stop and look

I was thinking about how when my family is on vacation, or visiting friends that we don't see often, or doing something unusual, we tend to slow down. Little things are funnier, we do stupid stuff and get a kick out of it...we SLOW DOWN.

And then we get back from the vacation and everyone gets back into their bazillion-mile-an-hour routine.
We start creating invalid excuses, such as "I'm too busy", "I will finish this first", or "I'm too tired".

The thing is, we have to stop and look. If we don't we miss the little things.

For example: my older sister was 12 weeks pregnant with her second baby, had sever morning sickness, her 20-month-old baby girl loves to yank chains, and her lab-cross puppy loves to chew.

My older sister was craving bagels.

I had bagels.

I could have said "I need to go home and do homework, practice piano, do laundry, read the passage for Bible Study tonight, blah, blah, blah..." 
But when I texted her telling her of the bagels, and she got excited, which never happens when she isn't feeling good, what could I do?
So off to big sister's I went. Later, she told me that my niece was running around the house yelling "Nam! Nam!", which is little Jo's nickname for me.

I could have made excuses. I could have tried to get something done on my never-ending to-do list.
Instead, though, I did something for someone else. I slowed down, and breathed and enjoyed my sister and brother-in-law and niece for an hour and was completely blessed. Sometimes we have to stop and look.

Because if we don't, we miss out on the precious, priceless things that life hides from our overview glances. We miss the things that don't come into focus right away. We have to look for some things. And if we don't, we never see them.

So, these pictures - most of them, I took them thinking "These are going to be cow-pie pictures because of __________". (And the careless part of me took the picture anyway...) Fortunately, I was wrong! They turned out just fine... :D Enjoy!

Kona was on my lap when I took this...I didn't think it was going to turn out, because this lens doesn't zoom out AT ALL. But it worked! And turned out very nice, if I do say so myself... ;)

You know, for this picture being taken from the car, it turned out pretty good...

What can I say? I'm a messy cook ...I thought the spilled popcorn kernels looked pretty...

A glorious Montana view, just for you!