Xingfu means happy and blessed in Chinese. Even though 2014, the year I started this blog, was a busy and, at times, difficult year that is the word I thought of for this space. Mama not because I have many children but because I seem to fall into a caregiving role. Sometimes I feel like Mama to the world.
The name XingfuMama means Happy Mama with undertones of being blessed.
Where does the time go? I received this picture of my son last week on WeChat (Chinese equivalent of Facebook):
These seem like just yesterday, and the day before:
For Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Anything Related to Music
Welcome to week 1 of the Pull up a Seat Challenge in 2019. Take a load off and share a favorite perch by linking your post to this one, either with a comment or ping-back. For more detailed directions go to Pull Up a Seat page.
Thank you to everyone who participated this week. It is always fun to see the variety of ideas. If I didn’t get to your site please forgive me: I’ve been in Arizona at a location where the internet is the worst I’ve experienced since being in a remote village in Kenya with a cell phone modem seven years ago. I think I got all of the posts for last week into the list below so you can check them out easily.
Here are my pictures for this week. I’ve been traveling to Arizona with my father.
Welcome to week 1 of the Pull up a Seat Challenge in 2019. Take a load off and share a favorite perch by linking your post to this one, either with a comment or ping-back. For more detailed directions go to Pull Up a Seat page.
Thank you to everyone who participated this week. It is always fun to see the variety of ideas.
I am spending a lot of time going through and organizing photos from this past year. Here are a few seats from our trip in north England (to see the picture larger and read the caption click on the image.)
Our walk along Hadrian’s Wall Path last summer took us from Solway Firth on the west coast of England to (after a short metro ride from Wallsend) to the North Sea at Whitley Bay.
At the start of the 12 day walk we were up late (sunset was around 10 pm) and early, due to a combination of jet lag and adrenaline. The day after the walk we just went out after breakfast.
Today is the last day of 2018. A year that seemed to both drag on and fly by. I looked back through my archives to figure out where it went. Going back over things, I realized that it has been a really wonderful year. The stress of Grandma’s hospitalization and fussing over holidays this past couple of months had driven from my mind the many wonderful and beautiful things that happened and that we saw and did, big and small.
January was just January-short days with a little sun and a lot of clouds.
February has two of my nieces birthdays just a couple of days, but several years, apart, They turned one and seventeen in 2018. The hat was a birthday gift from my husband, who knits, and I have a matching one.
More clouds, and a few mountains:
A short visit from my son and his friend (over Chinese New Year):
A big ship-load of cranes:
In March spring began to creep in, amid some interesting clouds:
One unusually warm day we took an outing to Washington Park Arboretum, in spite of living in Seattle most of my life I had never been. If you are ever in town you should go.
More flowers and clouds led up to St. Patrick’s Day:
On the equinox we went to Solstice Park and watched the sunset.
Our plans for my grandmother’s 95th birthday were thrown off by an outbreak of Noro-virus. We couldn’t have the party we had planned at her facility, but a few hours of phone calls yielded a wheelchair van we could rent and we went out. Fortunately (?) she had had and recovered from the virus a week before her birthday so she could go out…after all 95 is kind of a big deal.
Spring really kicked into gear:
In the second half of the month we went to China to visit our son. It was my husband’s first trip so we flew in and out of Beijing so he could see a couple of the more famous sites.
My son lives in Shouguang, which is a small city that is part of Weifang Prefecture in Shandong Province. While visiting we took in the Weifang International Kite Festival:
and Shouguang’s claim to fame, the International High-Tech Vegetable Expo:
Less famous, but very lovely is Shouguang’s garden of peonies. We spend a lovely morning there and came home with some fans painted by this gentleman:
May had big changes for me. A little one was that Amie Lu, a gift from one of our son’s co-workers, joined our household. Amie Lu is a safe travel deer. We named her Amie Lu because Amie is friend in French, and the name of her creator, Lu means deer in Chinese.
When we got home from China, my dear friend, Sam (my father’s dog) had lymphoma and had to be put to sleep, she was obviously failing, but it still broke my heart. I still tear up when I think about her.
A new camera: my dearly beloved Nikon P610 started to have a problem with the zoom switch in China and I needed to find a new camera before our trip to England in June. I was in a hurry so I had time to learn how to use it before our June 5 departure.
The new camera made May a month of learning for me. I took a whole lot of pictures trying to learn to take advantage of at least a few of the wide range of features before our trip.
June was really a highlight of this year, and decade, we took a trip that we have talked about on and off for the thirty one years we were married: We walked the Hadrian’s Wall National Train in northern England. We had all kinds of weather and beautiful scenery…and I made it. The walk ended on our 32nd wedding anniversary and we are still married! A few times along the way I wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew…but I made it. We ended the trip with a few days at York and a visit to Kew Gardens.
Since Amie Lu is a safe travel deer, we took her with us. She rode mostly in my pocket, but occasionally demanded to be let out.
