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Photo challenge. Reflections: years later

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2005 or 2006 Engagement photo. Been a long time: all the years blend together!
Sibling photo_December 2006

When sorting through pictures last week, I found two pictures with interesting similarities between Chris and I, and the kids.

How in the world are both pictures in similar poses with a Christmas background?! They’re like mini versions of us. I’m sure when they get older, they’ll scream when they see this photo. “Ick,” they’ll say. It’s was the photographer’s idea…I think they have standard poses for siblings in that age range.

I will cherish these photos for a long time. I took pictures of pictures on my cell phone, rushing, in case we had to evacuate from the wildfires. Pictures are memories of times past, good and bad, and the thought of losing them made me nervous. Since the fire warning lifted, I can now scan the pictures slowly and do so without the cellphone shadow.

(These pictures I took from the original photos, so you’ll see the shadow on the latter half of the picture.)

The many memories I will forever treasure. 

K. Hooton

Thanks City Sonnet for hosting the photo a day challenge every month!

Categories: photo challenge

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singlikewildflowers

Welcome to my blog! My name is Esther and I'm so happy you are here. I'm an avid nature photographer and a daydreaming thinker. My posts revolve around photos of nature's beauty, homeschooling adventures with my 2 kids, sporadic reflections on my child's heart condition, Bible reading reflections, gardening feats, and other mish mash things. Hopefully you'll leave encouraged, pensive, or smiling at the simple things of life. Thank you for stopping by and hope you'll find some interesting posts to read!

54 replies ›

    1. Thank you Jennifer for your sweet comment!! But to be honest, like I mentioned to Linda in my earlier comment, we got professional help for hair, makeup, and pictures, Not the kids though…they went all natural. 🙂
      Thank the Lord we didn’t have to evacuate! It was a frightening prospect and I was a wreck for that whole week. What a brutal year 2020 is.
      I hope you are well and thank you for visiting my blog. Totally appreciate it!!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. You are so welcome! And yes, 2020 has been something ELSE. I can’t imagine the threat of losing your home on top of everything else, my goodness! The relief must have been huge when everything was okay. May God’s grace and peace surround and uphold you during these times. And visiting your blog was a treat. I also love the name of it so much!

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      2. You too!! I hope the rest of this year will be mellow for you and your family.
        I came up with my blog name with the help of a close friend: I knew I had to have the words “like wildflowers” but that was unavailable, so through brainstorming with my friend who is a jazz singer, she added “sing” to the first part.
        Have a great weekend and take care!

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  2. How fun is this – the kids will appreciate it when they get older. You two make a stunning-looking couple in your engagement photo. You were and still are very beautiful. The kids are adorable, but I know you meant to put on the caption 2016 since your engagement photo was 10 years before. 🙂

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    1. Thank you; I will take that compliment and store it into my long term memory!! The engagement photo was a long time ago and the magical work of getting professional help for hair, makeup, and photography. Those people do amazing things. Now that I’m jogging my years, it was 2006. We had Elliot in 2011…childless for 5 years so I can finish school. Caring for a baby would’ve made it too easy for me to quit and move on. That would’ve made me an ABD (All but dissertation) student; that would be depression when my friends were graduating.
      I thought it such a coincidence to find pictures with the resemblance and similar poses.
      They’ll probably scream when they see that photo as teenagers. “Why are we hugging each other?” “Ewwww, she’s my sister?” But when they’re older, I think they’ll appreciate it. Everything takes time!!

