Farewell To The Old Chair

The other day I sat down in the rocking chair in the boys room, which has been becoming increasing more dilapadated for a while now, and something went "crunch." This was not the someone-left-a-goldfish-cracker-under-the-cushion kind of crunch it was more like a metal-giving-way-under-too-much-pressure sort of crunch. I stood up and the top portion of the chair fell over to the side - not good. So the chair had to go but I couldn't send it off without a pictorial tribute. I know I'm overly sentimental about such things but what can I say this chair has been in my family for a long time - for about as long as I've had a family in fact. Here I am propped up in the chair at four weeks of age - I told you the chair was old!

Here I am again at 18 months sipping on my bottle and sporting my footy pj's. Those were the days.

After David and I turned our guest room into a nursery we needed a rocker for the room. (This one was actually my second choice but the first one I had in there was in even worse shape so we brought this one out of storage and put it in there.) This is the earliest pic I could find of the rocker at our house. Nathan is about a year old.

The rocker was the location of night-night story time for quite a while.

Here's a couple of my favorite pics of the boys in the chair together in the past.

I wanted a few final pics of the chair but I wanted to do it in an artsy sort of format. I have seen a pic, it may be an album cover, with a red couch in the middle of a big green field - very cool, chic, artsy, dramatic, etc. I wanted those type pics but the best I could come up with was the old chair in my front driveway missing it's bottom section - oh well. At least the boys look nice.

In my first pics I had our house as the backdrop.

The only problem was the boys couldn't look at the camera because the sun was in their eyes.

Take two: I turned the chair so that the boys could actually look at me. What a concept.

I took some solo shots of each boy. Benjamin sort of cooperated. He's used to his mom being a photo hound but he really just wanted to go run around.

I handed him a leaf to look at so that helped him sit still for a second or two.

I love this pic! I don't know what Nathan is doing in the background but it cracks me up everything I look at it.

And he's off.

Nathan enjoyed his photo shoot a little more. He likes to pose most of the time. Like mother like son.

I've discovered that boys can make up a game anytime, anywhere. It's a gift. I'm just so glad they have each other to play with.

I moved the chair one last time before ending our shoot. (Has anyone noticed that I will use any excuse I can to take an overabundance of pics of my boys?) I like the trees behind them from this angle.

I snapped another couple of solo shots before we headed inside for lunch.

I love the expression on Nathan's sweet face in this one. Is anyone else thinking of the John Denver song "Sunshine On My Shoulder"? Okay, maybe it's just me.

Well, the chair may be gone but at least its final day in our lives was sufficiently photographed.