A Snowy Birthday Eve

Our first big snow arrived today, and is still falling as we speak. Our co-op called a snow day, and the kids and I made a trek to the store for groceries first (must have a cake!), and then enjoyed a snowy hike, sledding, and a fire. The oldest three have become quite the fire builders, and tenders, and I really get to just enjoy their efforts in my cozy fire-side chair. That’s where I am now, of course.

Our second born has a birthday tomorrow, and she told each person in the store exactly that. My birthday comes shortly after hers, and I am wondering how to have a similar kind of enthusiasm this year. Ha!

I am certainly enthused about her life, and am happy to dote on her in the usual fashion tomorrow. This usually means her choice of food, cake, a gift, often a visit from grandparents, and this year, she’s requested a trip to the thrift/antique store with just me. Looks like mama has passed on a love for a good thrift score. Proud ;). Of course, I have a running list of things I love about her that are way more meaningful than her shared love of thrifting. Most of these I find to be sacred, special things, much more meaningfully shared with just her, so tomorrow I will do just that.

As much as we look forward to celebrating tomorrow, we also look forward to Sunday for another celebration. I know she would rejoice to tell you she’s scheduled to be baptized. As it goes with spiritual things of great importance, we really covet your prayers for health & general protection from the enemy leading up to this event.

Solo deo gloria!

Enjoy just a few of last year’s birthday photos on film I found to round out this post.

Until next time,

Bethany

Northern Michigan, Two Years Late

We’re coming up on another trip to Northern Michigan, which led me to remember those rolls of film from our last time up there that were developed long ago and never shared. Seems to be a trend around here to share things much after the event. Some day I will be more timely, but for now life is filled up with babies and homeschool and read alouds and buying plastic baby pools from Menards on a sweltering day in June, only to find the only way it fits in the car is if it’s stuffed in over their heads (ahem, today). Basically, all the real good life stuff that is here just for a spell.

Sometimes, also in June, also today, the baby takes a long enough afternoon nap, that I get to sit down and share said film rolls on the journal. So here we are. Petoskey, MI, 2021 on film. Guest appearances of my sister’s fam & my parents and uncle.

P.S. Baby did wake up before I was finished, but he decided to be cordial - no funny business - and sat on my lap while I finished. Thankful to be hauling along this newest dumpling child on our trip up north this year. I try not to coerce my children into always loving the same things and places I do, but I sure try my best to make them fall in love with this particular place the way I do.

Cameras/Film: Rollieflex 2.8e, Canon 1V - porta 400, HP5400

Door County Travels | 35mm & 120mm Film

This year I decided to bring only film cameras with on our family trip and leave the digital at home. Normally, I am tempted to scroll back through photos and even edit a few before returning home when I bring along a digital and I love that with film, there is no option to review photos, or edit them, or post them on the spot, etc.

Film forces me to slow down, be present, and hones my ‘eye’…it is currently extra pricey and you do not want to waste those precious exposures, versus with a digital camera you can take 1,000 photos and then pick one that you like best to edit and use. Then, the fun of sending off your rolls and waiting for the lab to develop and deliver them to you. It is all very exciting since you don’t really know until you open that digital scan email what you have actually gotten.

Since I am mostly resting on the couch these days, and I have a terrible habit of never sharing so many photos, I thought now was as good a time as ever to pop some of these up onto the journal for myself, and hopefully you, to enjoy. We visited a Lavender farm on Washington Island, went to the beach, and so much more.

These are a variety of film stocks: Kodak Portra 160 & 800 on my 35mm Canon 1V camera and Kodak Gold 200 and HP5 400 on my Rollieflex 2.8e Twin Reflex Camera.

Enjoy!

Turning Eight

Yesterday we celebrated our oldest, Oliver, turning eight years old. It is hard for us to believe how fast it has gone. Oliver was our miracle baby, after more than half a decade of infertility. That stage feels like forever ago, but every birthday of his brings those memories to the surface. The longing fulfilled is truly a tree of life! (Proverbs 13:12).

It brings me to tears when I think of celebrating his eighth year with us, all while carrying his newest sibling. Our longings have been multiplied! Praise our Lord! I personally thought it would be fun to have his sibling born on his birthday, but he had requested I wait at least one more day :).

