The Holland Family Blog » Erica Holland Photography and Family Happenings

Halloween has come and gone, and while Annika is disappointed, I am not shedding any tears. Halloween is fun because I have three little girls who love dressing up, but I am ready to move on to better things.

Like Thanksgiving, for example. Isn’t it fun to have a whole month where we focus on things we are thankful for? We need 12 of those months. As I look around me, at my generation in particular, I am struck by what I see as a sense of entitlement and a lack of gratitude. This is not to say that this applies to everyone, or that there aren’t problems in our world and society and that we shouldn’t work hard to make our communities and our world a better place. But I think we could also benefit from recognizing how good our lives are, from acknowledging the sacrifices that our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents made for their future, for us. We have much to be thankful for.

Today I am thankful for a little girl who sometimes acts her age, but most of the time rises to my high expectations for her. Especially when it comes to being a big sister, she is mature beyond her years. Annika became a big sister when she was hardly more than a baby herself. While we have our challenges, most of the time she is patient, selfless, and loving towards her two little sisters. There are not very many things that make me as happy as seeing the three of them happy together. I am grateful for the big sister in our house.

Because I missed all of you…

I haven’t posted a blog in a long time, and I’ve been wanting to. Not that I feel really obligated to, or guilty about not doing it. I understand that as life goes, blogging is rightfully low on my priority list, below feeding my children, listening to conference, cleaning my house, helping Brad with applications, talking to my family . . .  you get the idea. But I missed it all the same. I enjoy the process of reflecting and writing and sifting through my thoughts, I suppose.

I haven’t been short on things to write about either. Only a few short days after Nani left, my parents flew in. They stayed for a couple of weeks, and we spent a long weekend in Belgium. I have hundreds of pictures that I would like share (and that’s really not an exaggeration.) But editing pictures has fallen down my priority list as well, and so I haven’t shared anything here for weeks and weeks. Then yesterday I was looking through my photo folders for something else, and realized that I had this series of edited pictures that I never shared. They were just sitting there, asking me post a blog. So, here they are:

In the few days in between our parents’ visits, we had a nice warm evening (one of the last of the year, I think). After dinner we pulled out the little barbecue grill and roasted marshmallows on our patio. This wasn’t our first time roasting marshmallows there, and I hope it wasn’t the last, but it was one I wanted to remember. The sun was shining, Brad was home from work, and everyone was happy. I was happy, standing in the background watching my little family around the make-shift fire pit. We ended the evening with only one burned finger, and plenty of sticky ones. Winter is getting closer every day and soon I’ll feel like the sun hardly makes an appearance at all. I’m glad I’ll have memories like this one to pull out on especially cold, overcast days.

Happy fall, everyone!