Hot Magenta.

Ever colored with a kid who wants to use hot magenta for the lawn, robin's egg blue for the little boy's flesh, and the puppy gets colored anything but brown, black, white, or golden?  As the grown-up, my tendency would be to suggest they pull a "more appropriate" color out of that box of 64.

Headed out to jump rope in thongs? Child, what are you thinking?



Last weekend when playing with my wholesome, innocent, and honest niece and nephew, I realized my sometimes unfortunate and out-of-place grown up "sensibilities," and was reminded of the beauty, pleasure, and good sense of simply living life with a child's heart.  I saw the genius of hot magenta grass and a little boy whose skin was colored robin's egg blue.  I witnessed the joy of jumping rope in flip flops.

I love the way children can be present, honest, stripped down, and in the moment.  The way they can make mud pies, build sand castles, or string together beads as if it were the last, best, and most important activity on earth.  Fully absorbed, and with confidence that they are making a masterpiece. The way that they find more joy in discovering a little bug or a green worm crawling on the sidewalk than they do in playing with a fifty-dollar art set or a new scooter.  They are as good at seeing everything in nothing as we adults are good at seeing nothing in everything.  Overly dramatic or poetic?  Perhaps.  But, in many ways true.  And, after all, what's wrong with a little poetry from time to time?

After accepting that my body--having been traced, not drawn freehand--looks like this, I had the good sense to hire the same artist for a pedicure.

Keeping my promise to get more pedicures!

And, in all seriousness, this pedicure was the best I've ever had.  I will do it again!

A girl of many talents and many loves.  A girl after my own heart...

It was a good weekend.

A weekend that reminded me to make dandelion wishes:

To take evening swims despite super chilly waters (or at least to take photos of Nana and the kids doing it)...

To dance on tables at sunset.  (Dance on tables like a child, that is.  Eeks, that could have come across terribly wrong!)


To do what I like to do, all by myself, for hours on end, simply because I want to.

To play, not simply practice.

To enjoy the perfect thumbnail moon that watches over it all.

And to never question the use (or wearing) of hot magenta.

While we try to teach our children all about life,
Our children teach us what life is all about.
~Angela Schwindt