Eliot's Favorite Place: Our Backyard

Chris and I lived in an apartment for our first two years of marriage.  It was cozy, close to everything, and safe.  I am thankful for that apartment in that stage of our lives together, but I can't imagine not having a yard with kids.

Our front and back yards are Eliot's favorite toys.  The backyard had been off-limits for a little while due to the mess from the storm and the roofers.  Now that we're back out there, we're all enjoying it.

Whether exploring bugs,

Eating grapes off the vine with Dada,

Drawing with chalk,

Or playing sports,

Eliot is happiest when he is outside.  Fortunately, our yard satisfies that need when we don't have time to go to a park--though I'm sure as he grows older, he will want a larger yard.

He reminds me to take in the details and all of the little miracles that can be found amongst the grass.  Rocks, flower petals, grasshoppers, and grapes.

I suddenly have had a large influx of more photos lately.  I realized that I had been taking a lot of instagram pictures and not too many "real photos," which is something I didn't want to fall into.  I didn't even have an album set up for flickr for the month yet.  Then I remembered that so much of the past month has been spent on the road and at other people's houses, so I was busy chasing a toddler and not taking pictures.  And my memory card was mostly full....  So, I snapped back into the picture-taking routine and got a bunch of shots of Chris and his boy playing over the past few days.  I don't want to have any regrets and photos are so important to me!

Now if I could get my act together and take a video of Eliot playing with his trains.  He amazes me!  He sets up his track, says "train," and makes different noises for different carts (according to Eliot, the one with the hippo goes "chomp chomp" and the one with the lion roars while the rest go "choo choo").  He's so smart.