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      1. That is funny what they’ll say and yes, the similarities in the photos are just amazing. When I turned 40 years old, for my birthday, my mom got me a session at “Glamour Shots” which was an event where you go in and they do your hair, makeup, you pick some outfits there (themes) and they take your photo. It was a lot of fun and my mom ordered two of the photos which she had framed. They do take your looks to a whole other level! 🙂 When I turned 60 years old, I did this post and if you look at the header photo (albeit a little congested), I took pics from birth to most recent going in a clockwise direction. On the second line, to the far right, fourth and third photos from the right were the two “Glamour Shots” photos ordered. One was a red leather top and the other was a denim-colored tube top and denim jacket. They were not full-length shots, just to the waist and you wore your own pants:
        https://lindaschaubblog.net/2016/04/14/the-ultimate-throwback-thursday/

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      2. Linda, this is a great post of learning more about you through the years!! I remember Glamour Shots and always wanted to get one done. Now I know what you look like and as I thought, you are very pretty just like the words you write! Isn’t it a confidence boost to get your pictures taken with hair and makeup done?!
        My teen pictures are awful…I had a mouthful of braces too and an awkward teenager. I much prefer my mid 20s to now.
        Thank you for sharing your story in context to the times and how you felt with each milestone birthday. 🙂

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      3. Thanks very much Esther – that was a really fun post to put together. When I realized my birthday (which is very low key as I have no family, just me) would be on Thursday, I thought it would be fun to do a “Throwback Thursday” and look back at this monumental decade year. It was very fun doing the Glamour Shots shoot. I really enjoyed it. I have some teen photos at the really awkward stage too. I had braces in my late teens – not fun and they were the total wrap around each tooth, not just placed on top of the tooth. All metal and had two sets of head gear to pull up and back. I did not have to wear those in public, just at night or when home – whew!.

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      4. Fun post! You should keep adding to it for new birthdays.
        Braces. I had them way too long. The first orthodontist did an awful job, and my mom had me go to another one. All my growing up pictures have me in braces.
        The head gear sounds uncomfortable and awful for a teenager to endure. Thank goodness, it was only for the home

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      5. Yes, maybe amend it for the big half-decade and full decade birthdays? I had them on as an adult – had the meanest orthodontist ever who chastized me for squirming in a way-too-small chair and with two assistants hammering away making adjustments with their mallets and him standing by. We were about to move to the States and didn’t want the orthodontic work interrupted or finished by a different orthodontist so it was delayed and then my father was on afternoons or nights and didn’t want to tame to appointments and my mom didn’t drive and too far to walk. I got them on in college and they were on three long years. Yes, thank goodness the headgear was not out of the house. The rubberbands were all the time and I laughed and one popped into someone’s soup when I was waitressing!

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      6. Getting to the appointments are tricky when you’re a teenager. I would always be days or weeks late to the appointment since my mom was so busy with work. Sometimes, she’d just drop me off and pick me up later. There was a Christian bookstore next door, so I’d browse while waiting for her.
        I’m sure there are nice orthodontists out there, but we both got the meanies. My first one was indifferent and made a mean comment about my teeth and breath. I was only 13 years old. Geesh, made me reluctant to go back for further appointments.
        Oh my, what a story about the rubber band pooping into the customer’s soup!! That’s a moment to remember…for that person and you. What did you do or say when this happened? I hope it was not an awful encounter.

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      7. I was already an adult and much taller than the space allotted in the patient’s chair. I’d be shifting around trying to get comfortable and all patients were in one big room – three or four orthodontists and we could see other … as to patients/doctors/assistants – don’t really understand that, but that’s how they did it. The other orthodontists seemed nice – not Dr. Heisel. As to the customer, he and I both laughed and I was very embarrassed, but he was one of the “regulars” so I scurried away with the bowl of soup, dumped it down the drain and got him another one – told my boss and he went over and said although I was mortified it looked like he was okay and no charge for the meal. 🙂

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      8. The orthodontist set up was the same as mine. It lacks privacy and other people can hear what the doctor is saying. I also got 4 of my teeth pulled out the second time I got braces! Now that was a painful experience.
        Glad to hear that the soup experience did not scar you. If the customer was temperamental. it could’ve been a bad experience. Yay for everyone’s good humor!!

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      9. I got two teeth pulled out to get braces and I was an adult so they were permanent teeth. They were rear upper molars and were pulled out as I had wisdom teeth they wanted to use in their place. About three months after my braces came off, my bottom wisdom teeth started coming in and I had to have them removed immediately. Yes, a regular customer – whew!

