The Slice of an Orange

Mmm.....

Doesn't this look scrumptious? 






   This has been lunch or dinner more times than I can count this summer. In every variation.




Oh boy I love real food.

And beautiful food. 

As we sat down to dinner the other night, I grabbed my camera to snap a few shots of  the veggies waiting on a platter and a perplexed Abby asked:

Mom, why do you take pictures of food?

I smiled.

Good question.

So I told her a story.  I told the whole table a story.

Once upon a time, when I was a missionary, my companion and I were invited to a morning study session at the mission home.  This was a rare invitation.  When we arrived, our mission president led us into the kitchen where he offered us a plate of orange slices.  We each took one, and as we savored the first bite (because a good orange is out of this world!), President McKittrick held up one slice into a beam of sunlight streaming into the room above his head, and said:

Look! 

Have you ever seen the inside of an orange illuminated by the sunlight? 

We nodded our heads, No, and he moved forward, stretching his hand out towards us so that we could see up close.

Isn't it magnificent?!   He exclaimed, with a beaming smile.

The complexity, the intricacy, the amazing symmetry... 

And look at the color!!  

It's ingenious.         It's miraculous.     

This is the work of God.

The air below sunbeam pulsed with infectious passion and awe, our eyes fixed on fingertips and glistening wonder.



We all saw heaven that day in the slice of an orange.




I'm as novice as novice gets with a camera.  But I know enough to seize that moment when light hits nature just right-- beauty halting breath.  It colors my day every time.  Each snap of the camera ushering me into a blissful moment of dizzying abundance-- and gratitude

I've discovered through a lens that the magnificent and miraculous are always there- if we stop to notice. 

Even on our dinner plates! 

And ever since that fall morning in a Montreal kitchen, when the sunlight streams through and I move in close,

I see God-- in the details. 

Summer Snippets

And just like that, Summer's over.

Ours consisted of a little bit of everything.  June was filled with field trips, swimming and water parties by day and family kickball, tag and frisbee by dusk. 

July was reunions, vacation, parades and fireworks:

And far too much smoke.

And then there was August. 

The Dog Dog Days of August.

We had absolutely nothing on our schedule.  And I left it that way-- curious to see what the kids would come up with, and desperately needing some down time to think and study and plan.  The guilt of leaving my older children to fend for themselves won over occasionally and we headed to the pool, or a movie or spent a day in the kitchen here and there.  



My usual attire.



 But August has mostly been a whole lot of nothing that they got to turn into something. 

Like tent play:

and a backyard campout:

Lemonade stands and bake sales:

The Parade of Homes came to our corner of the woods this year-- right next door

Over the course of two August weeks, 8,000 people parked on our street for a tour. 

That's a lot of potential lemonade.

Abby sat out for most of the first stand, where her brother made record sales,

And then decided to get in on the action with some additional goods and goodies the following week:

Let's just say, it was mighty successful.

She's dedicated all of her proceeds to a future kitten.

Most of August has been sunny and HOT.  Too hot to play outside.  Too hot even for the pool. 

What to do when it's 102?

We kept an endless supply of crisp cold watermelon...

and hunkered down for some serious

S-S-Scrabble!

Oh, that Scrabble angst.

I love that my kids are at last old enough to play. It makes it super easy to win. (hee)

This summer saw the end of our hiking hiatus, now that the twins are old enough (and willing) to go the distance.  As long as we were in town, we managed a weekly hike- some we completed, some we didn't.  But all were like manna for my soul.

 



My sisters and me.

  

  Ahhhhh.  Summer.