Five Minutes.

There’s a picture on my camera I want to tell you about. I’m going to write about it for five minutes.

Ready?

Set!

Go!

I didn’t want to go outside again. It’s too cold and I’m too warm-blooded to want to wrap up the kids in layers and plastic baggies and hats and gloves and boots. (Or maybe I’m just too lazy?)

So, we put water and food coloring inside a squirt bottle. I wrote the kids’ names in the snow to their squeals of delight. Then it was their turn. I let Asa hold the squirt bottle of blue while Lydia did a spray bottle of purple. I wish you could feel their excitement–doing something that feels, I don’t know, maybe wrong? Throwing splashes of color on the vast bright whiteness?

Asa’s little body in his Buzz Lightyear pajamas–not knowing at all what we were doing, but still wanting to be involved. Just letting the water drip, drip, drip out of the end. His little pants leg pushed up on one side. His body in a squat.

And Lydia, the busy big sister bee. She wants the squirt bottle, she wants to make a smiley face, write her name and help Asa all at the same time. She’s squealing with delight while greedily eyeing her brother’s dye bottle.

And I’m going to another door, to peek my camera out. To look and see what else I can see. To get a new view of my children. To capture a moment that we might see every year from now on. Or maybe never see again.

It surprises me the emotion of small moments. The longing I have in each moment while they revel with their head-first, full-on  abandon.

Yeah, I wish you could have felt their excitement.

:: :: ::

STOP.

That was it. My picture in 5 minutes. Your turn. Can you write for 5 minutes straight? Bring us into a picture? Bring us into a brief moment of time? Try it! Then link up to the sparkling Gypsy Mama!

{confession: I looked at the clock only once–when it was 20 seconds to the end. And I did go back and add “in the snow”. That’s all. Whew, I feel better!}