Thursday, January 27, 2011

Four | Child's eyes




"There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million."
~W. Streightiff


And these eyes are no exception! Oh the compliments I get on our kids eye lashes. I love them, long, beautiful, full lashes. Our son Elliott sees the world in ways kids should. Every day is an adventure and I love exploring our world through his eyes.






















It's hard work having your picture taken!

Friday, January 21, 2011

Three | Wind

“I can't change the direction of the wind,

but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

~ J.Dean



I know it's Minnesota, it's suppose to be cold in winter. And windy. But sometimes the things I hate the most remind me that within each day there is a masterpiece that I do not control. However I can choose to make the best of it.



I hate the cold in winter, but sometimes the wind can make the most beautiful patterns in the snow. Much like the wind in our journey to create our family. I can hate the struggle, the fertility problems, try to understand, but in the end we made the best of our struggle and were shown the beauty that came from it though our children. As much as I'd like to hide the winds we fought, I want to capture the memories of them. It is our journey and we choose to make the best of it.



Thursday, January 13, 2011

TWO | A Birthday Not Forgotten


I knew what I was going to be taking pictures of for this week. This is going to be a hard post to write about. I know I said that I wanted to capture the moments that tend to get forgotten, but I knew there would be some at this birthday that I didn't want to miss.

We celebrated a birthday very special baby girl on Sunday. Last year we were excitingly expecting another baby. The first few months were going good, a shock for my very eventful pregnancies. At Nine weeks we spread the good news that we would be welcoming a baby in the late spring. Then at twelve weeks we went in for a routine ultrasound to check on baby and to check for abnormalities (this test is commonly called the nuchal translucency test). Our world crashed. We found out that our baby girl had a condition called Edwards syndrome (also know as trisomy 18). With this, 95% of all babies will die in utero, and most of the rest will die with in the first two weeks of life and have several medical problems. Not good news at all. We had a lot of difficult decisions to make about Abby's health and life. We decided to let God take over and carry Abby for as much time as we were given. At 17.5 weeks Abby went to heaven.

It's been a year of ups and downs. It was hard to watch the emotions of our 3 children as they tried to deal with death. Not just any death, but the death of their sister who they only knew by my growing belly and hearing her heartbeat with my home doppler. Also we were surprised by a new baby, a month after Abby's birth, I discovered I was pregnant again. Oliver is such a miracle, but I think I held my breath until he was safely in my arms.

One thing we decided on as a family is to never forget Abby. She is very much a part of our family. For those who have never experienced a loss of a child have a hard time understanding this. Even I didn't know the amount of emotions that Abby would bring us. She was not our first baby in heaven, but our fifteenth. All the other pregnancies were lost very early on in our pregnancy, I never got to see them on an ultrasound or feel them kick me from inside like I did with Abby. I didn't get to kiss their tiny body and have to say hello and good bye all in the same day like we did for Abby. We will never forget her and our lives will never be the same.

Sunday January 9, 2011 was Abigail Noelle's first birthday in heaven. We decided to make a cake for her and release balloons with our special notes on them. And though all this, I found some tender moments I don't want to forget.

The picture this week for my project 52 is:




The expression on my daughter Calla's face says so much about the day. It wasn't the happiest birthday party, but one we didn't want to miss. She told me she missed her sister, so much that she couldn't let her balloon go, she wanted to keep it to remember her.

Here are some other pictures from the day.

Our son Elliott spending a moment with Abby's box


A picture left for an Angel


Balloons with notes ready to soar




Daddy where are they?






**PLEASE check out the other Project 52 links on the side bar! There are lots of amazing storys being told though pictures! If you have a P52 you would like placed on my blog roll, please leave a comment with your link, I'd be happy to have you there. **

Friday, January 7, 2011

Week One | My three month old

Since I just started this challenge, I didn't get time to really thing much about the pictures I was going to take for this week. Luckily I did take some pictures this week of my newest little bundle of joy. So for week one:

Capturing my Three month old

"Only love can be divided endlessly, and still not diminish." ~A.M. Lindbergh

Oliver is our fourth child we welcomed into our family. It's amazing how much you can continue to love each new child just as much as the rest. I'm not sure where my 4lb 130z preemie went under those cheeks! All of our children were preemies and I'm amazed how fast they grow and change. I love to photograph our children. They are the one's who change the quickest and I forget about all the stages of their life when I try to think back over the last 7 years.

This week Oliver turned 16 weeks old. And I don't know where those sixteen weeks have gone. But I wanted to stop time for a minute and capture that inquisitive stare that babies have, taking in their world. He's learning to smile and coo and I don't want to forget those memories. Of course this day he didn't want to do either of those for me!

And the wining picture for this week-




Of course there were several runner ups. It was hard to pick my favorite for this week.




Thanks for stopping by and please I'd love to hear your feedback!

A new challenge in time

I've started to write this blog as I'm taking part of a new challenge for myself. I've always loved photography. I've just had very little time to make it a steady hobby for myself. I'm hoping this will help expand my love for photography and help me learn more about the art of it. It is called project 52, and it is a challenge to take a picture a week for an entire year. Not just any random picture, but a picture that has meaning to them. The object is to have a theme to the pictures and follow that through 52 weeks. I have to thank the wonderful Styleberry Blog for the inspiration for this picture challenge. I first stumbled upon her blog searching for more information on how to make homemade baby food and I've loved it ever since.

This will be a learn in progress journey too. I by no means claim to be a photographer. I don't own one of those amazing cameras that allow others to take great pictures. Perhaps someday I will. I did just upgrade my camera a few months ago, it's a step up from my point and shoot. I also don't use an expensive editing program. In fact I use a free one (that's the frugal in me, check out my other blog on more about that!). I do believe that every one can capture the moments of your life through pictures whether they look like they were professionally done or not.

So what is my theme? So many times I've said how 'time has flown by' or 'I wish I could remember when' or 'I can't believe how fast that went'. Especially now that we have four beautiful children. I feel that part of their childhood and my motherhood is slipping though my fingers. I want to help preserve those special moments that happen every day, not just during big events like holidays and birthdays. So my theme this year is 'Capturing Time'. I'm going to post my picture for the week on Fridays. I'm hoping being able to blog about these will help keep me going on this challenge.