driftwood & lake glass

it's time this little blog featured a very dear person in my life, my aunt laura. i admire the love that she has for God, family, simple pleasures & enjoying life's moments completely. when she tells a story, you feel the emotion as if you had been there yourself & that shows how much she soaks in life & lives fully. she gives great hugs & has given me an appreciation for meaningful ones. over the years, during my visits, she & i have burned a path along the lake from our bike rides... taking in many stunning views & sunrises, walking the beach looking for sea glass, sitting on the rocks talking about life, dreaming of renovating a small little shed on the lake into my summer studio & commenting on the architecture of the homes we pass.  among many things we share a birthday, love for good food & all things Italian, passion for photography and an appreciation for quiet moments. i admire the way she loves her husband unconditionally, raises her children & takes care of her family and i'm blessed to have her as one of the women in life that i look up to.

once upon a beautiful evening, aunt laura and i found ourselves alone for dinner & decided to have a picnic on the beach. so we made some delicious mango salsa & some black bean & corn salad which we then packed into backpacks with crackers, hummus, bananas, beach towels & bags for beach treasures. we rode our bikes along the long & leisurely route we usually take & finally ended up at the beach park. dinner was fresh, simple & oh-so-yummy, accompanied by bursts of conversation & a whole lot of peaceful quiet while enjoying the view. after enjoying our bananas as desert, ugandan style, we abandoned our picnic spot & split up to scour the beach for polished pieces of driftwood. i quickly got distracted looking for lake glass & found myself alternating between looking for the two.
we decided to use the self-timer on my camera to get a photo of the two of us... and then that turned into several self-timed shots as aunt laura so enjoyed watching me run back & forth, scrambling up & down from boulders & skirting tide pools to try to make it before the timer went off:) t'was quite worth it in the end & we cherish the images we got.
the sun finally started to come out a bit as it set and while aunt laura played around with my camera, i brushed through shells & pebbles on the search for more sea glass. we established ourselves on one of the boulders just a few minutes before sunset & watched as the hot pink sliver melted beneath the horizon. such a beautiful evening!

PROOF for eleanna that i was about to- and did -eat a whole banana for the first time since getting home from Africa! It wasn't the same... but it wasn't terrible either:)

not quite making it before the timer went off!

all of the following images are products of aunt laura's talent:)