the week at his grandparents, where five other cousins are visiting. I didn't expect to miss him.  I miss him terribly.

On My Midday Walk: Confused by this Crustacean

Today, taking a break from my online graduate classes, I took our dog for a long walk in a county park by the Raritan River.  On my hike back, I encountered three brothers with their mom, leaning over something by a stream in the park. Upon closer inspection, I saw they had captured some sort of crustacean and had put it in a plastic bag with water. They told me it was a lobster; at first I thought it was a crab, but later I realized it looks nothing like a crab.

Theme Thursday: Bright

This is a goofy photo of a bright young lady named Anna, 13, in front of the Monroe County (Ala.) Courthouse yesterday morning.  My friend Meredith and I, along with her daughter Annaleigh, traveled to Monroeville, Alabama to attend a teachers' workshop on "To Kill a Mockingbird." Monroeville was the model for Harper Lee's Maycomb in that classic novel.

Meredith and I are both writers and teachers. Anna is a ravenous reader: she has read "To Kill a Mockingbird" at least four times, but she reads whatever she can get her hands on.


Anna is bright, very bright. On the long car rides we took all over Alabama, she sat in the back of the van, reading, reading, reading. She also read in our hotel rooms, in restaurants, anywhere she could.

If you ask Anna what kinds of books she likes to read, she will tell you "every kind."

Linking up with Cari on this one!

This Moment: Congress Park Carousel, Saratoga Springs

Their little girl, who sits between them, tried to ride on the carousel. But she had a bloody nose. So the family of three sat, quite contentedly, watching.

If you have a moment to share, visit www.soulemama.com

At Summer's End: Gratitude and Snapshots

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?"                                        

Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

It's been a long, leisurely summer and now it's over. And that is okay with me. Summer has given me time to reflect on how blessed I am to be guiding our two sons into adulthood with my husband.  Even when lunch is in a parked minivan in the parking lot of a suburban shopping center.

This Moment: Falmouth Family Portrait

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' at www.soulemama.com

Something About Summer Ice Cream

Our 12-year-old invited a classmate, also 12, to go to our swim club this afternoon. They played Bananagrams while it thundered and we waited for the skies to clear. They didn't. As we were driving home, our son asked if we could go to Magnifico's a family-run seasonal ice cream store that sits snug beside Route 18, a busy state highway.

Westmoreland Sanctuary: Magnificence on a Summer Afternoon

While our older son did some cycling, our younger son and I went hiking today. Yes. Today. During an impossible heat wave.  I wanted to share some of the pictures we took on our hike.

We waited until 4 p.m. to head to Westmoreland Sanctuary, a 640-acre nature preserve that straddles Bedford and Mount Kisco,  New York. The preserve is a few miles from my parents' home and we are visiting with them for a few days.

This Moment: Off the Diving Board

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{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' at www.soulemama.com

"Everything Becomes Sign:" Even at the Swim Club

The Presence of Christ is everywhere: even at our suburban swim club. Tuesday afternoon, my husband and I laid in lounge chairs in the shade beside the pool. Several yards away, a mother spoke quietly with her son, while her three other children waited beside us. I have come to know these children a bit during my daily visits to the pool this summer. "He has a time out," the six year old explained to us. "C. woke us up from our naps when he was told not to. The five year old piped in: "I couldn't get back to sleep."

Summer Afternoon at the Pool with my iPad

This afternoon my husband and I and our younger son went to our swim club. I brought my school-issued iPad and took my first photographs with it. We were told to spend time enjoying our iPads over the summer so we can know them well enough to use them in the classroom in September. The iPad's camera is a huge upgrade from my Samsung camera phone.

Here is our 12-year-old, who has spent about at least four hours today jumping off the diving board.

After this photo, I had to put my iPad away becauseI got a little too close to the pool and  a bit of pool water splashed on my iPad!

Making Joyful Noises: A Maestra and Her Mission

I want to share a slice of heaven my family has been privileged to encounter. We stumbled upon the wonderfulness that is Sherri Anderson during a tough time in my children's lives. This is a powerful example of how God can take a sad circumstance and turn it into something beautiful. "All things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose."

A few years ago, I was working fulltime in Trenton, New Jersey and we found ourselves unexpectedly without summer activities for our older son, then 11. As a family, we found ourselves there because some adults in our lives made petty, unfair, hurtful, lousy decisions about his summer, adults we thought had our son's best interests at heart. That is a story for another day.

This Moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual.  Photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

A Day at the Beach Celebrating Summer's End

 

Ever since our oldest was entering kindergarten, I've taken our sons to the beach for the day shortly before school starts. Today, for the eleventh year, I continued the tradition. It was a spectacular day, and hard to imagine Hurricane Irene had pounded this beach and boardwalk just days before. The air was crystalline. 

Joining us in Asbury Park were my girlfriend Judy, her 12-year-old son, and a friend of my 11-year-old. We spent hours playing in the waves. I had to nudge the boys out of the water at lunchtime.