March 21. Tuesday Night.

Hi Journey.

Sometimes I look at my blessings and just love life; love its fullness, its richness as it wraps itself around me week by week. Once in a while I pause long enough to reflect on my life to this point (I'm almost at the end of the first quarter, J!) and realize just how well-off I really am.

I had a chance to engage in a smidge of reflecting on the flight back, last night. Rolled into bed sometime after One, but I wasn't too growly this morning. No Bloom Team meeting today; just paperwork and a few follow-up calls. I deliberately kept face-time client meetings off the calendar today. I was so drifty when I met with Pat Scutari after coming back from Carm's at Christmas it just seems better to leave open a day to decompress a bit.

Wow, what a great time the way my trip ended up. I promised I was going to tell you about Dad's party, Journey. Let's start there.

Sunday night Mom and Carm brought out a cake with 31 lit candles on it—then each of the twins and Cora came parading into Carm's kitchen with their own mini-cake with ten lit candles. My dad laughed so hard I thought he was going to crack open. You know how boys are with fire, Journey. Their gaze kept ping-ponging back and forth from the candles to the carpet in front of them, walking with measured, ring-bearer paces as they couriered their cargo up to the counter.

Once the cakes all arrived the kids bowed to a round of applause from the grown-ups. And of course my dad made a big show of sucking air into his lungs and then blowing hard but missing all four of the cakes, so that he invited each grandkid to sit up on the stools at the counter and help him blow out those candles, which they happily did.

And yes, he loved the Jaguar Mark IX Kodak-collage we made. Casey brought it out to him and set it up on the counter, next to the cakes. Grandpa invited each of the kids to show exactly which photos they picked out and even elicited a brief explanation from each in turn as to why and how they chose to place their photos in exactly those positions.

Fantastic salesmen and clever grandfathers are all good listeners.

The kids beamed. Just beamed. Everybody loves to be paid attention to, Journey. And right there on Sunday night in my sister's kitchen I saw fresh evidence of why our Snapshot sessions work. People love to talk about the images of their family. I suppose deep down inside every person lurks the vestiges of an ancestral storyteller sitting around a night-time fire on those African plains.

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