a few things worth remembering

i love quiet sunday evenings with my family. we haven't been driving out to utah county as much on sundays to have dinner with either of our families lately. i miss them but am also relishing the hours of just sam-chas-and-hero time we've been having- especially since saturdays can be so busy.

we've been making dinner together while opening up the kitchen window to let in the fresh early spring breeze and listening to music. sometimes it's the mormon tabernacle choir, sometimes it's arcade fire. either way, hero especially loves it and always asks for more "song??" in the 2 second quiet in between tracks.

after dinner, i clean up the kitchen and listen to chas and hero playing, coloring, and generally laughing their heads off together downstairs. it's a welcomed break for me and a chance for hero to just wrestle and be all sorts of silly with her dad.

for the past two sundays, after hero is asleep, chas and i have made cookies together. yesterday's batch was particularly yummy (which may or may not be due in large part to it being a pre-made mix). as they came out of the oven, we ate a few hot with ice cream on the side and then piled the rest onto 4 plates to take to neighbors.

generally, small and simple events but filled to the brim with joy and contentment nonetheless.

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i did my second session practicing shooting film last weekend. photography is making me so, so happy right now. even though i have to wait a few days to see the results of my work with film, just driving home from that shoot, i felt so ALIVE and on a total creative high. getting the scans back from the lab and actually seeing the images for the first time brought back that same feeling of "yeeaaahhhh!! this is awesome!" (dorky photographer stuff)

you can see the full session here.

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on friday night, chas and i tackled our basement storage room together and finally organized it all. while sorting through boxes, we found a photo frame set holding a picture of both my grandmothers (who have both long since passed). because hero's middle name is my maternal grandmother's first name (marilyn), i thought it would be nice to put the photos in her room on her nightstand. the next morning, after we've all been up for a bit, i hear hero in her room making the sweet little sound she makes when she's giving kisses ("mmmwaaahh, mmmwaaahh"). out of curiosity, i go into her room to see what random object she's bestowing so much love onto. she's on the floor, with the photos of my grandmothers lying down, face up, in front of her and she's leaning over giving each one a big kiss- one right after the other. back and forth, back and forth. it was the most sweetest thing. i had even forgotten that i'd put those photos in her room and hadn't showed them to her or anything. she just noticed them on her own, grabbed them off the nightstand, and started giving so many kisses. through tears, i asked if she knew her great grandmothers and she replied very matter-of-factly, "yeaaahhh!," with just a little hint of "duh, mom" in her voice.

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we find out the gender of baby #2 today!!! stay tuned :)