dandelions « Behind the Willows

I love looking around at life through the “lens” of the week’s theme.

I love that I’m taking more pictures, playing with my camera settings and challenging myself to do it all without Photoshop (at least for that one picture!). Life is always full of obligatory challenges and it’s been nice to be able to choose a challenge for a change! But, life being what it is there are also nights, like tonight, where there are unexpected challenges with the photos.

When you try to take a picture while simultaneously attempting to calm down the baby you’ve upset by the sudden change of position and arguing with the two year old over who gets the one particular dandelion amongst the hundred or so available, the challenge part of the photo challenge takes on a whole new meaning.

But, after I snapped my picture and Clara picked the contested flower for her bouquet I watched her blow her dandelion seed heads and remembered another challenge of mine.

To slow down.

To remember that even though the kids might make things take a little bit longer, make life a little bit messier and a bit more frustrating, that I need to take a deep breath, slow down and let them in.

Because when I do, it’s always just a little bit better.

And if it takes looking at life through a camera lens to remember that, I guess I’ll just have to keep snapping photos!

What happens in May is that the lawnmower breaks.

Last May I wrote about the difficulties in fixing a lawn mower with help. (You can read all about it here: New Respect)

This year the lawnmower had difficulties beyond my paltry mechanical skills so I laughed and took pictures while the girls helped John.

That was fun until he looked at me with this smile on his face and said something to the effect of…

….”If you don’t put your camera down and get YOUR girls out of here I’m going to feed them to the pigs, throw the lawn mower in the neighbors pond and run away to Acapulco.”

So the girls and I left him to his work and did the only other thing to do when the lawnmower is broken, we made dandelion crowns. Because when your grass has grown tall enough that you can lose a Great Dane in the yard (Really, it was that tall!) the dandelions have nice long stems for braiding!The lawn mower was back in service today and we finished mowing the lawn for the first time this afternoon!