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      10. Those extractions hurt so much! Mine were permanent teeth too. It was a weird feeling to have the dentist pull out four teeth in the span of five minutes. Unnatural too since they weren’t causing any pain. I got prescribed antibiotics but no pain medicine. My goodness, pain level was off the charts.
        And there’s the problem of wisdom teeth you mentioned. Yep, we keep the dentists busy and in business.
        I have permanent retainers on my bottom teeth…glued on in the back. Don’t even notice it’s been so long.

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      11. Yes, it did feel weird and I worried what if they didn’t come in properly after having teeth removed – yikes! They should have put a glued-in retainer on the bottom teeth. I had no trouble with the top retainer and wore it faithfully, but the bottom only fit over the four front teeth as one still receded a little and it slipped off all the time and sleeping in it was not good so I wore it except sleeping. He finally told me to just stop wearing it. I wear a bite guard on my top teeth and have done so for years. It is not only to keep me from grinding my teeth, but also to keep my teeth aligned – I got my braces off in 1979.

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      6. I have rolls of negatives too. I can’t part with them, so they’re sitting in a box. If we decide to organize it, it’s gotta start small. But this is not the year for me to do that. I scanned pictures for about 3 hours when we had the wildfires nearby, but there’s loads more. lol. How did we do it before digital?!
        Have a great weekend!

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      7. I don’t think we took as many photos before digital 😂. Right now I take hundreds and close to a thousand on a trip.
        I have negatives in two shoe box size of boxes by years. Perhaps I can do one hour at a time 😉.

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      11. I still have a camera like that in the storage. I think it still works but wouldn’t use it. I got a first cell phone with a battery bigger than a walky talky. I took it to ATT to recycle, the guy said I may want to keep it as antique so I brought it back.

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      12. Glad you kept it! It is an antique and a great conversation piece if you needed one. Also, you could show it to your granddaughters and maybe they’ll take it to school for show and tell when they’re older.
        I have an old cassette walkman that I showed my kids, and they looked at it as if it dropped from an unknown planet. lol

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      13. Oh, what a great idea to do show and tell at school. I surely will mention it to my daughter.

        I took part in writing about past time and I wrote about my first typewriter. Fortunately I found one online that looked just like the one I had.

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      15. My younger sister went to Egypt for five years when her husband was assigned there from the navy. When they moved back, the girls were asked to make presentation in the class.

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      16. Sorry for my late reply…
        Your nieces’ presentation of their life experiences in Egypt sounds cool! I’m sure they got asked a lot of questions from their classmates. And a great opportunity for them to reflect on their experiences while preparing their presentations.

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      17. Yeah, that was long time ago. They graduated from college now.

        If you take your kids on vacation, it would be a good idea to have them do a project or make a scrap book for their experience. That helps them to remember longer 🤣.

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      18. It’s a wonderful idea and a good keepsake.
        At their age, we mostly stick with pictures. Once they get older and more comfortable with writing on their own, they could do it. Right now it would be me doing more of the work. Since I’m their teacher, they try to get away with so much. Hard to maintain boundaries between mom and teacher.

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    1. Hi Jen, so sorry for my late reply. It’s been a hectic week with computer issues, kids adjusting to taking online classes and doing lessons with me, and me just frazzled from it all.
      I hope you had a much better week than me! So happy to hear you guys are finished with iReady and your son is on the right track. Give yourself a big pat on your back. Good job mama. The little ones will catch up…these little minds are figuring it all out and that takes time. I wish I remembered that more often with my kids. oyyyy.
      My dissertation was on exploring the experiences of college students going overseas to volunteer. Degree is in Curriculum and Teaching. Seems like eons ago…

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      2. God is good and in this time of uncertainties, it’s reassuring to know that He has a good plan and future for us. That Jeremiah 29:11 verse has been helpful to remember these days. He is a God of love; He’s not an evil overlord out to punish each and every little sin.
        Hope you have a great rest of the week!! hugs…

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