pictures and words

 

I’m kind of all warm and fuzzy inside, because I just finished adding pictures to our 2011 photo book.   It’s pretty amazing, because I’ve never actually finished a photo book. I had all these grand schemes for our wedding album, Hudson’s first year, and so on, but those projects got too in depth and overwhelmed me.  I no longer wanted anything to do with them.

But this time,  I powered through and decided that no words would be allowed, after all don’t pictures already contain thousands?  So, no words and no limited amount of pages.  We’re 80 pages in, folks.  Eighty pages full of tiny moments and big ones too, from this year known as 2011.

The cover alone hold 700 small photos taken on my phone turned in a massive collage. 

And while, I feel rather victorious, I also just relived a year in the life of us. I filled many pages with photos of my newborn baby girl, superfluous amounts to be exact, and nearly as many with my goofy little boy.  I watched the seasons change from winter to spring, and from spring, the sky turned radiantly blue and the water from the lake sparkled in the warm summer air.  The warmth faded into a mosaic of glorious autumn hues and slowly, (thankfully) those colors floated down from the trees leaving bare, spiny trees and a brown earth.  Even today, the rain is erasing any remnants of previous fallen snow, and rain means the temperatures are higher than freezing, glory.  

I clicked and clicked as tiny newborn faces turned into a sitting, crawling, and standing, full of life, wild eyed wonder.  I saw a brother very unsure of this new little creature in his home grow into her favorite playmate and he’s just waiting for the day she will chase him down the hallway as far as she can. I watched a two year old turn three, his imagination soar and his spirit as gentle (and yet, trying) as ever.  I noticed the depth of the reservoirs of a father’s love for his baby girl, with the shiny blue eyes melting him always.  And the way my heart swells when my little boy sinks into my arms. 

As I revisited every walk to the beach, every trip to get ice cream, all the adventures and celebrations, I studied the face of my love, the one who stole my heart.  The guy who I never planned on meeting on that California mountain and now everyday he loves and works so hard for me, for us.  Sometimes, it still catches me off guard, this life, this family we have made, the dreams we are building.  Sometimes, so much so, that I run out of words.

 

Linking up with Heather and all those Just Write folks.