Lanaya Elizabeth Visits and Takes Phoebe's Senior Pictures

A visit from our oldest! 

We were so glad she made the time to come spend with us while Amos was away at a conference. I didn't get many pictures, but we had quite a pleasant time with her here.

We played games (she kills at SET), watched movies, visited with Mimi and Papa, went to church together..... She did lots of knitting. :-) She's working on a wrap for her friend and also on a new summer top pattern. The process of coming up with a new pattern and getting it vetted by outside testers is fascinating to hear about. 

On Sunday night Phoebe and Harrison went to the youth group Super Bowl party in town, and Phillip, Liz and I stayed home and watched the Super Bowl for the first time in a very long time. I went to town to get snacks, and then we watched a very low-key game and half-time. Even though it wasn't super thrilling, I thought it was a very good evening at home participating in a nationwide pastime ~ kind of anthropological.

Lanaya Elizabeth used her awesome photography skills (and Amos' very nice camera) to take Phoebe's senior pictures. 

I'm glad we have so many cats around for props. Phoebe is our resident animal wrangler. She knows how to tame them and they love her.

One of her favorite poems is "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

No thing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Phoebe painted this still life last year following a Udemy class. Her artistic streak runs deep. She sees things and understands things on a visceral level that I can't comprehend. 

We've had good discussions this year about books she's read for school - Crime and Punishment and Till We Have Faces - and she makes connections and communicates them in a way that amazes me because they go beyond what my brain connects. 

She's an old soul who loves antiques.

We had to keep some of her crazy expressions because they're so classically her. 

Hand sewing is a favorite pastime.

Proud of you, Phoebe! Congratulations on your senior year!

A vibrant winter sunrise.