Twelve Years

Drawing by Chris Van Dyke. *

Today marks our twelfth wedding anniversary. When I stop to think about how long that is, how much we have done and seen in our own lives and how much has happened in the world in that time, I am amazed. When we got married, Google didn't exist. Neither did iPods, or YouTube. Iraq was the country we went to war with when I was in elementary school, and Afghanistan wasn't on the radar at all. Since then, we have moved from college in Walla Walla to Bellevue to Texas to Bellevue (for a summer anyway, but it involved driving both ways) to back to Texas to western New York to Arkansas. We have both completed graduate school, adopted three cats, a dog and a chinchilla. Bought a house. Grown (or tried to grow) hundreds of tomatoes. Played hundreds of games of racquet ball; traded racquet ball for tennis. Read thousands of books (I am not kidding. Until this past year, I read about 100 books a year - combine that with all the reading we both did for graduate school, and multiply times 12 years...) Had a baby.

What hasn't changed? The fact that Benjamin is still the person I want to be with every day, the person I want to see the world with, the person I want to grow old with.

*If you like this picture and want something like it for yourself, Chris is available for commissions. Check out his page here.

Spring flashback

Summer seems to have arrived in Arkansas to stay. April and May were cooler than normal, so we have had a bit of a reprieve, but temperatures are forecasted to be in the 90s all week. So it is a nice little break to go back and look at this pictures from our trip to Bellevue and Idaho last month, when it was cool and refreshing. Enjoy.

 Benewah Creek, just outside Benjamin's mother's house.

A door to nowhere, Lake Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. Without a boat there, I can't tell if it is supposed to keep people from the lake off the dock, or people from the dock out of the lake!

Apple blossoms.

Lavender in my mother's garden, with one of her bees.

Poppy with bee (look closely, she's in there).

Chives, and bees.

Early morning raindrops.

Roses, in a delicate state of decay.

Spiky and purple and geometric.

One more rose, because I can't help myself. I love photographing them.

Visiting All the Grandparents

We spent two weeks in Idaho and Washington last month, visiting all the grandparents. Malcolm was, apart from some sleep difficulties, a great traveler, and the grandparents were all thrilled to have him. The weather was mostly good - cooler than Arkansas, and rainy at times, but not depressingly so. I got some very good flower pictures, since everything was blooming profusely. Here are some pictures of Malcolm with the grandparents; I'll save the flowers for another day.

Malcolm reached 10 months while we were there, so he let Grandpa Rider help him with his month card picture.

Three generations of Benjamin Riders at Lake Coeur d'Alene. In this picture Malcolm is starting to look a little more like Benjamin now, although a lot of his expressions are still very much like mine.

Malcolm got to meet his Oma Jennie for the first time ever, and despite the look on his face in this picture, he did get along well with her.

There, that is a happier look. Jennie was, of course, in love.

Malcolm does love to chew on rocks...

Grandpa Mikey and Malcolm in a quiet moment. Usually, they were winding each other up instead.

Malcolm and Grandma Candi, reading the same book. You'd never know it by these pictures, but my mother does have a large collection of children's books - she was a children's librarian after all. But Malcolm really liked that one - it was one of my favorites as a baby too.

The drive from Bellevue to Idaho and back can get rather long, especially if you are strapped in a car seat facing the wrong direction, so it was lovely to be able to stop and visit with our good friend Ellen along the way. As a bonus, she gave Malcolm his first piano lesson on a real piano!