Happy May Day and friday everyone! Hope you are all doing well, and are ready for the weekend. Today I want to share some photos I took on a beautiful day at the park.
We have been enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures, so the kids and I have been spending a lot of time outdoors. Both kids have birthdays coming up in May, so we headed to the park to take some photos to mark the kids turning 7 and 2!
Hope you enjoyed, have a great weekend!
~Becky
Lets be honest, everyday is a photo shoot in our house. However, I thought it would be fun to take some more formal shots and make them into a fun card to send out to grandparents for Valentine’s Day.
It didn’t quite turn out as I would like, but with a 6 year old and almost 2 year old, it almost never does.
Bribes of sticky gummie snacks were used, and this was the best I could get. Grandparents, aren’t the most critical of photos of their grandkids, so I think we will be ok 🙂
Elsa is such a diva, she will under no condition smile on demand!
This pose was all him, he really knows how to work the camera 😉
Hope you are having a wonderful week!
~Becky
Today I want to share something a little different from my usual posts. Sunday while watching the Superbowl, an ad came on about how girls are confident in their strengths and abilities when they are very young, say 7 or 8. And once they reach adolescents that changes. Girls are viewed as week and inferior, the commercial used the common phrase “run like a girl”, at least by their male counterparts and even adults. These stereotypes play a major role in how young women view themselves when they are teens and as they grow into adults.
This commercial resonated with me, as a mother of a young daughter, I want to do everything in my power to ensure she keeps the confidence within herself. I want her to believe that she has the ability to do whatever she wants, if she is willing to work hard.
Even if you don’t have a daughter, chances are you have you have a sister, niece, cousin, some young girl who looks up to you. Maybe you even lack confidence within yourself, that you want to get back.
But what is happening in our society that has caused girls to be thought of as weak, inferior, and less capable than boys? Is it these mentalities that also lead to women making less money in the same career as men?
For me personally strong female role models, my mother, sisters, and college professors, have played a pivotal role in shaping who I have become. I believe we are all influenced by our surroundings, the people, ideas, and culture that we engage in all affect who we become. When we are teens it’s our friends, who have the biggest influence on our choices and behaviors; with our parents and teachers and other adult role models playing a role. When we are young it’s more difficult to take control of who you surround yourself with.
As we grow, attend college, and start our careers that changes. We are influenced more by people we choose to surround us. We begin to gain our independence from our parents and become our own person. But it also must be mentioned that social media has impacted how people experience the world like never before. We can now have access to everyone’s life experiences, at least the experiences they chose to share. This can affect how we view our own lives. We see what amazing experiences everyone else is having, while our days feel repetitive and mundane. People who are graduating college or getting that big promotion. Or we are stuck at home in the midst of a winter blizzard, while a friend is soaking up the rays on a beach in Mexico, I get it, I’m envious at times too!
OK, got off of track a bit, so why do girls lose confidence? Did someone tell them they couldn’t participate in a sport, or did they watch a movie that portrayed the female as a damsel-in-distress, that could only be saved by her knight-in-shining armor? I’m not sure where the transition, from young confident girl, to I can’t do it because I’m a girl, happens. But I hope we as a society can make changes in how we raise our girls, to be girls who grow into confident women. Women who have confidence not only in their physical abilities but also in their mental abilities.
When I graduated high school, I didn’t think I would ever attend college, I didn’t think I was smart enough. I was a C average student. Fast forward eight years, I was married with a baby, who I stayed home with full-time. On a whim I signed up for two college courses, thinking I would see how it went, and it would keep me busy (as if a baby didn’t keep me busy enough).
Here we are several years later, I not only finished those classes, but I earned my Associates Degree, graduating with honors. I am currently a few classes away from getting my Bachelors, I have taken a break after having my second child. I plan to finish soon enough, my baby won’t be a baby forever.
I hope if you take anything away from this, it’s simply that you can accomplish whatever it is you want to in life. It may take a lot of work, but even if everyone else thinks you can’t, as long as you think you can, that is all that matters! So get out there and take the first leap of faith, not literally, but I think you get what I’m saying 🙂
This is exactly what I will tell my daughter. But I am certain that she will learn more from my examples than from my words. So I will also do my very best at being a good female role model from my daughter, and I am confident she will grow into a confident young women.
Please keep this important conversation going in the comments, if you have something to add. Most of all remember to give all the girls and young women in your life the encouragement and support they need!
Lots of Love,
Becky
Conrad with our first family pets! He loves them, but ultimately wants a dog someday, baby steps.
Things have been busy around our house, as is the case with most families this time of year! The next couple of months are going to continue to be busy, but exciting! This year I am hosting Thanksgiving for the first time ever, not completely on my own, my mom will be making some of the food. It will be around 10 people, which seems manageable for my first time. It’s been exciting getting my home ready and planning our menu and table scape. I’ve finally gotten a lot of the decorating projects finished around the house, and plan on deep cleaning and organizing. What better time than when hosting a big event?!
Next month, my sister and her family will be in town from Arkansas for Christmas. We will be spending Christmas in a beautiful cabin in the mountains. I am so excited, we have never gone away for Christmas. We will be sledding, snow shoeing, and spending lots of time together, without the distractions and stresses that can crop up when you are rushing here and there to see everyone and get it all done. And focus on the meaning of the holiday and what is truly important.
