Sara Montgomery Photography: Dandelion Bouquets

When we had our first daughter, I waited and waited for the tulips to bloom. I just could not wait to take her there. So, of course, the minute we were invited by our great friends to head up to Mount Vernon for the tulip festival we were out the door. The tulips are something else. It is hard to explain how amazing it is to gaze out onto fields of endless flowers. We put Ava in a little coat and hat that we had purchased for her before she was born. I think that she only wore it this one time! I would say it was a waste of money, but I love the shots of her in it.

Ava has been pulling me back to reality these days, and for a 4 year old, she has really gotten me to think about a lot of different things. These days, our family has not been making it to church as regularly as I would like. I use most every excuse in the book, but my main one lately goes something like this..."the kids are too squirmy, I spend too much time trying to prevent the markers from ending up in the Bibles and chasing down Cheerios from three rows ahead of us..." We all leave flustered and I wonder if it was worth the effort (at least that was the experience on Easter).

Here is the amazing part... a few days ago, the kids were playing with play dough and Ava brought her masterpiece to me for me to guess what it was. It looked like a giant somewhat flattened mound of play dough with two balls of dough on top of it (one ball bigger than the other). I had no idea what it was, so when I gave up on guesses she said, "Mom, this is Heaven and on top is Jesus behind a stone. God made Jesus alive for me." Then, she just walked back to her table and started another project. WOW... I guess she was listening!

From that day, I have just been watching her and listening to her in a different way, it has really been fun. We have been talking about flowers a lot as we notice them popping up around the yard and neighborhood. The girls love to pick flowers and give them to me, mostly dandelions... I suppose we have easiest access to them, and people typically do not care if you pick those out of their yards! As the girls run to them yelling, "Look Sunflowers!" I found myself correcting them, "Nope, those are just dandelions..." Do you know what I realized? Why am I correcting them. Why do they have to look at dandelions like weeds instead of beautiful flowers? There are so many things around us that we do not celebrate and appreciate... These Dandelions are just as beautiful as a tulip to the girls.... they should be celebrated as well.