love thursday

My niece Tess turned 2 last Saturday and had a fairy birthday party. All the kids had wings, tutus, wands and flowery headbands, and my sister-in-law Brooke beautifully and tastefully decorated the house to lovely ethereal effect. Needless to say, the kids (all girls except for one boy, for whom Brooke, made a little elf costume!) had a blast and loved all the fairy play. This photo is of the aftermath: Brooke reading on the couch with Lucy, Tess and Zoe, who would have sat there, all pink and cuddly and rapt, for 5 hours had Brooke been willing. The…

The day we made sand angels out at Latta Plantation, the girls were really hooked into Bob. They wanted to do everything he did. So when Bob ran and jumped up on the tall skinny tree stump near our picnic table, Lucy wanted to climb up there with him. Then later, while the girls and I were playing in the sand, Bob lay down in the sunny sun. After a short while Zoe saw him and went over and arranged herself in his exact position. She even closed her eyes, as if she, too, understood the sheer joy of napping…

I was first introduced to family Christmas traditions in the 10th grade when I was invited to my best friend Joy’s house to help her family trim their tree — insisted upon by her father, who was dismayed when he found out I had never trimmed a tree before. It was everything I expected and hoped it would be — warm, loving, nostalgic and full of sweetness. My family growing up had plenty of our own special traditions for different holidays (and now that I’m an adult with a family of my own, I treasure them all, and work to…

When we were weighing the pros and cons of moving away from Durham, one of the things that was on our cons list that we had no answer for was the Eno River. It essentially runs through the middle of town, it’s vast, it’s got a great variety of trails and destinations (swinging bridges, old defunct pump stations, actual mountains, log cabins, etc) and, as is obvious from this photo, it’s gorgeous. And there aren’t too many mountain lions. This particular day was a treasure. It was September, yet still warm enough for the girls to strip to their underwear…