Gramps

Today services are being held for Mark's father, Richard Worden.  Sadly he passed last Thursday.  We were all shocked with his terminal cancer diagnosis just before Christmas.  We had just flown out to Phoenix to spend Thanksgiving with them and had a wonderful visit.  It wasn't something that was in our "normal" holiday routine to fly out to Arizona for Thanksgiving with 2 children under 4.  Normally we spend Thanksgiving here in Houston.  It's much easier than travelling.  We are so happy we broke out of our normal routine.  Those days we spent out there with Gramps will always be in our hearts.  Here's a little pictorial tribute to Richard Allan Worden.  He was so great to my children and loved them dearly.  He will be missed by many.

I took these photos last May when he and his wife Linda (aka Grams) came out to visit us here.  It really stinks to have grandparents in 3 different states and on 2 different coasts.  The kids just don't get to see any of them enough.  We will miss you Gramps.

our Christmas

This Christmas was a little less Merry than years past unfortunately.  The plan as usual was for us to head first to OKC to visit with Mark's mom and family for a few days and then on to Eufaula to visit with my family for a few days.  What is with my holiday plans derailing this year??  Well, we got some very sad news right before Christmas.  Mark's dad was diagnosed with a very aggressive and terminal cancer.  It looked like he may have just days so Mark got the next flight out to AZ.  That left me with the kids and a long trip to OK without Daddy to celebrate Christmas with us.  So the kids and I changed our plans and went to visit Nanny and Poppa in Eufaula first and spent most of our time there with the exception of  Christmas day when we made the 2 hour drive to OKC to spend some time with Mark's mom and her family.  It wasn't exactly the same without Daddy.  He is back now and his dad is doing as well as can be expected which is not good I'm afraid.  We all were so lucky that we went out to visit him for Thanksgiving and had a lovely visit not knowing that he was even sick.  We have been and continue thinking about Gramps and sending lots of love out to Phoenix.

On a happier note the kids did enjoy their Christmas.  Here they are throwing out "reindeer food" (aka oatmeal with glitter) on Christmas Eve.  Notice the coats and hats, it was freezing in OK, actually below freezing much of the time, brrrr.

And Lucky for us Santa could not fit their presents in his sleigh with the rest of the kids' toys so he needed to drop them off at our house a few days early which let Daddy enjoy their surprise before he left for AZ.  All Celia has been asking for is a bike, specifically a "Barbie" bike.  Honestly, she hardly ever plays with her Barbies so I'm not sure why she wanted a Barbie bike, but that was her request and Santa very nicely obliged.  Celia also told Santa that her little brother needed a bike as well.  Poor Kye has been stuck with her hand-me-downs so Santa brought him his very own boy bike....

They both LOVE their new bikes.  I thought Celia would have a hard time riding hers.  But she is doing so well on it.  And Kye can't quite reach the petals on his.  But he has got the hang of "walking" it with his feet.  He is so happy to have a bike of his own.


And it seems Santa had room in his sleigh after all for one more ride-on for the kids.  On Christmas morning this monstrosity was under the tree at my parents' house.

They LOVE it as well.  Celia is a major horse nut anyway and had to put this huge thing beside her bed that night so it could sleep with her.  She has given it 3 different names and I think she finally settled on "Spirit".  And, yes, she's riding with a feather boa.  Shouldn't every girl ride her horse with a feather boa?  Check out what's on the TV.  My dad watches all those old westerns.  Celia is racing the horses on there.

I predicted there would be lots of fights over it and there have been.  But I also thought Kye might have trouble riding it since it's for age 3 and over.  I was wrong.

Here he is introducing himself... oh and check out his cap.  I can't get Kye to leave a hat on.  But this one?  He wouldn't take it off.  Why??  Because it's a John Deere hat like the one his Poppa has and anything Poppa has Kye wants too.  In fact, this was a pretty much a John Deere Christmas for Kye which is fine by him.  I think my dad bought every toy tractor he could find.  Kye loves them and he calls them all "Poppa".  Like if he drops one "Oh, no, Poppa" etc.  He's obsessed.

Back to the horse.  Why did I think he would have trouble riding it??  Check him out...

Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately for me) there was no way I could fit "Spirit" in my car with all the other presents we had to take home to Houston so my parents are boarding her until they can bring her down.  Until then I will be looking for a place to put her in my house.  Thanks Nanny and Poppa??

my Holiday Card

I guess I lied when I said the last post was my final post on holiday cards because I have one more, MY holiday card "session".  I had this really awesome photo shoot planned for my holiday card pics.  And just about everything that could go wrong did so that did not happen.  I even had a really cool plan B and plan C.  But every time I tried to do it something went wrong.  Like it was super hot, or super cold or Celia chopped off all her hair.  You get the idea.  Well I finally threw my hands up and decided to use old pictures of the kids.  But when I went to do it.  I just couldn't.  So I decided to salvage the pics from my plan B session.  This was the session that was SUPER hot.  It was ridiculously humid this November day that we took these.  So humid we had to have fans going to even get ready we were all sweating so much.  And the place I picked to do them was in the woods and wet and swarming with mosquitoes.  That's Houston for you.  My mom was only in town for a few days and I wanted her to get one of the 4 of us so we had to do it this day.  Kye was sick.  Celia had just gotten over this horrible eye infection that I was sure was going to show in her pictures.  Anyway, we spent literally about 10 minutes taking these because everyone was miserable and I was sure after we were done that I got ZERO usable shots.  But I went back and looked at them and with some, well lots in some cases, photoshop magic I got this card...

