something beautiful

Played Candy Land with my teenage daughter tonight. It was a fierce competition, with much quoting of Veggie Tales (”I’ve been stuck in the Molasses Swap for 38 turns!”… “Still stuck.”), but in the end, and she totally kicked my butt. Mr. Mint betrayed me.

I once ran across a description of my generation that called us “grunge-listening, Starbucks-drinking, flannel-donning slackers.” Finding it highly amusing, given my great affection for both grunge music and a good flannel shirt, I teased my oldest that he only wished he was one. (His response: “We flannel-donning slackers drink Mountain Dew nowadays.”) Whatever. I am committed to doing my part to raising the next generation right: in flannel. So far, so good – even the small boy has embraced his destiny.

Given my track record with these kinds of projects, I might well call it “a photo occasionally, for a little while” but there you go – I’m making no promises. However, as needing as I am of inspiration, I think it might be beneficial to my creative spirit if I force myself to pick up my camera and find something to make an image of with some measure of regularity.

When it comes to school, I am very fortunate in two ways: 1 – that we live in a state where I can both homeschool and still take my kids to elective classes at the public school, and 2 – that I live in a school district where I’d actually want to take my homeschooled kids to elective classes at the public school. With that in mind, we spend a lot of time working our schedule around the school’s schedule for things like P.E., Art, Band…  not to mention a good chunk of time in the car every day getting to said classes and back.

Which is why Mondays are so special. On Mondays, my youngest does not have any classes at the public school. And because I think there should be some cozy benefits to homeschooling – at least few totally non-academic, kid-pleasing perks that make their public school friends instantly envious when they learn of them – we have decreed that every Monday is Pajama Day.

It works for us.

And true to form, the boy is playing a new instrument this year. Which is why I will never have “so many pictures of marching band” that I don’t need to bring a camera to an event.

I’m not done going through them, but these are my first round favorites:

Carol shot this one:

Another one Carol shot:

Happy birthday, Boy! I love you. -Mom

I’ll just confess up front that these images were taken almost a month ago, and they are already “outdated” in that the girl now has shorter, blue-green hair, but what can I say? I still love them.

Oh, and I realize these socks aren’t purple. The socks she’s wearing in the last image are, but you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I love that she’s standing below the “dress code” window while wearing an early 90’s prom dress, bright checkered socks, and Converse, with little monster bows in her hair. She really isn’t one to conform to anyone else’s style…

This is one of my favorite images, and she would not let me post it on facebook where her friends might see it. She hates the white slip dress because it is so not “her,” but it is one of my favorites. I love that she wore it with purple checkered socks, too. I wish I had more images from this part of our session – there is a somewhat humorous story as to why I don’t, which involves a wedding photographer with a misguided idea about marketing himself, but that will have to be for a different post. Suffice it to say I barely caught this shot and wouldn’t have, had my sister not taken one for the team and kept that guy busy a minute so I could get away. My sister rocks.

I desperately need new pictures of the kids, so last night, while Tim was at church and the older kids were at Grandma’s, the boy and I went up to the beach to for an impromptu shoot. It was pretty crowded (what was I thinking? it was 80-some degrees and beautiful – of course the beach would be crowded!). We tried to wait patiently as sand-caked swimmers scooted sheepishly through our shot, but they just. kept. coming. We eventually shifted to a slightly-less-popular bench without the tunnel in the background, but the light was all wrong. Finally, I gave up the tunnel shot and we down to the beach. I realized my mistake as the boy lost all interest in looking anywhere near my camera and consumed himself with burying his feet in the sand…

Sure, he’s cute, and I can always capture the action, but once in a while – really, only once a year or so – I just want a picture where he is engaged with my camera. I tried all the tricks I could think of, but he’s been on to my ways for a while. Still… he is cute…

Finally, we made our way back up to the tunnel for one more try, but apparently, word was out about a great sunset at the beach, because a BUS FULL of elderly photographers showed up and filed through the tunnel only to stand right in my light while they waited for the sun to set. In the end, I decided it was better to be nice and have fun that to get the “perfect” shot. No sense in taking ourselves too seriously, right?