Also, Conrad began Taekwondo class last week, and is loving it. He is a very social kid, and loves spending time with and meeting new people. This is the first organized sport he has taken part in and I am excited to see how it goes. He will benefit from taking direction from others, and a self confidence boost is beneficial for almost any child. Also, it will be great for physical activity and meeting other kids. I really like is that his only competition is himself, and he has to do the work to advance, no comparing himself to other kids, just focusing on what he is doing.
What’s new with your families? Do you stay home for Christmas or travel? Hope you are doing well!
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” -Joseph Chilton Pearce
~Becky
I was so thrilled when my brother Ben, who moved from Montana to New York City just over a year ago, announced he would be home to visit. Obviously I wanted to see him and catch up, but I also wanted him to be the one who photographed our family of four, for the first time. The last time he photographed our family was four years ago, so we were much overdue for an update. Ben began dabbling in photography four or five years ago, and since built an impressive portfolio and reputation in Montana, and he is just beginning to purse his photography full time in New York. I know I am slightly biased, being his sister and all, but he truly has an artistic eye and the technical skills to back it up. I am so excited to see where this journey leads him! I am over-the-moon excited for the photographs he took for our family! These are a few of my favorites, if I had to choose, because I love them all 🙂 Hope you are all doing well! ~Becky check out more of Ben’s work here: http://www.bencooperstudio.com
I hope a wonderful Halloween was had by all! We enjoyed a beautiful autumn evening trick-or-treating, and my in-laws made it down to spend some time with us. With a few trick-or-treaters at our door 20 kids (up from the 4 or 5, last year) it was a nice and quite evening.
I made a point to offer an alternative to candy, by handing cute Halloween pencils and glow sticks, in case there were any kids with food allergies, or even just to lesson the sugar load a bit!
Do you get lots of trick-or-treaters? I wonder if it is becoming less common to go door-to-door for treats, and opt for malls or businesses to get the loot?
Have a wonderful weekend!
~Becky
Like most families we are getting into the spirit of the season by trying out new pumpkin recipes, decorating, and bringing out the sweaters, scarves, and mittens. This week I took the kids on a nature walk to observe the changes taking place, collect leaves, watch the birds on the lake, and of course snap some photos of the kids!
Conrad found this large leaf he had to bring home. We later found out it is a rhubarb leaf.
Elsa found some leaves too.
Conrad, always being a ham!
I love to watch the relationship of these two develop.
Date night this past July.
Saturday marks eleven years that my husband Jake and I made our wedding vows. I guess I should begin by telling you how we met and began dating. We both moved to the same small town, out of pure coincidence, in the fourth grade, we were even in the same class. But it wasn’t until sophomore year in high school that we began dating. We both had a mutual friend, and let me just say Jake the skater kid with long hair and baggy pants, was not the kind of guy that I would normally go for. So the mutual friend introduced us, with the typical he likes you, do you like him, kid stuff. We began dating, and six months later I was devastated when my family moved 2 states away. To make a long story short, we dated long distance for awhile, and where on and off again for a few years. It wasn’t easy, especially when Jake enlisted in the Navy and left shortly after high school in the summer of 2000.
The summer of 2002, I on a whim, took Jake up on the invite to visit him in Washington ,where he was stationed. We weren’t dating at the time, but just always seemed to keep in touch. And that visit was the turning point that we knew, this was for real. That Christmas we were together again and Jake proposed. And September 27, 2003 we were married. A few days later we loaded our two cars and I moved with Jake across country, away from family and friends. Jake and I made a life for ourselves, and enjoyed four years of marriage living in WA, before returning to our home state of Montana.
We talk about how even though it was difficult living truly on our own, without family to fall back on in difficult times. It also gave us a good foundation on which to build our life together. We got through the difficulties of being a young married couple and learned to work out our differences, rather than run from them.
I couldn’t imagine spending my life with anyone else, that’s how I know it was meant to be. And I will continue to do the work it takes to be in a happy and successful marriage. Eleven years and two kids later we are still happy and in love!
(I wish I had a better photo of our wedding, but we didn’t have professional photos.)
I wanted to share some photo highlights of our summer, it went by way too quickly, but we made a lot of wonderful memories!
Today we received our curriculum and will begin homeschooling Conrad in a couple short weeks. I’ve spent countless hours researching the endless amounts of information regarding homeschooling online. And yes, it is a daunting task, I honestly didn’t know where to begin.
So I began by writing down why I intend to home school, a list of my goals and the reasons we chose this path. That way when doubt creeps in, which it inevitably will, I can read our “mission statement” and be reminded why we chose this lifestyle for our family.
Of all the approaches that are possible for homeschooling and teaching in general, we plan to use a mixed approach, with some traditional classroom/worksheet/book work, some hands-on activities, field trips, and a little of the “unschooled” approach. The let them be free to learn and discover on their own terms, without the constraints of a classroom and ridged structure.
Our goal is for our son, and daughter when she is older, to receive a well-rounded education. One that emphasizes their interests and cultivates a life-long love for learning. But also prepares them for the career path they choose in life. And gives them the confidence to pursue their passions, whatever they may be.
We plan to take it year-by-year, and see if homeschooling is still the best option for our family. We want to keep an open mind, and do what is best for our children and our family as a whole. The door for possibly reentering them into public school is always open. But for now we are excited for what this next chapter in life has to offer.
elsadarling 