A Few More

Here are a couple more from our family session, just for fun...

Daddy and his girls:


How they *really* feel about having to stand close together for pictures:


...and one of my favs--the girls loved these weeds and kept picking them and carrying them around. It wasn't until I went and checked the camera after this shot that I realized they were still holding them! LOL

Our Family Photo

I'm still holding out on the Christmas pics (sorry!), but thought you all might like to see this year's family photo! We took it in October, and after much debate over how to go about getting a nice picture of us, we decided to finally invest in a tripod and a remote, so that we can always do our own family picture, and as a bonus I can use it for my maternity photos. :)

We weren't sure how it would do, but we picked a day to get it done and realized that I'm not nearly as good about planning my OWN photo sessions as I am everyone else's! My youngest daughter had nothing to wear that went with anything the rest of the family owned, and we hadn't planned out dinner. And I had just gotten the tripod/remote and had to test it out an hour beforehand. So, a quick trip to the store in town and my daughter had a dress that would work, and we decided to eat quickly before heading out to the campground for our photo. Unfortunately this left us approximately 20 minutes of sunlight to work with! Oops! Brief panic ensued, but amazingly everything went great after that. It only took us 15 minutes to get a photo we were happy with. Turns out my girls are MUCH more cooperative for a camera that has no one behind it and is "magically" operating on its own. Who would have thought? So they happily stared at it, fascinated, the entire time, and it was only mine and hubby's lack of photogenic-ness (if that's a word) that ruined most of the photos. We had so much fun doing this! Here is the one we ended up choosing:



We could still use some practice with the set-up, but I thought we did pretty well for our first try!

My "Excuse"

I have not been updating my blog as much the last couple of months, and though a lot of you probably already know, I figured I'd explain the reason for my semi-disappearance to the rest of you in case you are wondering (I will explain why my older daughter looks so serious in a minute):



That's right...we are expecting a new baby in May! We're very excited, the girls are thrilled, and we bought them these "big sister" shirts to announce the news. :) So, needless to say, after a few months of not feeling well I've been trying to take it easy lately, and have a lot of work cut out for me over the next several months! I am still taking clients, but will be a bit more selective about what I'm able to do. I plan to go on maternity leave in April, so all sessions will need to be finished up/ordered by the middle of April to guarantee prints are delivered before the baby is born. After that, I'm taking three months to focus my attention--and my camera lens! hehe--on the new bambino! (And my girls, of course!) I'll be sure to update and keep everyone posted as the date gets closer!

Now, to explain the serious look on my older daughter. She is very excited about the baby, but I asked her not to smile for the picture. Why? Well, because for some reason every time I went to take the shot, she would "smile" like this:



After several frames of goofy expressions I finally just told her, "Don't smile for this one." LOL Anyway, to show that she CAN be photogenic when she wants to be, here is a snap I took of her afterwards, lounging on the floor of her room:

Snowflakes and Drumsticks

No, not turkey drumsticks. :) I know, I've been horribly delinquent with updating my blog lately...I have a good excuse, I promise! For now, though, I'll share a few of my nephew's 18-month pictures. We only did a mini session with two outfits for these, because the rest of the session was spent on Christmas pictures...with him AND my two girls. Talk about a work-out! I had the help of my sister and we were still completely exhausted by the time we finished! I'm thrilled at the gorgeous photos I got of my girls, but you all will just have to wait until Christmas to see those. ;) For now, some of the few non-Christmas ones taken that day:

Studying the snowflake...




My absolute favorite of the day!




It didn't take long before tempers flared...having already spent a good deal of time at my house, fighting with the girls over toys, being photographed with the girls and being repeatedly told "no-no" about everything interesting, a temper tantrum was inevitable. Okay, he looks like he's ready to do some serious damage to my camera with that drumstick!!!


Fortunately he is easy to distract, and we gave him a break before finishing up the rest of our Christmas photos. I can't wait to share the rest of the ones we got that day, but in the meantime I'm relieved to be done with the cousins-holiday-photo-marathon...at least until the next holiday anyway!

Leaves!

The girls have been loving the leaves this fall! Last year they weren't very into the whole idea of jumping in a leaf pile, but now it is one of their favorite outdoor activities. We put their little slide on one side of the pile and they just have a ball. Earlier this week I took the camera out to get some shots of them playing before it got too dark out.

Here my oldest is raking more of the leaves back into the pile








We spent a good deal of time taking pics of her jumping off the slide to capture her in-flight






My little one found a black leaf and thought it was the coolest thing


Super-ecstatic about going down the slide!

Sneak Peak!

Adorable one-year-old boy! More to come!