Mega-Post: Snapshots from Our Christmas

The tree is still up, but the last signs of Christmas day are gradually disappearing from our household.

We're gearing up for 2010 and I'm fired up to look ahead, but for just a minute, I thought I'd look back to the Clausen Family Christmas 2009. It's hard to believe that it was less than a week ago...

We spent Christmas Eve in two parts. The first was a VERY festive celebration at the local Methodist Church. It's not our usual Church, but the combination of reflection, live-action holiday stories, joyous caroling and participatory Nativity scene (we added two sheep and a shepherd to the mix) was perfect for our young family. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that my camera would've been welcome, so I have no pictures of that. :(

Then it was on to my parents' house for a yummy Christmas Eve dinner and some early gifts. My brother and SIL got right into things with the kids:





After that, we came home and E got to writing the annual letter to Santa. It's always important to make sure they ask Santa not to ho-ho-ho in the house, as that would scare the girly girl.

They put three heads into it to make sure it was just right:





In the morning, there was joy throughout the house. E was surprised to find a new bike on the deck outside:



Mr. N was stoked with all of his football loot:





I believe that this was part of an end-zone celebration:



And Foxy was just happy with anything, including a water bottle:







My husband showed mad love for the gift he got from his boys (even if it was purchased with ulterior motives):





And when the rest of the family showed up/came back after showers, we had food, libations and more merriment.









The kids took a break for some Mario Kart:



My SIL showed that she was a very good sport:



And my brother demonstrated that Chargers love doesn't disappear just because there are candles on the dinner table:



In short, it was fun and festive, and we were grateful for it all. I hope you enjoyed your own holiday as well.

See you in 2010!

And Finally...

I am finding it hard to believe that Christmas is just four days away. I am sitting here, staring at the display of gourds on my table (now starting to go moldy) that I've been meaning to toss for the last couple of weeks. I mean, really -- it seems so wrong that by the time the Thanksgiving decor makes its way to the bin it'll be time to dismantle the Christmas tree, too.

But I'm going to look beyond all of that and focus on the fact that I have a beautiful, healthy family and that we're going to be with each other and with even more family this holiday. No overcrowded airports or cancelled flights, no frigid weather or family members called away to work or serve, no sickness or sadness beyond what's affecting the world at large.

We are lucky.

And so, as I hustle to get the last galleries posted, I am going to wind down the work for 2009. I may pop on to post a few photos of our recent gingerbread madness, but my focus will be, as it should be, on my family.

And on that note -- and because a post is nothing without photos -- here is the quintessential holiday shot of my kids, as well as a more pleasant shot and a holiday wish.

Fun with Holiday Lights

Under normal circumstances, I spend a decent amount of time online, researching better ways to take and edit photos. Reading up on what I consider to be best practices. I check forums, read blogs, try out tutorials... you name it. I am always looking for ways to improve what I do.

During the last couple of months, I've been pretty limited in my time online. I was fortunate to be booked through the fall months, and with three young kids nipping at my heels during my time "off," there just weren't many spare minutes to be had.

One thing I did come across was a cute set of photos done by another photographer and replicated by a few others on a discussion board. Given that I rarely see something that I don't want to try, I hopped online and found myself the cheap set of multi-colored lights I needed to create my own version.

And so, I give you my take on the "lights as backdrop" shots:





I left everything set up to try it out on my daughter as well, but the darn girl is just sooooooo grubby by the time she gets home from school... I never really felt up to the work it would entail to get her photo-ready.

And on the subject of playing with lights, I'd been wanting to capture a different sort of tree image this year, so I tried a few different things. This one was by far my favorite.



Now I'm by no means an expert on this type of photography, but if you have a dSLR and you're interested in trying it yourself, just throw your camera on AV, open up your aperture (put the AV number as low as it will go; mine was at 2.8), and -- this is the important part -- put your lens on manual focus (not auto focus). Then play with that focus ring until what you see is what you're going for. Voila!

Numero Tres

And finally, I present to you: The Cake Smash.

Seriously, this was so.much.fun. And I think my little subject enjoyed herself, too.



Next up, some fun Christmasy stuff. I just need a nap and a shower first. This week has kicked my backside...

I Lied

I said last night that I would have to do two posts of the birthday girl. I lied. I am going to have to do three.

I could blame it on my spastic Internet connection. I could blame it on my massive to-do list. I could blame it on my kids who MUST.GET.A.GINGERBREAD.HOUSE.KIT.TODAY.

Here's a little taste of the pettiskirt portion of our time together, aka preview numero dos. Of tres.

The Fun-tastic Miss N

I dare anyone to tell me this isn't one of the cutest one-year-old girls they have ever seen. Is she not precious?

She had a big shindig on Sunday but still had enough party in her to come over and play, pose and celebrate once more. (Thanks again to her mama for the cupcakes they brought along for me!)

I've got lots more to share -- including a spectacular pettiskirt and a "smash the cake" series -- but I need to get some dinner plans together for my family. Hence, I give you preview post numero uno. Stay tuned for more...