We celebrated with his choice of meals: Dutch baby for breakfast, Chik fil a for lunch, and Noodles and Company for dinner. We also took a trip to his park of choice and watched part of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang together. The day rounded out with a homemade ice cream cake. He said he had a great day!

Oliver’s early birthday present this year was a camera. He had been expressing a lot of interest in photography and I had been occasionally letting him use my camera, but we felt it was time to encourage that creative skill and allow him something special he could tote around and use himself.

I have been loving plugging in his camera card with him and looking through his photos since we gave it to him. I thought it fitting to end his birthday post with a selection of photos he has taken on his camera this summer. Money well spent, I think. I cannot wait to see how he continues to grow!

All photos to follow taken by Oliver, age 8 on the *Fujifilm X100f. Photos are also edited by him or just straight out of camera using Fujifilm’s built in film simulations.

*a great little camera for personal use or starter camera for older children that they can grow with I must add. I have personally been very impressed with it. We picked ours up used on Ebay.

Waiting for Baby

Somehow it is August, and we’re at 37 weeks with baby number four and I suppose, despite the usual 42+ week gestations of Thomas baby’s, you can say we’re really in the waiting for that “any day now" arrival. Maybe this baby will be the one to show up much sooner than we anticipate, shocking us all with a blazing fast, possibly even a sneeze and they’re here sort of labor? Of course one can ask for these things in prayer, right? Alas, He can always say no ;).

- Juniper admiring the recently returned Moses basket. -

The things lent have been brought back home, the clothes sorted into a little dresser, the birth tub here and accounted for. Yes, I have waddled (Emphasis on this word!) all the birth/baby things to various spots in the new house where I think they will belong in preparation, along with some very willing little helpers. Perhaps my favorite part of all of this so far is the excitement and anticipation from the siblings! It is much more pronounced than ever before. All commenting how they cannot wait to meet baby and hold and rock and all of the things. They youngest has made some concerning comments about her plans with this baby, which I won’t include here, but they will keep me extra vigilant with eyes always on baby when she’s near. Long live three year olds and their innocent, but interesting ideas :)!

- Harriet with her “Baby” -

Perhaps the most interesting experience this time around, has been the fact that I have lived most of this pregnancy “offline”, so to speak. Whenever I mention pregnancy on a now rare post, I have at least a few distant friends/acquaintances who will mention they didn’t even know I was expecting again. I guess it is a stark contrast from my previous pregnancies, which were pretty well documented online with photos and updates. The price you have to pay nowadays to experience some freedom from the social media chains, I suppose, is some people feeling left in the dark. I promise I wasn’t hiding things from the public, nor could I if I even tried with my super-early-showing-fourth-pregnancy-belly. Ha! Pregnancy info was dished out to those who asked, when appropriate, of course :).

- “ Carrying You” An image taken about halfway on my film camera -

Well, I guess that brings us to this: how am I or how has it been going as most ask? Truthfully, this Summer heat has left me chugging electrolytes like my life depends on it, and my diastases is now the width of a whole hand… BUT, as I will say over and over again to any who ask, the Lord is the author and decider of life. May my body have the precious gift of stretching and aching and growing as many times as He calls it to. I am holding the tension between the reality of what more and more pregnancies does to a body and the absolute gift it is to be called to carry them. Perhaps it was that half a decade of infertility that allows that blessed view, or maybe just my view of the Lord’s sovereignty over life…regardless, I am thankful to both acknowledge the rough parts as well as rejoice in the truth.

Please pray for us, as we come to mind, during these last weeks and the season to come of bringing a new little person into our family.

I would love to end this post with these treasured photos my friend, Vanessa (all the way from Australia), took of me on a creative retreat back in May in the Alabama woods. I have never wanted maternity photos, but she offered to take some of me in “the pine trees I loved”. Oh, I didn’t think so, but I will cherish these and will look back at them so fondly when someday my years of growing babies are past me. Missing you from across the world friend! All of the photos to follow are by Vanessa. She is an incredible artist and beautiful person. I am so thankful to have met her and know her. You can find her here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tinysparrowphotographypage

instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vanessa_tinysparrowphotography/