So here we are, entering into the third year of Living Arrows. I mentioned in my last Living Arrows post of 2015 that I didn’t know if I was going to carry on this year. As you can probably tell from the very existence of this post I am going to continue but I’m going to try and return to the spirit of this project as it was first begun. The name Living Arrows comes from the poem ‘On Children’ by Kahil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

As Hayley over at Shutterflies who hosts Living Arrows mentioned this week, it is a project about ‘celebrating motherhood and childhood and capturing those moments you want to preserve forever.’ And so for 2016 I am going to aim to use these posts to showcase my favourite pictures of Toby and Gabe from the week but not, as I have been doing, to also use it as a generally diary post. I’ll probably still do that but as a separate post under a different name.

So here we are…week 1 of 52 in 2016

(I should include here in the interests of full disclosure that I didn’t take this picture of Toby, it was my sister-in-law – thanks Becca!)

And this happened today so how could I not include it?