Saturday, August 2, 2008

This was my sixth year riding the PMC, and my fourth year to include the Huckleberries ride (which makes it a three-day event). Those previous three years, I was totally exhausted on Saturday morning from the hard ride on Friday.

This year was different...

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Corinne, Lauren and I went to Isaiah Drake's birthday party on Monday. He's one year old. Monday was actually his mom's (Michelle's) birthday, his is today, but we were mostly celebrating his because it was his first.

I took 134 pictures (good grief), and managed to whittle that down to “only” 104 before uploading them all to Facebook. The flickr set contains a more manageable 55 pictures: I recommend the slideshow.

The party (cookout) was held at Ben & Mandi Isbell's house on the Bradford River. Games, canoeing, lots of food, cute kids, friends, and loads of presents for Isaiah. Ben even started a big bonfire on the ground near the deck (but more than one story below) that made some of the kids a little nervous.

(If you're reading this in email, make sure you see it on the web for the pictures.)

Someday Lauren is going to be old enough to realize that not every little girl spends a big piece of her life in front of a camera. That not all of her little friends have their pictures posted on public web sites for family and friends — and strangers — to gawk at.

That not every little girl has a crazy, doting "Opa."

I hope this works out. I hope she grows up knowing that she's beautiful no matter how she looks. That even though not every picture is perfect, she's always beautiful.

I hope, in fact, that she can be the kind of girl who is confident enough in herself to be honest and comfortable with the camera, without posing. Like she does now. Not beautiful like a model, but beautiful like someone that everybody wants to love, someone who loves and gives freely.

She won't become that person just because my camera can't take its eye off her, obviously, but I hope it helps (thinking about the attitude of the people behind the camera). Confident, comfortable, happy, warm, and full of brightness. We're off to a good start, but there are big obstacles in her path...

For anybody who cares (which I believe is no small group), I've put up a bunch of new pictures of my favorite little model, the cutest baby girl in the whole house, Miss Lauren Deane.

As you can see, she's pretty happy about it. She knows her fans have been missing her.

Can you believe she turns five months old in just a week? I can't.

Last night, Corinne and I brought Lauren to the Westerly Summer Solstice Festival. She's three and a half months old and has no clue what all the stuff is, but we figured it would be fun anyway. :-) We were right, but mainly because we met Ellyn, Katie, Tom and Gramma there.

The highlights of the festival included the best smile picture of Lauren (so far) as seen here; a really tasty sausage and peppers grinder; the rock wall that Tom couldn't climb often enough; the beautifully restored, antique fire truck owned by the Westerly Fire Department, and the local karate school's street show.

I took lots of pictures, so go peruse.