The Sleeping Willow

I recently read an article about finding traits you like and dislike about yourself, recognizing them, taking pride in the pro’s and finding a change in the con’s.  It doesn’t come naturally for everyone to just be able to define who they are…in fact, it is difficult for many to identify pieces of themselves, I am one of them.  So in my thought process I challenged myself to quickly say the first word that comes to mind when I think of myself… “mom”.  That is the single word that rang through my head. “Mom”.  It is all who I am, or ever want to be.  It is who God had known I would become before I did, even after going through such hardships. It is the best of who I am.  It is the most natural, unforced part of my whole being.  For me, it is easy.  There is so much of me that is flawed, so much that I am uncomfortable with, and can quickly find fault in… but I just hope that I make up for all of that in my “Momness” (<– yes, I made that word up).  I mean, don’t get me wrong… we have hard days… when one has a bad day, it seems all do.  So much of parenting seems to be in the “grey” area, even when you read every Parenting 101 book you can find. Where you just hold your breath and pray you make the right decision. You learn from it, you move on. I love my sweet girls, and am so beyond grateful to have my incredible “bonus” son in my life.  Each one of our children make up a piece of our puzzle, and I can’t imagine life any other way. 

Autumn was amongst us today… we all are a little foggy with the sniffles, and desperately needed out of the house. We took a walk around the farm in the crisp air and jumped in the crunchy leaves.  I think I needed out as much as the kiddos did.  We even discovered one of the chickens nests that we have been looking for over the last week or two. But nothing is better than coming back inside to a toasty warm fire, a frothy latte, and some fresh baked bread.  So glad my girls love this beautiful season as much as I do…

I just couldn’t imagine a prettier place than here on this Oregon mountain for Autumn.  I love all the yellows, oranges, and shades of green that are coming back from the Summers heat, it truly makes it easy to remember all the beauty God provides when its consistently surrounding you. Most of all, I love that my children will have so many wonderful memories of chasing chickens, running in the fields wet grass, and rolling through the crunchy, colorful leaves. We are so blessed to be able to live so close to my wonderful sister in law, and her family.  All of the animals here give us so much joy and entertainment. One of the mama pigs had a few babies yesterday, and we got to walk down and see them squealing and nursing.  Two more mama’s will be having their babies any day now, and I can’t wait to see how many they each have.

{It was getting pretty dark by the end of the day (thanks a lot daylight savings time) so I apologize for the grainy images} 😉

Well, I was nervous about getting any images of all three of them together… but with some pixie dust, whispering stories of fairies, and their imagination, I believe it was a success.  We had so much fun creating this fairy tale series, and I can not wait to give my each of my children their very own story book of all of these images combined.  This whole week has been a blur of chaos and franticness… but in the moments I walked outside with them… it was quiet… still… and they reminded me how wonderful it is to be a child again…

And as Sweet Pea said, “Mama… if you are quiet… and you believe… you will see them too.”

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laughter broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”
~J.M. Barrie