Photo Project Week 6 -Words

The comforts of family

My mom and grandparents are here visiting for a week, and while I'm afraid we haven't been the most exciting of hosts, it's just nice to have family here!

Grampy "reading"

Mimi helped me with dinner

Check out the other MCP project 52 entries for this week.

Little One

Josh and I were blessed to take care of this precious little one last weekend. At three weeks old, mostly all she wanted to do was sleep. But she did let us see those big, beautiful eyes long enough to snap this picture. Link on over to I Heart Faces (which I am officially addicted to) and check out the other faces of January 2011.

A week behind...

Life is busy... but you already know that! The last two weeks have been a flurry of grading and finishing up one semester, and then settling into the next. I have not however, forgotten about my Project 52 (after only 1 week!). But I never posted last weeks picture! So today's blog has two pictures- one for last week and one for this week.


The theme for week 3 was "shades of gray" (or "grey" if you are partial to the British spelling as I am). My favorite part of this picture is the glow from the lights in the bottom left hand corner.

This weeks theme was soothing repetition. This picture is of a shell ball that we got on our honeymoon in Martha's Vinyard- we actually call it the soothing shell ball- there's just something very calming about it.
If you want to see some amazing photographs from this weeks theme head on over to the MCP Project 52 page on Flickr!

The Shadown Proves the Sunshine

Ok, so already Project 52 has done its job. This week I most likely would not have taken the time to take any pictures if I hadn't known that I needed to post for project 52. This week's theme was "illustrate a song," so yesterday I set out to capture something (I would say on film, but really I guess it's on memory card- which just doesn't sound as poetic) while I walked the dog. Luke, who is normally very intent upon doing his own thing on a walk (I think that he sometimes forgets I'm there) was very patient with all of photography stops, and while I tried to get him to pose pretty for the camera, he would have none of it. oh well! I guess I have a whole 50 weeks left to capture a good picture of him.
So my submission for this week illustrates the song "The Shadow Proves the Sunshine" by Switchfoot (P.S. the video link to the song just happens to be from the concert Josh and I were at in Ventura).

New Year

I'll be honest, I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. In part I think this is due to the fact that as a teacher, I think in school years not calendar years (so for me the new year began in August). However, I have come up with one resolution (lame though it may be) and one project for 2011.

Resolution 2011

To fold the laundry as soon as I take it out of the dryer and then put it right away.

I know- not very exciting, huh? but definitely achievable! As for my project- I am very excited about this!

Project 2011

I've decided to do a Project 52 this year- each week I'm committing to taking at least one picture and submitting it to MCP's Project 52. My goal is to be more consistent with practicing photography. I'll also be posting my picture here each week. Each week has a theme that I will also be trying to stay within. This week's theme is "illustrate a song" so we'll see what I come up with!
In the mean time here are a few pics from our trip to Monterey.

Morro Rock

Somewhere along PCH

Fisherman's Wharf, Monterey

The True Christmas Spirit

"The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity- hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory- because at the Father's will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.

We talk glibly of the "Christmas spirit," rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should in fact carry a tremendous weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round.

It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians- I will be more specific: so many of the soundest and most orthodox Christians- go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord's parable, seeing human needs all around them, but (after a pious wish, and perhaps a prayer, that God might meet those needs) averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians- alas, they are many- whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the submiddle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor- spending and being spend- to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others-and not just their own friends-in whatever way there seems need. "

- J. I . Packer, "God Incarnate," Knowing God