Most of you know I grew up right around the corner from the house I live in now, and the deer have been a part of my life forever. At least once a week we have paused to take in the beauty and peacefulness of the deer on the hill. It never got old. Even now, when we are at Sunday dinner at my parents house we see them cross the hillside almost every week in the summer.
I have felt almost possessive of the deer, and proud when people would slow or stop their cars to look at "our deer." My kids have inherited the same awe and wonder for them. Abby sees them almost every morning when she's waiting for the bus. Phoebe almost stepped on the most precious baby fawn one easter when we were picnicking on the hill. The morning after Owen was born, the kids were pulling in the driveway with Gramnell and there was a whole herd in the back yard. Ok, Lucy is a little bit scared of them. She had a dream once when she was 2 that there was a deer in her room. She was terrified, and still is, but she pretends she loves them...
The problem was I never captured the deer on film. I took a few last winter with my phone, mostly to illustrate how much it had been snowing to Brandon, but I didn't know how to transfer pictures from phone to computer. I once saw a picture on a blog (I don't remember who's blog it was or how I got there) of a little girl all in white with her back to the camera standing in front of a small herd of deer. Her mom had taken her in her baptism dress to snap some photos on the temple grounds (not in Utah) and the deer showed up, and they got some really beautiful shots. I would LOVE to recreate that with my own kids and my own deer, but alas, I haven't got a camera worth talking about, and...well, there's a lot of reasons that would be tricky. I won't list them.
So since I have been thinking about this post, I decided I needed some good pictures of the deer. Abby and I pulled in the driveway last week and there they were...luckily my camera had been in the van all week. Oops, no, it wasn't. I had taken it inside earlier that day. I sent Abby in for it, without slamming the door or turning off the engine. She managed to get it without scaring them away, but as I tiptoed closer, I realized my battery was dead. Ugh! I turned off the van, didn't mind slamming the doors, went inside, almost giving up. I searched my house high and low for batteries, finally finding some in a random cd player, and headed back out. The deer had been patiently waiting for their photo op, apparently. They were still there, and as I started snapping away they almost posed for me! I climbed up on the trampoline to get a better view, and more and more kept coming out of hiding to pose. I almost cried! I almost called angie b to come take some with her decent camera, and Angie P. to come see for herself. It was so exciting!
We don't have any immediate neighbors on either side, and probably never will. Sometimes my kids feel cheated that they have no friends nearby to play with. These are our neighbors. We love them. Isn't it a wonderful place that we live?
