Posts Tagged: home and family
How We Escape
At some point in the last 3-4 years “Escape Rooms” became a group activity, a diversion if you will. Instead of dinner and a movie or a trip to the bowling alley or comedy show, small groups of friends or coworkers would gather to solve a series of puzzles. If done well, everyone would be freed at the end to go celebrate how deeply smart they are. Pretty fun.
But now the walls we want to escape are the very ones keeping us safe. And we cannot escape because the governor and the CDC and WHO tell us it’s dangerous to gather to do much of anything.
So we escape in other ways.
The Case family loves to read. I’m a big reader and the books we’ve amassed since Finley was born are a treasure trove of escapism. We leave our “sheltering in place” selves and are transported via stories, through using our imaginations (we’re sounding out words already!), and trying to get to know better the characters that are Finley’s newest friends.
And we picnic. It’s springtime and we love our yard and garden and relaxing and snacking in the sun. Our first child Chelsea is a shade girl mostly, but it’s another group activity that keeps us from worrying about the many things that we cannot control.
We’re still finding magic in our home, on our property, through “pretending” with our kid, letting him learn to do yard maintenance, and by slowing down.
Sheltering in place means gratitude for shelter itself. This has occurred to me more than once. I am grateful for our life, our health, our home, our community, for first responders and nurses and medical workers on the front lines. And I am grateful for the ability to identify moments of joy, hope, and grace right in those very moments as they are happening. I’m grateful that I’m able to explore those feelings during this mandated down time.
The image above comes with its own caption built right in. If in the right head space, hearts appear everywhere. This house and place have mine. Every blade and square foot is positively infused with love. Many of our memories can be re-enacted in my mind, just by casting my eyes around.
Of course there is art time – another chance to tell stories, to make it up as we go along (aren’t we all sort of doing that???) and to cook and taste and get super messy together. This little bundle of “Man in the Making” is as tactile and kinetic a learner as his parents. His eyes and surges of energy tell me daily, “I want to touch it, taste it, roll in it and write the Government Study for a Summer Grant about it. Now back up; you’re in my work space.”
And in the evenings, we breathe in the flavors of another day lived. If tempers flared and voices were raised we settle our differences with hugs and apologies and a desire to do better. And guys – some days are tough. Norman Rockwell it is not! It’s life.
But more often than not, we retell our day’s journey across the virtual field (or tablet/laptop in our case) with those we cannot hug at the moment. I saw a great ad that said something like, “we distance ourselves now precisely so that we can gather again later.” And that’s really it. While you can, if you can, soak in the gratitude while marveling at how vulnerable we all are. Ryan and I love you all. Stay home, stay safe, explore and if you can share your escapes with us on social media, we’d love to see them. We WILL escape these walls in due time, and then we can gather to congratulate ourselves not for how smart we were, but how wise we were and how grateful we are.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographsnewborns and families, special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States LicenseAll photos are ©2020 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
Family summer wrap up
Labor Day is just days away and that truly signals the end of summer. Back to school, last family trips and cookouts and time to hunker down. For photographers, August is a slow time for the obvious reason: it’s too hot to stand around having your photos taken. I have a pal whose Uncle Max likes to quip: “you know why Southerners talk so slowly? Because it’s too hot to do anything quickly.” You take my point.
For Ryan and me it was a busy month at home and really all about family, Finley, and food from our garden. This month has been a blessing, even with a tree landing on our house, and I’ll get to that in a minute.
One summer highlight was a camping trip to Sparta – an annual summer thing and really an any season thing for us when our schedules allow. These trips have grown and that is an understatement. For this last one, there were 25 of us and the ratio of kid to adult was 50/50. I never would have dreamed several years ago that the profile of those trips would have changed so much and so much for the better. We love this group of crazies so much. Lots of wandering, swimming, chatting, snacking and soaking each other up.
We also took short trips, went to some outdoor shows and I was able to get down to the Atlanta Market for World of Prom with Kelly Shumate – the owner of Bridal Traditions and dear friend. It was a working trip and I loved it!
We also kept busy with our garden and boy, was the harvest worth the upkeep. Finley and our pup, Chelsea enjoyed eating items right out of the garden and I cooked, canned, shared and am now wondering about expanding it.
Our one Debbie Downer moment was a storm that came crashing through while I was in Atlanta and it caused a tree to position itself, uninvited I might add, in our kitchen. Ryan and I are DIY’ers to the core, but this is something that is being handled by others and I will be glad when it’s over. Too much life happens in our yard, porch and certainly the kitchen. I need it fully functional!
As we wrap up the summer like everyone else, we’re looking ahead to more commercial work, fall family portraits and we will begin thinking about (not nagging! so don’t panic), but thinking about the holidays and all that comes with that. The sooner that you start planning, the happier you’ll be. For now though, watching Finley play with his new flashlight while grilling fruits and veggies will do for me, thank you very much.
We love family portraits whether they are set in the studio, the great outdoors, a specific location like the mountains or high country, or on our property in our outdoor portrait garden. Pixels on Paper photographs, engagements and weddings, brides, and special events and portraits of all kinds in our Wilkesboro, NC studio. We would be honored to meet with you, learn about you and your family and be a part of taking special portraits that will become, we hope, family heirlooms.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License All photos are ©2019 Pixels On Paper. Do not copy, crop, or remove watermark.
