so Much Sweetness

Got to meet this brand new little lady this past weekend.  Her parents are dear friends of mine.  Her mom made working in a job I hated actually bearable.  Now I get to share a job that I love with her :)  That's so much better. 

Much, much more to come on these cuties plus mom, dad and grandma...so stayed tuned.

Get Ready LPGA

Dad gets a day off after working tons the last couple of weeks.  What better way to spend it than a family golf outing?  Along with a few of my clubs I took my old camera with us to get some snaps.

Of course this guy is content to drive the cart...

...rake the sand traps and handle the flag.

. 

His flag handling needs some work.  It was a little difficult to find the hole with Kye running the flag down the fairway.  And the driving... considering we had to backtrack to find a club he threw out the cart... it wasn't so good either :)

Celia on the other hand has all the sudden taken quite the interest in her Daddy's favorite pastime. 

She's been practicing in the backyard and even popped one over the fence.  While Mark and I were shocked at the hit she was getting upset that she lost her favorite purple ball in the neighbor's yard.

She hit some great shots on the course as well and loved every minute of it.

Watch out LPGA!



Friday

I had tons of New Years resolutions this year, probably more than I have ever had before.  And I know it's impossible to keep them all.  But one of them was to take more random photos of the kids just doing what they do every day.  So... today was Friday.  I dabbled a little in potty training Kye with no success.  Other than that it was a pretty typical Friday.  No school, no activities.  Here's how we spent it...

Celia with all her new zoobles and my little pet shop animals that she got for Christmas...

Kye as he wakes up from a very rare nap...

Note the red toenails.  Apparently my mom was painting Celia's and he had to have some too.  Of course he didn't stay still so they look awful.  They make me smile though when I look at them so I have kept them.

still not quite awake...

Time to play tractors.  It's always "tractor time" at our house.

This is his "mom can I spill out the whole bin" face...

If anyone's curious, he has no tractors on his "tractor table" when he first wakes up from his nap because everything in his room must be removed for Kye to actually take a nap.  And by everything I mean everything, hampers, clothes, decorations, books, and certainly toys.  The tractors go in these big plastic bins.  They get spilled out and put back in so many times throughout the day.  He's a trip this one :) 

Happy Friday!

Reindeer Kisses

I barely took pictures this Christmas.  I know, I know, how awful is that?  But we do Christmas at my husband's aunt's house and it's quite cavelike in its darkness so it pretty much makes photography impossible and then we didn't stay long at my mom's house either because Mark had to get back to Houston for work so I haven't even loaded my meager lot of Christmas pictures on the computer yet.  So instead I thought I would share a few of my little reindeers.  I made little goodie bags for Kye's class and all Celia's teachers and they turned out so cute. 

I can't take full credit.  I got the idea from pinterest my latest obsession (and I mean obsession).  But the original pinner had actually not used a picture, just the little phase with the candy.  It reads:  "I heard you've been nice spreading holiday cheer so enjoy these sweet kisses from this little reindeer".  It was still cute, but I knew I could make it even cuter with some super cute reindeers.  So I rigged up some reindeer antlers from some old ones we used for the dog for our Christmas card several years ago and bribed my kids with some candy to took a few pictures for me.  Here's a few of my rejects... still cute pictures...

and a close up of the winners...

I actually liked this picture of Kye so much I even edited out the reindeer antlers to see what it looked like...

We had a short but nice Christmas in Oklahoma.  And have been enjoying 2012 so far.  It should be an eventful and exciting year.

Loving Light - My Holiday Card Photos

Since I didn't do Holiday Sessions this year I got to focus on my own family photos for our card.  And by that I mean spent slightly more than 10 minutes on them this year.  I think I spent 30 minutes taking these.  That's about all my kiddos could handle.  Really they are pretty awful about taking pictures right now.

When you first start learning about the best lighting to take pictures in photographers will tell over and over to "find the shade" and "avoid the sun".  But once you start learning a little more about lighting you realize that some of the most fabulous photos are actually soaked in dreamy sunlight.  I am obsessed with that dreamy sunlight lately, in other words, backlighting.  It's not easy to master and I am still learning it with practice and patience.  So this year I rounded up the gang complete with my almost teenage niece and headed out to an empty field in our neighborhood just before sunset to get these "dreamy" images.  And I love how they turned out. 

Celia was probably the most cooperative of the bunch, or rather least uncooperative I should say.  She posed for me for a good 5 minutes then was so done.

This guy on the other hand, not so much.  Lucky for me I'm not a fan of overly posed photos.

Is that light not FABULOUS? 

I've been sort of taking a break from my photography lately, but these images have really sparked my interest again.

Brunch with Santa

We had our brunch with Santa at Redstone this past weekend.  We love this event.  There are tons of things for the kids to do like making crafts...

Balloon animals...

train rides...

Seriously, do these bars look natural on him?   Really, he is being quite the little mess lately...


and of course Santa.  This Santa is so good.  We love him.  Celia hasn't been scared of him for a couple of years now.  She tells him she wants "My Little Ponies" a total shift from the Barbies she's been telling me for the last month that she was going to ask him for, great.  Santa has some exchanging to do.

Kye was still not sure what to think of this big red dude and looked a little like he was going to pass out.  In fact, Santa had to remind him to "breathe".

(Isn't it cute how they both have their hands in their pockets?)



But he managed to hold it together and pose for a picture, sort of.

Stills looks a bit in shock, but I'll take what I can get.



A Trip Back in Time

I'm totally in the middle of editing my Christmas card pictures, but I'm taking a break to post pics on here from our trip to the Texas Renaissance Festival.  We've never been before and I was planning on taking the kids when they were a little older, but when I renewed my zoo membership this month they gave me 4 free tickets to the festival so I thought we would try it out.  We only needed 2 tickets so we invited a few friends along.  Of course it being in Texas and all I think this is supposed to be the biggest Renaissance Festival in the country.  It was huge and pretty cool.  Adults and kids both agreed we had a good time.

Since we're not taking family photos this year maybe I could use this one for my Christmas card?  :)  It would save me a ton of time.  Yeah, right, like I'm going to do something easy like that. 

This guy was at the entrance, but there we're so many people dressed in major costumes.  You could tip them to take a picture with them.  Seriously, this guy was tame compared to some.  I got tons of ideas for future Halloween costumes.  These people take this stuff seriously.

Here's one of my absolute favorites of the day.  This is what I want to be next year for Halloween...

There was so much to see.  We didn't even have time to make it back to the children's part.

Side note:  I do realize that Celia is in this crazy dress in half my blog posts.  You would think she doesn't have a closet overflowing with super cute clothes, but she does.  She just loves this dress and wears it all the time.  I have to hide it from her so she will wear her other clothes.  One of these days I'm going to accidentally misplace it permanently. 

ok, back to the festival...

One of the highlights of the trip was this theater performance where our neighbor got pulled up on the stage to be what turned to be a main character in their show.  He was a really good sport and the kids were cracking up, well until he was up there a little too long for his daughter's taste.  She started getting sad at the end thinking they were going to keep her daddy.

The parade went on forever.  The costumes were awesome.  Some I seriously can't show on here because they were a little too skimpy on the material.

Watching the jousting...  I was so impressed with this stadium.  I could do some really cool photo sessions at this place.  Too bad it's not closer to Houston.

Our fairies.

And this is what a ridiculously tired little boy looks like past his naptime right after his daddy stole a bite of his pretzel.  Time to go home maybe?

We left shortly after I took this picture.  It was a long walk through the festival way in the back of the parking lot to our car each of us carrying a tired child.  But it was worth it.