Project 365: Day 5 (January 5)

Helmond, NL to Brussels, BE to Washington, DC to Cleveland, OH to Green, OH. It was a very long, thankfully uneventful trip home.

Project 365: Day 4 (January 4)

Helmond, NL. Packing up the goodies for the long trip home. I bought lots of Dutch baking supplies for my pantry.

Project 365: Day 3 (January 3)

Paris, France. Niels took me back to the spot where he first proposed 45 months ago.

Project 365: Day 2 (January 2)

The Louvre in Paris, France. Daniel finally takes his first nap in a stroller. Apparently the art didn't impress him as much as it did us.

Project 365: Day 1 (January 1)

Helmond, NL. Daniel "helps" in Oma's kitchen. I spent most of the day in bed nursing a doozy of a headache.

Project 365

In a few weeks, it will be seven years since I sustained my brain injury. Since that time, I have almost always had a camera with me--either my regular camera or the slightly-more-subtle phone camera. One of the tricks I learned in therapy was to take pictures of things as a way of making up for my shoddy memory. I've had many, many strange looks over the years as I've taken pictures of items at the store, signs to help me remember where I parked, and other random things. Once Daniel came along, it seemed more acceptable for me to take random shots, so I felt free to take more pictures.

Over on Facebook, I noticed several of my friends mention something called Project 365. In a nutshell, Project 365 is a photo challenge where participants take (and post) a picture a day for a full year. The idea is not so much to take posed pictures, but to instead capture random, candid shots that give a view into one's everyday life. Needless to say, I love this idea because it makes my clicking habit seem more normal.

I've started posting my pictures on Facebook, but for those of you not there, and hopefully, as a way to get me blogging again, I'll repost my pictures here.

Oh, and Happy 2011!

Thankful

The creative part of my brain is still maddeningly-lacking lately, thus the continued lack of posts. My headache is much more tolerable, and I'm able to (mostly) keep up with Daniel and put food on the table, but that's about it for now. Daniel has officially dropped his second nap, which I miss terribly because that was my nap, too. By 4 or 5pm, both D and I are ready for Niels to come home. Niels is so good with Daniel and they have a good time together for a few hours each night while I get to rest.

We just celebrated Thanksgiving in Arizona with my mom and gramma, along with Niels' parents. It was really fun to have everyone together, and I'll let NIELS write those updates! :-)

I was thinking about the past 12 months, and even though I've had a few bonus health issues to contend with this year, I'm so thankful for all the good God is allowing me to experience. Top of the list, of course, is my wonderful family.

Niels continues to be an amazing husband. My life is so much better because he takes a lot of stress off my shoulders that my brain functions better. Not great, but definitely much better than it ever was before we married. He provides well for our family, we're a great team, he's my advocate to doctors and people who don't know or want to know more about my brain injury, and he's a great daddy to Daniel (who adores me).

Daniel turns two next week, and he is such a joy. He has a sweet, easy-going personality (most of the time!), is silly, and so smart! We continue to be surprised by how much and how quickly he's learning new things. His current obsessions are Elmo, trains, airplanes and the alphabet. He started to recognize letters at 19 months, and by 22 months, he knew all 26 letters by sight and sound. He was sick last month and we had to take him to hospital. He shocked one of the nurses when he sounded out all the letters of the word "radiology!"

Maybe I need to post some more of his silly stories here.