After two big trips with just a month between we were ready for some home time. The Puget Sound area in summer is (in my biased opinion) a “world class” beauty spot. I always try to spend July and August at home because, while some places might be as nice, I really feel like no where is actually better. We ended the month with our annual week at Mount Rainier. I love actually staying at Paradise because you can go out in the mornings before the crowds ascend.
July brought into our lives Max, my father’s new puppy. Sweet and affectionate, and the personification of energy, she burst in on us and is well on her way to ruling the roost, because, while she is smart and learning, my dad is neither teaching nor learning. Oh well, it worked with Sam.
Again this year there was a period with a lot of smoke from wildfires in British Columbia. My heart really goes out to the people closer to these mind-boggling blazes. Otherwise it was just summer.
The approach of fall.
This is the month I started the Pull up a Seat Challenge. It has been great fun to see all of the posts that the one, simple theme elicits.
October had two parts, the first three weeks of it I was in Shouguang, Shandong Province, China visiting my son. It was a quiet, just wander around and be in a regular Chinese place sort of trip where I didn’t try to do anything ambitious.
On returning home I drifted along not quite in this time zone until, a few days after I got home we got the call at about 1 am that my grandmother was being taken to the hospital. That started the second real part. Sitting in hospital rooms trying to decipher the technical gibberish and make arrangements, but mostly just waiting.
And fall was going on in full colorful swing during all of the nerve-racking lack of excitement.
In November I went downtown, shocking. I rarely do it even though it takes about 20 minutes on buses that run about 20 minutes apart. It is both familiar and intimidatingly changed. As always I decided that I want to get familiar with it again…it used to be my town. We’ll see if I do better at that in 2019 than I did this year.
Otherwise the month was Thanksgiving preparations (we built a ramp so Grandma could come) and the usual late fall prettiness (fall is my favorite time of year).
In November I also started a rather ambitious get my pictures organized and find an efficient workflow project that has made it, at least to start with, less easy to just get a post put together.
The cat has learned to open the laundry shoot, and a couple of other cupboard doors. It is a bit unnerving to hear the thump when I know where everyone is supposed to be. I guess it is her way of letting us know that the attempts to have a real guest room available (it was where she has a bed) are not to her liking.
“and so this is Christmas…” and winter.
Christmas Eve the air was exceptionally clear.
My guard dog didn’t prevent Santa from visiting:
Now we are hunkered down trying to keep the animals calm during New Year’s fireworks. I don’t make resolutions, but I do try to make improvements. Maybe I’ll get my new organization system to work, and figure out a more efficient way to work with RAW files…or maybe I’ll eat a bit less and get more exercise. Who knows? Certainly not I.
Lens Artists Photo Challenge: Review of 2018
Welcome to week 17 of Pull up a Seat. Take a load off and share a favorite perch by linking your post to this one, either with a comment or ping-back. For more detailed directions go to Pull Up a Seat page.
Thank you to everyone who participated this week. It is always fun to see the variety of ideas.
Here are my contributions for the week, taken last summer in northwest England in and around Carlisle.
I haven’t had much time this week, preparing for the holiday, to either do photography or pull together an Advent 3 post.
This week’s squares, somewhat late, except that I decided to light my fourth candle early, on the solstice instead of waiting for Sunday. It just seemed like the right time to add some light.
Maybe next week I’ll be more pulled together…maybe.
Welcome to week 16 of Pull up a Seat. Take a load off and share a favorite perch by linking your post to this one, either with a comment or ping-back. For more detailed directions go to Pull Up a Seat page.
Thank you to everyone who participated this week. It is always fun to see the variety of ideas.
Here is my offering for this week, pictures from Bath England taken last summer.
One thing that fascinated me when I researched about the Great Wall of China is that it was used more for communication than for separation. In the days before cell phones, messages could be sent quickly over long distances along the wall using smoke, flares and flags.
These are photos from the reconstructed area called Mutianyu. It is less crowded than Badaling, which is more easily accessed from Beijing. As I mentioned we had a private driver to our hotel as part of Wild Great Wall’s self-guided tour so we did not have to figure out how to get back to the city.
Comparing from the photos I posted last week, Which Way. You can see that the reconstruction and maintenance are a monumental endeavor. The wall is along the crest of the hills and the area is not accessed by roads, the materials are heavy and there is a lot of territory to cover.
Traveling this section there are a lot of stairs, steep and uneven in many places.
For Son of a Beach’s Which Way Photo Challenge
For Wordless Wednesday
Mainly through the lens of a Nikon
gardening enthusiast & amateur photographer
~wandering through life in my time machine...you never know where it will stop next~
Sharing a world of joy with photos and words
Dil se Dil tak...
come on in, stay a while, but first wipe your feet (I just had the floor done)
Capturing the beauty of God's creation through the lens of a camera
Various Things On My Mind
My two cents about travel, life and easing into retirement
Life lessons from the beeline
My Journey through Still Life Photography
Flower photos and the mind
Images brought to you by Bren and Ashley Ryan
"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
Creative Exploration in Words and Pictures
The Cricket Pages
Expressing Thought Through Photography
