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.

Keeping Me on My Toes

Should I ever get too complacent, too comfortable with my work and the way my sessions tend to go, I need only schedule a session with a toddler to shake me up and remind me that things don't always go as we expect.

This little man was A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E, but he wanted nothing to do with getting his picture taken. He would be his sweet little self, and then as soon as my camera appeared he was off like a rocket. Or he was wriggling out of his mother's arms. Or he was scrambling out of the frame any which way he could.

Take a picture with his sister? No way.

A quick shot with mom and dad? Uh uh.

How about sitting still for half a second by himself? No thank you.

Like I said, he was a darling little guy (all the more reason to want to capture his sweetness in a photo or two). He just chose to spend our time together being a VERY TYPICAL TODDLER. And really, who would expect anything else?



He did like hanging with his dad for a bit. I love seeing their profiles together like this:



His sister was gorgeous (just like her mom), but she, too, kept me hopping. All sweetness and smiles, but as soon as she heard one shutter click, she was up and outta there.



She was out of this chair .001 of a second after I captured this. :)



And there's no posing to this one. It's simply someone truly in deep thought.



We tried hard for a family shot, and here's one we did get. I may actually have a couple of others once all is said and done.



Thanks, Z family, for a lively session. I know that we adults ended up pretty tired out, but I hope it was worth it for you in the end.

Hard to Believe It's November

Prior to this session, I was freezing my jobble-obble off at an event in town and thinking that it was going to be downright FRIGID at the beach. I even called my friend/client and recommended moving the session to another day. But that wasn't an option schedule-wise, so we went for it.

And it was downright gorgeous out there.

The setting was summer-beautiful, and we all got warm running around on the beach. It was hard to believe that it's almost Thanksgiving.









Oh, and I just remembered my promise to spotlight the gun show:



Again I say: November??!?

Early Thanksgiving

I spoke with an accountant friend the other day and compared this stretch between mid-October and early December to her life between March 1 and April 15. It's the busiest of seasons in the world of family photography.

I am very grateful to be booked up this season, don't get me wrong, but I also confess to feeling a little overwhelmed at points (especially when I look around my mess of a house and see what has fallen through the cracks while I've been 110% focused on the business). So I've tried really hard in the last couple of weeks to stop, take a breath, and remember all of the things that make me thankful.

One of those things, and I've blogged about it before, is my boys' love of creative projects. Once school started in the fall, they basically forgot about the Wii and dove into stretching their little brains through a million different self-directed activities. The house often gets destroyed (earlier this week, there were craft feathers in every nook and cranny of the downstairs), but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

They often use the time to expand on something they've recently done in school. Yesterday, Noah came home and created -- from scratch and completely out of his own vision -- a Thanksgiving scene, complete with table, food, Pilgrim, Native American and teepee.





He even fashioned a way to make it all stand up on its own (hint: there are popsicle sticks involved). I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that we may have a future architect or engineer on our hands.

So that's what I'm thankful for today. I hope that all of my family and friends and anyone who stops to read this little blog (thanks!) has much to be thankful for as well.

Alright. Time for reflecting is over. Back to the photo editing...