Day 165

Liam's end of school year picnic celebration was this evening. I love this photo of him. It so succinctly wraps up in so many ways what these first 6 months of school have been like for him (and for me if I'm being fully truthful, although it's not about ME of course). He's so calm, cool, collected, confident, and full of character both in this picture, at school, and in life. It didn't start out that way, and still, at drop off, shy little boy hovers in my shadow until the very last minute we can say goodbye. But he does it . . . and without tears. They had the children perform a number of songs at the end of the picnic and I swear, he might be the smallest one up there, but he no doubt had THE loudest voice. No shyness, no second thoughts, just belting it out in front of about sixty parents. I was so blown away. It was more than I ever expected. At one point, the teacher turned to me and said, "Well, looks like we have a new leader of the choir for next year!" Congratulations Buddy. You climbed timidly to the top of the ladder, looked down the steep slope ahead with trepidation, plummeted off the edge and slid effortlessly through your first "year" of school . . . all with a beaming smile on your face. We are so very proud of you in so many ways.

Day 164

Tired.

Day 163

Isn't she lovely?! I was lucky enough to shoot this beautiful bride's wedding last summer and I was thrilled when she contacted me a few months ago to do her maternity and newborn shoot. What a full circle. We met in the golden California grasses at sunset yesterday and I lugged this rocking chair about a half mile straight up hill. SO worth it. Stay tuned on my other blog for full post.

Day 162

This would be my mother's pure genius at work here. The twins' fourth birthday is coming up on Saturday and I have been racking my brain for about a month on what to get them. Recently we were at their house and I was questioning their mom and she said, "Dinosaurs. Anything dinosaurs. And dress-up. They are really into dressing up." Well then, ok. I did a google search for dinosaur costumes. The cutest thing I found were little dinosaur superhero cape type things and they had W and T's name written ALL over them. At $40 a pop though, my good intentions were squelched. We have a joke in my family . . . whenever my mom finds anything in a catalog, desirable and overpriced, she turns to my father and says, "RICK!!! YOU could MAKE that!!" And being the loyal, loving, and handy guy that my father is, to no ones surprise, he usually does. This time I turned the joke back onto my mom. And being the creative and sweetheart that she is, this is what she sent over for me to give to the twins. Liam tried them on along with his best dinosaur roar. The twins are going to FLIP.

Day 161

I don't know why but one of Liam's favorite ways to pass time when I'm not looking is to rifle through our mail pile, open loads of important mail, and tear much of it to shreds. This is where I caught him late Friday afternoon. Perhaps it has to do with his current occupational goals. We were at a mailbox one day mailing something and he wanted me to open the mailbox. I told him you have to have a key to open it, that only mail carriers have the key. We walked away and after a few minutes he said, "I want to be a mailman Mommy." I said, "Yeah buddy? That would be cool. You would get to drive a mail truck." He replied, "Yeah! And have a key!!"

Day 160

My cat is pure awesomeness.

Day 158 and 159

Tuesday and Wednesday I took almost 200 photographs of the 30 students at Liam's preschool. I consider these images as fulfilling my photo of the day quota, but I do not have permission from parents to post them online so a verbal description will have to suffice! Trust me, they are darling little faces :) although it didn't really work out how I had envisioned. Since the location of the photographs was to be right outside the doors and windows of the classroom, the director felt as though it would be too distracting for me to pull kids out one at a time to work with them individually. Instead, I jumped right in while ALL the students were playing in the yard. In other words, I had about 12 little people surrounding my legs, waiting their turn, while I tried to snap off shots of one child at a time sitting in a chair. They were standing where I needed to stand, bumped my arm a few times, I have extraneous kids peering into the frame from either side of me, and almost no one fell for the seemingly clever, "Do you see the dinosaur in my camera?" trick that worked like a charm on Liam. I had to just love my child to pieces though because the few times I attempted the dinosaur trick, I could hear him behind me saying, "Yah, yah!!! Do you see it? I saw it!! I saw it Mommy! Yeah! It's there!!" All said and done, it was fairly successful regardless. Next year, I might try the studio atmosphere/lighting approach.