i’ve been feeling a lack of passion lately…towards life and creativity and all the little things in the nooks and crannies of my soul that define me. in a funk, i guess, and it has disturbed me to the utmost that i could not find the means to bring back the flame. i haven’t cooked as much. i haven’t crafted. i haven’t written pages and pages in my journal like i so often do when i’m finding passion in life. i can’t cry and crying is literally part of my heritage…i’m a cryderman for pete’s sake. i can’t even barely put an outfit together and i’m usually drawn to my closet like a painter’s palette. i think it’s partly a letdown of all this creative energy before the holidays and the fact that i never made these life-changing new year’s/new decade-of-my-life resolutions so many people do. just been so entirely…blah.

somehow, the pieces are coming together though and tonight i felt my flame reignited. being with my sister, my nieces, dinner with girlfriends last night that turned into a six-hour soul-cleansing…

pumping up the tires of the jogging stroller (after hanging from a dusty peg in the garage for months) and running again…the first time since before the baby belly…and i’m talkin’ running as a family…lainey and latte in the double jogger, brandyn running a few feet ahead, and brett and i, our feet and breaths in complete sync…pounding the pavement in the dark, with the moon overhead……and it feels incredible.

…waking up with lainey between us this morning and realizing…she fills me with so much happiness, i don’t even notice disappoinments in life anymore.

and then tonight…my sister and i loaded the car with a herd of kids and headed to the beach…for a sunset God prepared especially for us. it wouldn’t end. the tourists clapped when the yellow ball of fire bowed beneath the horizon. they packed up and went home after it ended…but what they didn’t know was that it was just beginning. minutes after it set, the fireworks began…fireworks of pink and blue and orange.

my sister kept saying, “i can’t believe this. it just won’t end.” the kids packed their ziplocks full of shells for their friends at home. lainey didn’t cry even after the waves kicked her butt and soaked the cuffs of her sandy jeans. we drank hot coffee in the dim light and said nothing. and i felt it…the flames of passion reignited.

i don’t know why i forget from time to time that passion exists all around me. all it took was a trip to the beach tonight to find it.

(okay…so she cried a little when the waves knocked her down)

oh, so at peace tonight. don’t even know how it happened but it did.

enjoying the keepin-this-torch-burnin‘ things. ~k

it was one of those days we won’t forget. one of those days where i can actually taste a smidgen of the magic of what would be if she lived down here. one of those days straight from my dreams…where our babies are together and we take pictures of them running through sprinklers and teaching lainey to dance…where my sister and & i make dinner together and pause, mid-stir to break some crazy moves and sing into our wooden spoons. and then, somewhere in this dream, we all end up in the bathroom, for no special reason, and we dance to the killers and do fabulous make-overs on each other. and we make an atrocious mess…but it doesn’t matter because we are laughing. and dancing. and our nails have red nail polish bleeding two inches outside our nail bed because we let the babies paint them. but to us…it’s fabulous. it’s all fabulous.

oh, and it’s not a dream.
it really happened. today.

oh, and my heart just skips a beat when i see her lay on her tummy to make her masterpiece. she is the coolest kid. and if she became a street artist, that’d be okay. i just love her.

bwah ha ha…here come’s tarzan’s wife…out of the jungle.

hmmmm….wonder what tomorrow will bring.

…enjoying the if-she-only-lived-near-me things. ~k

so, the deliciousness has begun.
deliciousness as in little girls spilling out of the house and little hands fighting over lainey. deliciousness such as sister photo shoots …

…and making choclate eclair cake.

deliciousness like dinner with friends and watching kids play together…happily.

minus running smack into a bedpost that semi-rendered a concussion. no not that… (but the re-enactment of it without the concussion part was a little bit delicious)

…and there’s so much more deliciousness to come. ‘cuz today was just the appetizer. everyone should be so lucky to have a sister…and this kind of sister. i love her so much and being with her, especially when we’re separated by a huge bundle of states, ignites all these little fuses i forgot i had.

…enjoying the how-funny-is-it-that-we-actually-used-to-scratch-each-others’-eyes-out things. ~k