...and Signs of Spring!

As our snow and ice melted away in late February and early March, we began to emerge from inside and shed our heavy coats and hats and mittens and sweaters:

We donned rain gear and stomped in puddles during the first warm spring rain...

...this girl got all dressed up and went on a date with Grammie and Grandaddy to the symphony...

...we began to eat outside on our deck again...

...we played in the woods...

...we reacquainted ourselves with our favorite playgrounds around town...

...we collected sticks...

...and Ev started her spring nature collection!

In other fun spring news, we are expecting Baby Berry #3!  Due to join us in mid-September or so:)  

Enjoy the rest of this week, friends.  Easter pictures and late spring updates are on the way....

Memories of Snow...

As it is nearing May already, I figured I should do a little catching-up on the ol' blog.  So here we go! Since my last post, we finished out a chilly winter, complete with a couple big (for Nashvegas) snows.  We loved trekking to Percy Warner Park and sledding, hiking, and building snowmen:

Here, Doodle introduces James to munching icicles pulled off a bridge in the park.  Yum.

It was equally wonderful to come home to a warm house after playing in the snow, and to nap in front of the fire, eat snow-cream, and color and read by lantern-light:

So thankful that we got to enjoy a little snow this winter!  And even more thankful for the spring days that have followed:)

New Year, New Things

Happy 2015, friends!  We have eased into the new year around here, and can hardly believe that Valentine's Day is in the air already.  Several moments worth noting have happened since my last post:

1.  James started walking in early December.  He went from showing almost no interest or inclination to full-on, ready-to-run walking.  And since then, he has shown little interest in stopping:)

2. We went caroling with a group of dear friends from our church.  Ev had never been caroling before, and Dave and I hadn't been in years, and it was absolutely wonderful.  The group of kids singing Christmas carols was about the sweetest thing ever, and they delighted the hearts of all of the folks they encountered, including this group of twenty-something guys pictured at the door below.  Hilarious.

3. Santa visited our house on Christmas and left behind a sleeping bag, a globe, and a large dump truck.  Also, Ashley, a sweet friend of mine since sixth grade (!), gifted Evelyn with a pair of her old pointe shoes from her pre-professional ballerina days and made our girl's day.

4. We rang in the new year with party hats and monster faces:

5. As I have been slowly taking down some lingering Christmas decorations (all of our Christmas cards were on display until the end of January, for example), I have reminisced about reading through Ann Voskamp's devotional for kids, Unwrapping the Greatest Gift.  Evelyn loved reading the stories and coloring decorations for her own Jesse tree (see picture below).  It was such a sweet way for us to mark Advent together this year, and we can't wait to pull it out again next year!

6. We celebrated two January birthdays with fun gifts (a tent big enough for our little family to go camping!) and cake:)

And then there's the spaces-in-between, as my sweet husband likes to say.  Lots of fun things.  A new-to-us children's museum in Murfreesboro, some art at Cheekwood, hikes in the sun and the (sprinkle of) snow, dressing up, and reading by the fire.  Not pictured are the less-than-fun moments, mainly because I don't always have the wits or wherewithal to capture such moments on camera;)  

Love to you this weekend, friends!  

Thankful.

For my littlest love...

...for handprint turkey cookies...

...for sweet ballerinas...

...for breakfast with Grammie and Grandaddy...

...for reading time (right-side-up or upside-down)...

...for cousin time...

...for Christmas crafts...

...for Christmas dresses...

...for digging in the dirt with a pal...

...and for almost-full moons...

For all these things, I am thankful.

Fall in Retrospect

What did fall look like to us around here this year?  

For us, fall was...

...leaf-crunching...

...giggle-sharing...

...pumpkin-hunting...

...Farmer's Market-shopping...

...godmother-adventuring...

...costume-wearing...

...scary-face-making...

...trick-or-treating...

...beauty.

"The Life of Summer Falls Silent"

About a month ago, while browsing through Parnassus, our favorite local bookstore, Evelyn picked out a beautiful collection of poetry by Wendell Berry to give to her sweet daddy for his birthday.  She was drawn to Terrapin primarily because of the lovely illustration of a terrapin (aka turtle) on the front, but as Dave is a Wendell Berry devotee, her choice turned out to make an excellent gift.  The poems themselves are ones that the poet and the illustrator (Tom Pohrt) imagined children might enjoy and appreciate, and to that end, Ev and I have ourselves spent some delightful afternoon rest-times reading through the volume.  Here is one of my favorites of the moment:

"Now constantly there is the sound,
quieter than rain,
of the leaves falling.

Under their loosening bright
gold, the sycamore limbs
bleach whiter.

Now the only flowers are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

The calling of the crow sounds
loud--a landmark--now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow."

October 10, a poem by Wendell Berry

I love the final image of the life and liveliness of the summer slowly fading and falling silent as the days grow shorter and the nights grow longer; it is such an apt description for what has been happening both inside and outside our house!  We spent the end of the summer and the beginning of the fall on-the-go, doing all sorts of fun things:  playing in dirt parks and splash parks, visiting the zoo and picnicking at Cheekwood, attending library concerts and football games and carnivals, and soaking up time with friends and family alike:

We also kicked off our (extremely laid-back) "school" for the year with "A" week, and created some art, learned about some animals, and picked some apples:

But as September turned into October and brought along some cooler days, we slowed a bit and spent time planting fall containers on our back deck, hiking in the woods, and curating the nature collection on our front bench:

And though mid-October brought a flurry of birthday-related activities (more on that to come), we have otherwise indeed seen our summer life overtaken by the quieter rhythms of the fall, and are loving it.  Happy weekend to you, friends; we are so thankful for you today:)