I designed the card in photoshop because I could not find anything online that even sort of went with our colors.  So I have to show the before picture of the four of us to show you how much photoshop "magic" went into making it usable on our card.

Here's the straight out of camera shot...

Seriously... I LOVE photoshop.

And the shoot really wasn't a total bust.  Here is one of favs of Celia.  This is a little tribute to her former long golden locks of hair...

and a few of Kye who is normally my smiley one, but was so not interested this day.  By the way, one other secret...  The cute picture of him smiling in the card?  That was taken about 3 weeks later in my backyard because I wanted one of him smiling to add.

Happy Holidays All!

the Final Holiday Card Session

Can you handle one last holiday card session?  The lovely Dillard girls were so easy to work with.  I am thinking sisters may be the easiest subjects to photograph so far.

just beautiful...

I had so much fun.  Thanks to all my families for letting me be a part of your holiday!

more Holiday Card Sessions

It may be hard to believe but all the holiday card photo sessions I took were at the same location.  Even my own photo shoot was taken not 50 yards from where I took all these family photos.  But can you tell I was going for a different look with each of these?  I love the tall grass in this set of photos.  And I am always telling Brandy how ridiculously photogenic her children are.  A photographers dream.

Mom with her girls...

the awesome threesome..

Q: what do all these cards have in common?

A:  Me!

All the photos in these cards were taken by me with the exception of the 2 that I am in of course.  I finally received the last of my family session cards so I can show you all the photos I did now.  I certainly didn't plan on doing Christmas card session this year and it was a lot of work.  But also a ton of fun and so rewarding to see your own "artwork" admired and displayed by someone else.  Very cool. 

Oh, and I will give a shout out to my friend Ally who did the design for the card on the bottom right.  Check out her Little Bears Designs site for some great custom cards.

on the Eighth Day of Christmas...

Celia's class had their little Winter Program yesterday.  The plan was for Mark to take off work, leave Kye with a neighbor and that way Mark and I could give Celia our undivided attention and enjoy her program without having to chase Kye around.  Not to mention it's nearly impossible for me to work both a video camera and my regular camera on my own.  Of course, like most of my holiday plans this year, that didn't quite work out.  Kye got a horrible ear infection so Mark did take off work, but he stayed home to watch Kye while I went to see Celia and try to both film and photograph her in the program. 

Here is my little Maid-A-Milking.  I love that she got the "green" scarf which totally matches her little holiday outfit.  Actually I suppose it's not technically a holiday outfit if it was just something she already had in her closet that I stuck a peel off applique of a tree on.  It worked though and she got lots of compliments on it.  It's hard to see in the pics, but her shirt is covered in pink sequins.  I had to go to 2 different Targets to get it in her size just because I thought it would look cute for a picture at some point.  Don't you love Houston weather?  You can't wear a sleeveless tank in mid December just anywhere.

Forgive the bad photos.  It was quite a challenge to take pictures in a classroom overflowing with parents/grandparents etc. not to mention the typical horrible overhead lighting.

Check out the unhappy little maid here in the line up.  Frowning...

A full-on pout...

I found out later from her teacher that her little partner (aka her bff Julia) had not showed up yet and she did not like being paired with anyone else.  Finally Julia showed...

Smiles now.

They did a great job with the 12 days of Christmas and I even managed to get most of it with the video camera and then these still photos as well.  I even handed my camera over to the school director to get a shot of me with Celia.  Of course she couldn't be bothered to put down the cheese crackers.  Guess she worked up an appetite skipping around the room.

It's rare I'm in the photos because I hardly ever trust my "big" camera with someone else.  First of all it's super heavy and most people aren't expecting that.  Then it usually takes a few minutes for me to explain you just simply push the button on the front of it to take a picture.  Not to mention I would have a heart attack if anyone broke it.  And Mark would have a heart attack when he got the bill to replace it.  Anyway, I like that I did it so my kids can see that I was in fact there all the time. 

Oh, and I can't leave this one out.  This is what my little guy was doing during Celia's performance.

Poor guy.  He was in so much pain yesterday that I had to take him to the minor emergency because I couldn't get in to see his regular doctor soon enough.  You know something is very wrong with Kye when he barely lifts his head off the couch all day.  He's back to his usual self today though.  Which means I have cleaning to do...