Yesterday some friends and I boarded a party bus and hit a few breweries in San Diego. It was lots of fun, but that heavy beer and I don’t always get along well, so I had a couple small samples at each brewery and tried not to enjoy myself TOO much ;)
I saw this idea on Pinterest. I think the ones on Pinterest must have been re-colored many times because Sharpie doesn’t really want to stick to the wax paper very well. It does dry fast, though, and not a whole lot of smudging. Even so, I made my kids wear rubber surgical gloves, LOL :)
Our friends’ daughter :) She’s turning 16 soon and I was more than thrilled to take some portraits of her!
My friend Sharidy asked me to take these photos for her very good friends, as a baby shower gift. First of all, what a GREAT idea! And secondly, I was more than ecstatic to do so ;) What a handsome little dude he is!
We’re halfway through the first week of summer, and although we haven’t gone on many adventures just yet, we have turned the house upside down (the kids’ rooms, specifically) cleaning things out and getting rid of toys and clothes that we no longer use. My husband totally turned the garage inside out so that we can park both cars in there as we got a new car and wanted to garage it. Our house was a MESS but seems to be getting put back together nicely, with lots more free space and a few bags filled with hand-me-downs are stuffed into the back of the Jeep as I type this. I guess I’m calling it “Spring Cleaning” even though there is only a week left of spring ;) And today I have two photo shoots so my next goal is going to be to clean out all of my folders of RAW files and bring my collective 2.5T of used memory on my computer and external hard drives down to a manageable amount. Whew!
So glad it’s summer vacation!
Our inaugural ‘first day of summer’ Friday night with friends:
Right outside the backdoor shoe collection:
And the guardian of the shoe collection:
I finally planted my collection of loose succulents. I still want a succulent garden in the backyard, but not until my husband can build a cross fence to keep the dogs from eating it…
The cat found my crochet box…
Avery is convinced that she can build fairy homes and leave gifts and notes for the fairies and one will “adopt” her… after the Elf on the Shelf, I’m not sure mama needs this going on, too.
The hammock is getting a lot of use. Although Avery fell off of it yesterday and didn’t appreciate having to go through that tumble…
And last but not least, my little pretty freckle-faced girl. I just love this kid. She is Hell on wheels. That is for serious.
Now I’ve got some coffee to drink and Today Show to watch!
As is obvious, I’ve done this every year. I always have to fudge a little at the end because I can’t quite make it on the last day since I am in my own classroom on the last day of school.
My 8 year old today asked what I’ll do when she leaves elementary school and moves on to middle school. And my answer was, “I have no idea!” Anyway, just sharing these photos, which, fantastic photography attempts aside, stay some of my proudest photographs as the years pass by :)
Today Avery won the 3rd grade spelling bee. This was especially exciting for her as she was excused from doing spelling all year long and did independent study projects instead during that time. This makes this English nerd of a mama real, real proud :)
Click to enlarge if you like.
And Ainsley May, be still my heart. It took until the second to the last day of first grade for her to be brave enough, but this morning, she let me DROP HER OFF. I know some people might think… “and?” AND she didn’t have a complete meltdown over the whole thing. I had to be back and forth all day today at both their school and mine in hour and a half intervals, and my first interval needed to start at 8am, which is drop off time. I usually walk them both to their rooms and stand with Ainsley in her line to kiss her goodbye. Today, because I had so much going on, I told her I needed her to be ‘dropped off’ and I needed her to be brave, and she was <3
Click to enlarge if you like.
We took a 4-day camping trip to Angelus Oaks for Memorial Day Weekend. We left right after school on Friday and came home Monday afternoon. I did two things that really surprised even myself – hardly took any photos, and lived ‘off the grid’ for the entire trip! It was a very nice departure from the daily grind :)
I did have to capture a few, though. Including some with our horse and unicorn masks, which everyone either thought were super funny or super creepy. I’m not sure how I feel about them myself. A favorite memory was when we were sitting around in a big circle (there were 8 families, most all there at the same time, and a total of 15 kids, if I counted right?!?!?) and some dudes dressed in Civil War garb came moseying down the trail on their horses. My husband BOOKED IT to our trailer to get his horse mask, so that he could BOOK IT back to the trail and pet the horses. I, of course, then had to run to get my camera to capture it. I love that guy – what a weirdo.
Then my 8-year-old and her friend Bridget obliged me for a picture in the meadow…
And other than a few pictures of my dogs, this was really the only other shot I took. It was nice to put both my camera and phone down and just hang out and ‘be.’
Maybe an over-share…
Morgan is the daughter of a friend at work :) I told both her and her mom that it would be tough to take a “bad” picture of her… and as a result, I had a hard time narrowing down the number I wanted to share!
The school year is winding down here and both my kids and I have been busy with lots of extra things going on. We’re all ready for summer, for sure!
Sasha is feeling right at home. As I type this, my husband is off to grab some breakfast for us and both dogs are in the back of the Jeep with the top down. I’d say they have very little to complain about!
Molly sees Sasha as more of a mother, I think. It’s kind of an interesting dynamic. She’s still a spaz.
We’ve been doing some work in the garage to make it ready for a new car. It’s time. My Honda Accord has 110,000 miles on it, and it needs some major work, so we’re deciding still what to do – fix the Honda or buy something new – and if it’s something new, I want to park in the garage, which isn’t possible at this point (two car garage and too much ‘stuff’). So that’s been a fun weekend project that has spanned many weekends. It’s a good thing we have a refrigerator out there with beer and pretty setting sun light…
I took this nifty little self portrait which was done with a Lensbaby, and as a result, was very kind to my wrinkles ;)
I went through a couple more pictures of our weekend away at our friends’ house several weeks ago. I took too many pictures. This is always my problem.
When we got there, Avery heard a kitten meowing (they had gotten on the day before and we weren’t aware) — and said, “It’s too good to be true!” That poor little kitten didn’t walk on his own much that weekend…
All these toys and the cardboard box was the best one of all…
Just a couple portrait type photos of my girls :) They are getting so big and so wise and so much like teenagers that occasionally talk back. Sigh…
A little stab at an idea I’ve seen before…
And who could forget the Dom. He’s the one who is truly in charge of this household.
Hope all of you out there reading this are having a great weekend so far :)
What a lovely wedding to photograph :) It was tough to pare down and share only a few because it was such a pretty wedding! This was held at the Burrage Mansion in Redlands, CA. Such a gorgeous place to get married!
