The Long Summer Days of Gentle Breathing and Mirth

We are at the height of our summer. Long, lazy days of sunshine and sea and rest.

This has been a particularly busy year for us. The year began with the crazy that was writing a memoir for Recovering Grace, which set in motion at least 6 months of adrenaline-filled days. We have moved house, navigated 4 children at school, been overseas and unknown to me at the time, Rob's job was under threat due to restructuring. Thankful to God for providing a new job locally, and in time, before we became desperate. But these all have taken a toll, and when we arrived at our summer holiday place, we felt exhausted.

But there is nothing like sea air for clearing away all the troubles. Making us go into the new year with renewed minds and bodies. We are resting here. Enjoying family time and sun and sea and close friends. We are grateful for all these many good things.

Because we share this place with other family members, the first half of our holiday is in the Caretaker's Cottage. A small, old, 2-bedroom cottage. Six of us squeeze in here! But it's ok. Most of our days are spent on the beach or in the garden.

Grateful for quiet places of rest.

For long days on the beach.

For quaint, old-fashioned things.

A small mirror made from seashells and paua.

For sunlight.

For my old dog who keeps us company and sleeps the day away.

For children laughing

and sandcastle building.

Being able to spend the whole entire day in a bathing suit.

and eat cold ham and fresh salads.

For restful days for tired children

For windows that open wide.

to wear my New Caledonia sarong in the kitchen.

For sitting outdoors.

and hanging washing next to the Banana tree.

Meeting family dogs on the beach under the Pohutukawa.

For this old house and all the days it has weathered.

A plentiful garden of promise.

and time to sit and watch little ships sail past.

Christmas Card Photo Shoot

I aim to send out Christmas cards at least every 2 years, and if I get it done every year.... well, that's a bonus.

In late October we were sitting around one weekend morning, and it was a glorious day outside. One of those perfect Spring days with no wind and only sunshine and the trees with their fresh Spring covering and the lovely new grass and flowers just starting to bloom, and Rob and I looked at each other and both said, 'let's do the family photo shoot this afteroon."

It's never an easy thing to get four children all smiling and cooperating at the same time, and believe me at the end of this, we had some grumpy faces!

But we went up to Rob's brother's place to take the pictures. They have a beautiful garden, and we were looking after their elderly cat, Jag, while they were away overseas.

For the family photo shoot, I put the camera on the timer. All the kids wanted to have a go at pushing the timer button and running back to lie on the grass with the rest of us. We did laugh so hard quite often - and this photo is actually my favourite of all the pictures I took that day...

"Hello Jag!"

I also took the opportunity to take individual photos of the children.

And because you've seen Alice's photos in this post, here is a candid shot of her.

And here she is reading the Farmers Toy Catalogue...

 

From the individual shots, we moved on to a few group shots - but that's when everyone started getting grumpy.  Still, they did quite well, I think.

This was a bad-lighting failure photo, so I put a special edit on it, and now I love it.

And this is the family group shot we eventually chose - the one that was the closest to having everyone with decent smiles on their faces... (I couldn't resist putting a little edit on this bloggy version).

Once it was all done, we came home, and then tried to find a card format. There is so much to choose from. My favourite sites are snapfish.co.nz and shutterfly.com. We actually went with shutterfly in the end, but we had fun choosing. Here are some of our finalist choices...

And this is the card we went with!