something beautiful

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?

Click a thumbnail for the full image.

of her newly remodeled kitchen (which I will be blogging soon) so she could post them on facebook to show our aunt in Kansas. When I met her at her house, she had just arrived home from grocery shopping, so we quickly put her groceries away before shooting.

Here’s the thing about groceries: there are some items that may live on your counter on a daily basis (like hamburger buns), that you might not want included in images that you were going to share online, in which case you might temporarily stash them in the oven, where the unsightly blue branding on the bag would remain unseen.

And you might, if you happen to be my sister, have a sister who laughs and says, “I can already envision that melted to your oven rack.” To which you might respond, “No, I’ll know they’re in there because I put them there,” which makes perfectly good sense.

It is very important to note that this laughing sister is not being malicious or insulting your intelligence, it’s just that we have this family history….

Fast forward through an hour of me climbing around on things to get a certain angle, moving my light source from spot A to spot B, blah blah blah … somewhere in which my sister invites me and the kids to stay for dinner, which of course we accept.

As we began making dinner, we are talking. And laughing. And there are plenty of children and teenagers walking through, among other distractions. But dinner is going fine.

Then someone notices the smell of something burning…

As it turns out, when there is a lot of talking and laughing, and plenty of children and teenagers walking through, among other distractions, it is entirely possible and probable that you will forget about the bagged buns in the oven, even if you are the one who put them there. This, of course, will lead to more laughing, because didn’t we just talk about this a little over an hour ago?

Fortunately, there are plenty of teenagers about, one of whom can be relied upon to go to the store and get more hamburger buns.

My oldest son just got his driving permit, and it seems like a huge milestone. Suddenly, the day my boy moves away from me seems a whole lot nearer than I’d like – inspiring a wistful longing for the days when he wore overalls and the only thing he drove was Thomas the Tank Engine trains around clickety-clack wooden tracks.

Not to mention a time when my girl wore dresses instead of makeup….

Is it too much to ask that they just stay little forever????

Yeah, I suspected as much…

and being the rarity that is, I quickly obliged. To her, it was all about the new bows she bought at Hot Topic. To me, it’s all about her.

this blog is still under construction, so please keep checking back to see the progress.

I was going to import the posts from my old blog, but… it appears that I’d have to go back and reroute all my image links, and since the blog was primarily images… Instead, I think I’ll just upload some of my favorite images over the next several weeks and start fresh with the posts. In the meantime, I did save the very last post from the old blog…