Yesterday I spent some time looking at pictures from April 2015 for an Instagram account I started a few years ago. We've been able to visit so many beautiful places in the past 5 1/2 years, and I liked the idea of having a place to catalog some of those lovely landscapes and details. Early on I fell into the habit of only posting pictures from the same month of previous years. I love following the movement of the seasons in pictures.
The first April day I re-visited was a Friday when I think we had a church meeting wrapping up our Easter Holiday Bible Club in North Yorkshire. K.J. drove with the kids while I took my camera and walked on a public footpath behind the kids' school because I'd caught a glimpse of lambs earlier in the day. This was our first spring in North Yorkshire, and I was terrified I'd somehow miss lambing season. The thing about seasons is that they come once a year, and then they're gone. You have to pay attention in the moment. I'm happy to report I didn't miss out on frolicking lambs in 2015.
In addition to photographing lambs, I grew slightly obsessed with bees going about their business (beez-iness, bizzzz-iness?) in the spring and summer. England's moderate climate, and the English genius about gardening means flowers that don't prematurely wither away. They last so much longer than in Alabama. I spent a lot of time that first summer watching the bees in the lavender outside my kitchen window while I washed dishes.
I got this lucky shot experimenting with the macro function on one of my lenses at Newby Hall. It still brings me a lot of joy. I also got a lot of joy watching these lambs play follow the leader that day.
Ella took ballet lessons in a small village nearby, and while I usually went back home while she had her lesson, one April day I took a walk instead, exploring a public footpath. I was captivated to live in a place that had ridings.
But of course the most magical April night of all was when our entire family got to be present for the birth of twin lambs at a local farm. I was over the moon that night.
That seems like a good stopping place for now. Thanks for coming armchair traveling with me. It's fun to re-live past Aprils and to look forward to the day we can leave our houses and do some exploring once more.
Every year for Christmas K.J.'s parents give us some money to go shopping with, and after much contemplation of all the shelves at Barnes & Noble, I walked away with this book. After all, we were about to be "Americans in Paris," and this book promised stories of adventure in a significant historical time period.
I've been reading it aloud to K.J., and so far we've learned things that showcase the strengths of America in the past and also weaknesses and failures. For instance, the American ambassador was the only one who stayed in Paris when it became clear the Nazis were coming in to take over the city. All other diplomats, and the French government left the city and put Ambassador Bullitt in charge as mayor, and it was this American man who transferred the keeping of the city into the hands of the German army. Who knew?!
On the side of cultural failures, we've learned some fascinating stories of black Americans who stayed in Paris after WWI, a place where they had more opportunity and freedom not to be judged by the color of their skin.
It's a book filled with stories of Americans with vastly different backgrounds who found themselves in Nazi-occupied Paris, many of whom ended up involved in moving information around right under the Germans noses. It also tells the story of two American institutions formed after WWI that played an important role during WWII as well, The American Hospital and The American Library of Paris. When these places showed up in the story again and again, I of course wondered if they were still up and running, and indeed they are! I thought our reading lives might be reduced to mainly books available on Kindle this year, but I am really happy to have access to a historical institution and thousands of books in English.
The picture below is not the library, just a hotel; I thought it might be confusing! I didn't actually take a picture of the outside of the library.
The American Library of Paris began with donations from libraries in the U.S. with the aim to distribute books to U.S. armed forces serving in and after WWI. On our first visit to the library the lady working in the children's section asked me how we heard about it. When I explained she said that was not the usual answer she heard, and few people knew about their long and interesting history. The women who kept the library open during WWII secretly lent books to Jews in the city who were banned by the Nazis from using French libraries.
On our first visit we took the Metro, but a couple of days later I found myself in need of a walk, and the kids had requested books that were waiting for pick-up, so I went all the way on foot. I didn't think anything about walking two and a half miles, but I should have thought about not walking two and a half miles in boots I hadn't worn in a long time. I got a huge blister on the back of one heel, but I also got some good books and a chance to take pictures along the way, so it's a draw.
I loved this perspective of the Eiffel Tower.
Next time maybe I'll be like the smart Parisian women who put their tennishoes on with their hose. My heels would be much happier. Thanks for walking along with me to the library!
Let's just go ahead and declare June the month of sharing wedding pictures on my blog. When you've got so many photos of beautiful brides, why not?
So many months ago now I logged on to Facebook one morning and saw that one of our dear friends had changed his profile picture, and it now included a lovely young lady I'd never met. This seems significant, I thought.
And as the pictures of the two of them kept appearing I felt really happy such a dear friend had fallen completely in love but really sad that we were missing out on being there to share in their joy in person.
The months go by. There's a ring and a wedding in Brazil that we watch over Facebook Live (what a time we live in to be away from loved ones!). And then there's a surprise request: Can they meet here in England and stay with us? Yes, of course they can! What an unexpected gift to get to meet the bride in person.
And then the even more unexpected request to put together a small ceremony so the bride's adopted international family could be there to see them married since they were unable to make it to Brazil in January. The answer was absolutely yes. And life isn't all about one of us, but we have such a kind God who goes about ordering things so that so many of our desires and joys are fulfilled. Taking pictures of my loved ones quadruples my joy, and being 4,000 miles away I never would have imagined I'd get to photograph these two in their wedding finery and newly-wedded bliss, but God always does "more than we could could ask or think."
I think the Brazilian bride was only slightly cold on that North Yorkshire hilltop. 😉
It was such a delightful day, and our week spending time with Lua was such a delight, too.
We wanted to go somewhere to take some wedding portraits, but the weather was chancy. In the midst of our indecision about where to go next we stopped for a bathroom break. Inside the National Trust shop at Rievaulx Terrace one of the volunteers got so excited at the sight of Lua in her wedding dress and asked us if we would please take some pictures there for their newsletter. So while we were debating whether it was worth it to pay to get in and walk through the deep mud in our finery, we got asked to come in for free and even had the temple opened up for us to take pictures inside.
We thought it would do as a grand enough backdrop for portraits.
How cute is she?
Ella took on the role of bridesmaid and did a great job buttoning up the one hundred tiny buttons on the back of Lua's gown.
You can see the abbey ruins down below them in this picture.
You've got to scrape off your boots at the door in North Yorkshire.
Happy 6 months, Seth and Lua!