SERIOUSLY Cute Crafts

Quick break from the norm for a public service announcement: Are you crafty? Do you like a fun challenge now and then? If so, or if you just like looking at pretty photos of cute things, you MUST check out Emily Southerland's blog.

Emily has been running a Craft Tutorial Week on her blog (all while packing and moving her family no less). She has such a fun and fresh and self-deprecating style to her posts that I forgive her for making me feel like a complete loser as I read about all that she creates and accomplishes.

Anyway, take a sec and check out her stuff. I am thinking I may have to host a girls' night to make some of those rockin' flower accessories...

Sweet Baby T

If you check out this blog periodically, you may remember the glowing mama-to-be that I photographed back in October.

On Friday, I got the chance to meet the gorgeous little baby girl who'd finally made her big debut.

Baby T was sweet as can be, and while she was more interested in checking out her surroundings than sleeping, we had a great session and captured some beautiful images of her, her delicate baby features, and her proud mommy.

B (and T), here's your peek. I am really looking forward to sharing all of your images with you soon!

Getting Ready for the Numchuck

So we were unpacking our Christmas decorations just after Thanksgiving. Mr. N lit up as he pulled something out of the box: "Look! A numchuck!"

The nutcracker just grinned back at him while the rest of us laughed.

Considering his confusion and the fact that we have tickets to The Nutcracker this weekend, I picked up a book version of the story this afternoon. Can't hurt to get them into the story before they have to sit on their hands and use their theater voices for a couple of hours. (I'm starting to wonder what I was thinking when I plunked down a sizeable chunk of change for those tickets.) Anyway, the book was actually a little playset that included the story as well as a pretty comprehensive set of paper dolls.

All three kids listened carefully to the story and then literally tore into the paper dolls. They thought it would be AWESOME to create the various scenes from the story on our buffet.







Quite proud of their work:





And the rough-housing that followed:







And you wonder why I might worry about maintaining a sense of decorum at the theater?

Reminding Myself

I've mentioned before that this stretch leading up to the holidays has been a busy one for me. As I said in my pre-Thanksgiving post, I am definitely grateful for all of the work I've had, but I've also had to work hard at maintaining balance.

Tonight, for whatever reason, I thought it might be fun to pull out the home videos. I confess that I've been a spotty videographer, with some events getting coverage on the scale of the Olympics and others getting what's typically granted to, say, a minor uptick in jaywalking. Suffice it to say that still photography has been my focus. But I've managed to record a reasonable amount of the last nine years on video, and I've managed to burn (or have burned) a decent amount of that footage to DVD.

As the kids and I sat and watched the first couple of videos, I could only ask myself, "Why have we not done this before?" So the videos are sometimes sloppily edited and my husband's voiceovers can sometimes border on cringe-worthy (I said "border on," honey).

And yes, it was very hard to explain to my three-year-old why there is not a single video with her in it. In my defense, I've taken some, but nothing has yet been edited or burned. I tried explaining this to her, telling her that I knew for sure that we had a movie of her birth because I remember giving copies to our relatives one Christmas. I may have to ask one of them to lend it to us for dubbing, because it seems we're without our own copy. My explanation, however, only led to her sweet and pitiful requests, at each disk change, for me to put on the one of "the day she was borned."

So I have some work to do on behalf of my third child. Duly noted. But tonight I also got a big reminder of what has been important in my life since I got married, and I got an incredible reality check regarding how quickly my children are changing.

We'll keep the videos within easy reach from now on, though based on my kids' track record with rentals, only household members over 35 will be allowed to touch them. And because no post is good without a photo, here are a few quick snaps of E while the rest of us were watching a video of him at two years old assembling a big puzzle on his own. I love that he's as focused on a Lego project here as he was on the puzzle back then.





Now I must go and clean up the entire glass of milk that the middle child just spilled. And I'm reminded why it is occasionally tempting to bury oneself in work.

The Ranching Life

As Thanksgiving weekend drew to a close, I got to appreciate fall in yet another way -- by visiting a working cattle ranch up near Cambria. How awesome is that? The mission: photograph a fun-loving extended family, including the family's great grandma and her daughter, Nana, who was visiting from Oklahoma.

First up, a photo with everyone.



Then we let Great Grandma convalesce, as she's still recovering from a recent knee surgery. The rest of us able-bodied folks loaded into a couple of trucks and headed out across the ranch.

It was SUCH a cool and different experience for me. And man, the landscape was pretty.

We did a bunch of group photos with various subsets of the family. Too bad the backdrop stunk, huh?









And these guys were such good sports. Hopefully they won't kill me for posting this, but I just loved this shot. What you don't know is that there's a HUGE dropoff right behind them (it's a waterfall in winter). Don't let the tree behind them fool you: it's one STEEP drop.



Finally, I'm not a landscape phootgrapher by any stretch of the imagination, but I couldn't help snapping a quick shot of some of our surroundings.





Thanks, guys, for a memorable session! I look forward to getting the whole set of photos together for you.