Breathing Life into the Photo Blog

Alright.  The photo blog is back.  Thankfully, it's not another 365 day one.  I anticipate this one only being about 10 weeks.  For those that are new and don't want to sift through the previous 360 posts, the quick history behind my Photo Blog goes back about 3.5 years when my husband left for a deployment to Afghanistan.  I had just gotten my hands on a fancy camera and I like countdowns.  I needed a way to get through each day, and there's no better way to learn something than to use it, so the photo blog was born.  As it grew over the year, it became an outlet for my days and a connection to my husband.  Something that I started doing more for him and less for me.  It was good.

Here we find ourselves separated again, not nearly as long, and not nearly as dangerous, but apart long enough that I feel the need to countdown again.

 

I was nervous about today.  Today was Wednesday, my busiest day of the week.  Two yoga classes, one that involved the kids, and one that isn't supposed to (and was after their bedtime).  After a late night dropping Dad at the airport yesterday, I was worried the crazy kids would be too crazy to allow me to teach in peace, they would be too tired to not fight about every single thing, that they would exhaust me and stretch me to my limit on the 1st day we were Dad-less.  But they didn't!  After class at Bug's school we got home in time to for me to quick cook dinner before rushing off to class #2 of the day.  We got home from school and the kids immediately ran to the backyard and started playing.  Talk about a happy Mom.  Happy for so many reasons, that our two kiddos want to be outside, and that they have the confidence to just go!  There isn't an ounce of timid in either of them.  

In between flipping chicken in the pan and setting the table, I ran outside to our glorious backyard to chase the kids for 47 seconds and snap a few pictures of my most favorite part of our house here in Alaska.

The house I grew up in had the most wonderful neighbor, Carolynn.  She had a Birch tree in her backyard and we loved to play on it.  It had 3 or 4 trunks that split off from the base and it was the perfect cage, or house, or pirate ship - whatever we needed it to be.  I don't remember ever seeing any more Birch trees in that neighborhood, not like Alaska.  I'm not sure what we have more of up here, Aspen or Birch :)  But Birch trees are one of my favorite tree (the other is the Duck Foot Maple, or the Striped Maple - Just a little fun fact about Libby for ya!).