Just Thoughts

I just looked back through this blog. The many changes, and happenings; feelings, thoughts. I just realized also that I have been writing here for almost 2 years. I just re-read my very first post written on Feb. 28,2007. It was near a year after my mother had passed away, on March 25, 2006. What made me start writing here, I don't remember. I had never known or heard about these blogs, back then. I just did it. I remember writing on my childhood home that first post and enjoying that time in thoughts and memories as I sat here writing. And then, I just kept going.

Its not a new awareness tonight as I look back, at how this blog has changed over the past two years. I felt the change occuring as it did. I have been aware of the comfort and healing writing in the blog as brought to me. But the changes that I've almost watched unravel by themself is that what started as a place to grief and express my loss has turned into exactly what the title has always been; "The Beauty Of Life". The losses went into changes and joys and celebrations. Yes, there were more losses from time to time just as there has been joys of life shared and recognized. So, when I look back at all that is here, on this blog of the past two years, I see a journal, almost in steps of life unfolding as it will. A family's losses and births. Celebrations and sorrows. It is apparent to see and still feel in each post as it was, when I read back.

I have often thought, as I've looked over the posts and pictures and times shared here with the awareness of seeing life going on, I have thought how my mother is approving of it all. She would of course want our attentions and recognitions to be focuses on such. And how my thoughts have changed since beginning to write here. This place has served it's purpose of grieving and no doubt it will again some time. That is life also. So, here is where life unfolds in all it's magical forms, not only as this once began, in heartbreak. There is such power in words and expressing, whether one is the reader or the writer, its all the same. There exists a give and take in both.

Looking Out

Looking out my front door, its always easy to tell the season beyond the glass. As last year's pile of snow before it, the door couldn't be use. This winter has brought near as much snows as last. Though, I've got some pictures taken of it, I've yet to upload them and place on here. So much has been happening and I seem to always be longing for more time. It goes way too fast. As do the seasons. Winter seems to be passing quickly for me, though not many others have shared the same point of view. There seems to be certain stepping stones of winter for us in New England...Autumn, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and then it usually begins to drag into spring. I wait for the daffodils, in March.

Though this winter, we do not so much count the days til spring but for our newest family addition. Another six weeks, so they predict, to go. It begins to feel close as we prepare now for "Noah". Yesterday, Tammy was over and it took her (with my assistance) three times just to figure out how to place a bumper pad and mattress into a cradle. I got some cute pictures of Tammy's frustration; 8months pregnant, on her knees tryting to set the bedding of the cradle up. I suppose her first mistake was listening to me as I told her how to place it; wrong three times, while I snapped pictures.

Plans keep changing on many things but as it appears to be right now, Tammy, Josh and Noah will be staying in my home when the baby is born. For awhile. So, this weekend's plan include cleaning out the spare room and preparing it for them. Of course, there is a baby shower also planned but that is secret at this time:)

Another change is on this blog and the one which I "had". I made the decision to do away with "Home Sweet Home" and only keep this one. So, I've taken some things off that blog and put on here. Those things that I wanted to keep. The rest, I've deleted. Its gone. It's easier and its simplier this way.

I also have gone back to my healthy eating after receiving a not so good report on a physical. My tread mill is going to get set up tomorrow and I've come up with a brilliant idea to set my small television with "vcr" built in, right in front of the tread mill. Maybe I will walk through a show. Might make it alittle more enjoyable for me.

Stay tuned for updates of the arrival due in March and all the other happenings.

Changes in Seasons

Tammy & Josh (Baby boy Noah)

With Arms Wide Open

With Arms Wide Open

Well I just heard the news today
It seems my life is going to change
I closed my eyes,
begin to pray
Then tears of joy stream
down my face
With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
With arms wide open

Well I don't know
if I'm ready
To be the man
I have to be
I'll take a breath,
I'll take her by my side
We stand in awe,
we've created life
With arms wide open
Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open

Now everything has changed
I'll show you love
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
With arms wide open
I'll show you everything ...oh yeah

With arms wide open..
wide open
If I had just one wish
Only one demand
I hope he's not like me
I hope he understands
That he can take this life
And hold it by the hand
And he can greet the world
With arms wide open...
With arms wide open

Under the sunlight
Welcome to this place
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
Now everything has changed
I'll show you love
I'll show you everything
With arms wide open
With arms wide open
I'll show you everything..oh yeah
With arms wide open....wide open

Life Begins

This picture captured me. I want to print it, frame it and be able to look at it as I go about my day. It is beauty in its purest of forms. Innocence. So powerful yet can be held in your hands. This living, breathing, human being cradled in the palms of His hands, is breathtaking. This is one picture that has captured me. I look at it and see so much. The beginning of life. A dream come true. A blessing. The definition of precious.

A miracle.

All In the Eyes of the Beholder

There are many pictures that have caught my eye and I'd stop and stare awhile. I find myself searching, every moment that allows me time to just sit and explore pictures that capture my mind and heart. There have been many. Some of the pictures, I've taken, when I have been fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. I also find enjoyment in what others have blessed us with, in their sharing of captured beauty. Its been time filling and most enjoyable to search for pictures that say more than a thousand words. However, there are few pictures that even when you close your eyes, the stillness of what one's sight seeped inside, remains forever.

I suppose what makes us all unique is how we view things. I know, what I may find such beauty in, another may walk on by or stop long enough to gaze and appear confused in what could ever had been loved enough worth displaying.

All in the eyes of the beholder? Though The Beauty Of Life is a personal site of grief, loss, healing, growth and love between family and friends. It went beyond what it had orginally started as; a place to grieve. It grew into the life and world of a family. It's history, its current days as well as its future. Now, I extend The Beauty Of Life; not end it. Here, is only an extension of life's beauty whether it be discovered by myself or by a stranger and I, as the creator of such, will be sure it has been seen. For what is beauty if not experienced and gone unnoticed, unseen, and unappreciated?

I find such meaning expressed poetically in not only pictures, but in lyrics and music; stories and rhyme, even riddles. Here, perhaps how best this site can be discribed is to expose that beauty of life in a sense of stillness. Is it possibly for our very, deepest thoughts be captured and exploded in a picture? Whereas the moment you look into it, your thoughts begin to scramble and overflow, spilling out all that it brings you to know and feel in that very moment? As with The Beauty Of Life, this is the continuing journal of family, beauty and love shared. This is what allows me to create. Wearing what lies inside, in full view now, on the outside.