I go to bed late, and get up early, and it affects me the rest of the day. A Soy Carmel Macchiato helps a little, but then my energy flags and I wish I could go back to bed....

But not her... not my highly engertic 6 year old. She had to get up early today too.. and she did not have the aid of a sugary coffee drink to lift away the tiredness. But when we arrived home at 8:30am.. she was already planning on making a recipe and having a tea party, unbeknownst to me.

This girl I love knows that she must ask permission to use anything in the kitchen. This rule was set in place after this same girl at the age of 4 mixed a wonderful concoction of dark chocolate syrup, expensive Italian tomato paste, and expensive French mustard into my carpet.

No...Don't say that.. I wasn't mad at all... Nope.. nary a raised voice left these lips. I was totally in control of my emotions.


So, she knows this rule and trys to abide by it, but all the condiments in my fridge must call her name on a daily basis, because I sometimes come out to the kitchen and find a mixture of red chili paste and soy sauce and mayo and lemon juice and peanut butter... And no, she never eats it..she just wants to mix it up and see what happens.

Today she asked if she could make tea and serve strawberry jam sandwiches to her "friends". I agreed, but should have known she would try to sneak something else in... When I went to light the candles I found expensive sliced Bing Cherries mixed with the jam.

Why does she always have to use the expensive stuff??? I snapped a few pictures of her little party because I do love her and her quirkiness, but if you ever come by and see my lack of condiment supply.. you will know why!

A fun 1st birthday session..

Princess M was turning the Big 1 that day. She was in a very comtemplative mood, and was wondering what all the fuss was about. Her mamma had dressed her in a darling flowered top and pink pants, but try as I may... she would not smile for me. Even when she got a hold of the delicious chocolate cupcakes... nary a smile was upon her face.

Maybe she realized that growing older wasn't all it is cracked up to be...

Maybe she wasn't pleased with her gifts...

Maybe she didn't like some weird lady sticking a big black camera in her face...

Whatever it was, I captured her mood that day. That is what I do. Her serious little face is so precious!

She played with the frosting for about 10 minutes before realizing she could acutally eat it.


Yay.. my patience paid off. She finally took a bite!!


A beautiful Mommy and Me picture...


I look at this picture and wonder.. what are those serious eyes thinking??


Happy Birthday little one. Thanks for letting take some pictures of you. :)

And finally.. the rest of them..

I have been giving you sneak peeks all week at my latest senior session. J was such a cutie and really had lots o' fun posing. She was absolutely a natural...

We went over to a country club, and ran around using their gorgeous God-made backdrops. :) We were very polite of course and said hi to all of the golfers, who wondered why I was laying down in the dirt, or why J was fighting with the trees. :) Our effort paid off, and I think this was one of my favorite sessions to date!



In the words of Christian from Project Runway (um.. yeah.. I watch it!) "Fierceness!"

Brilliant Color..

Another sneak-y peek-y at my senior session. I am having such fun editing these! :)

One Senior..

A sneak peek at a gorgeous senior I photographed Saturday. I love when I get home and have lots of pictures to work with!!




Stay tuned.. more to come!

Shades of Gray....

A recent session... You know me! I love black and white. :) These expressions on his face just kill me!!

Ohh.. my son turned 9 last week...

Well.. it keeps happening. Every stinkin' year, the kids get another year older. I try as much as I can, to prevent their birthday from happening.. but I am not able. :( It ticks me off greatly.... I just don't like the loud time clock that reminds me, as soon as I shut my eyes for a second, my child will be heading off to college...

But see.. here's the weirdness... I actually love celebrating the actual day my child came into this world. Since I was able to talk, I have wanted to be a mom, so it is no surprise to me that I love making my kiddos favorite cake, and picking out the perfect present for them, and making their favorite breakfast, and just making the day all about them...

And they get all this for the low price of $19.99!!!!

Sorry.. I got carried away when I re-read that last paragragh. It sounded a bit like an infomercial, so I just went with it....

We made sure the day was special for him... Here's the rundown of what he requested...
Breakfast - Donuts (Yay.. I didn't have to cook)
Present - Money for gameboy games (Yay.. I didn't have to think)
Cake - Chocolate with Chocolate Frosting (Yay.. oh wait.. I actually had to work on this one.. FYI, I made a Dark Chocolate Buttermilk Cake with a layer of Peanut Butter Frosting followed by a layer of Chocolate Ganache courtesy of Food and Wine magazine.. I know.. I went a little crazy... What's new my people!)
Dinner - American Food with family.. so we picked Red Robin as it was halfway between here and where most of my family lives... (and again Yay.. I didn't have to cook!!)

Here are a few pictures to commerate the day.


My handsome men...



My brother and beautiful sis-in-law... who were laughing at the silly birthday card, which made them blurry. :)


Trust me... it was that good!



And lastly..sniff, sniff.. my sweet bubba's birthday portrait, complete with a Fauxhawk. I love it!! He..well, not so much.. but there is a bright, shiny, silver lining to this post...

..He still listens to me when I style his hair.


For now.

Oh.. and lastly.. he requested some more laser tag with Daddy and friends, so he still has that to look forward too. He is a lucky dude.. and so are we. We love you buddy!!

A new project..

So, I have lots of pictures to post from last week, as it was my son's 9th birthday.. but I will get to that later.

For a few months now, I have been collecting and sorting through images to make a huge photo wall in my living room, and it has been hard. I have taken a lot of pictures, but not very many are making it into my folder. The pictures don't have to be recent, but they do need to speak of our family, so that when people see the entire wall.. they get the message. :) I will be posting lots of contenders for my wall in the next few weeks... Feel free to tell me if you think they shouldn't make the wall!

If you know me (and my daughter) we love to snuggle. If we are having a bad day, you might find us in my bed, under the covers, snuggling together. It makes everything better! And I truly cherish the ability to do that with my bubba.

So, my point is that I have this picture in my head of Hannah's face while we are snuggling... Her eyes are usually closed, so all I see is looong dark eyelashes. And this girl has the most kissable cheeks you have ever seen!! And, I don't know if this makes me a bad photographer (ahhhh!!) but I haven't been able to capture that moment to my liking.. mostly because I am not about to whip out the camera when we are snuggle bugs.. I have to re-create it later.

Apparently though.. I did... almost 3 years ago... I found this picture this morning....

No words needed....

Fun Family Photos...

I met this gorgeous family last week to shoot a family picture before their son goes back to serve our country for another year. This family made my job fly. What fun. :)

They had all just gotten back from a vacay in Palm Springs, so they were all pretty tan... I felt like I should rub some dirt in my pasty whiteness just so I wouldn't blind them! Hope your eyes recovered, guys. :)


Here are a few of my favorites for a sneak peek.






See.. what did I tell ya! Bee-yooo-ti-ful, huh. :) Thanks for letting me into your world for a bit. I had a blast.

Off to see the Wizard...

Not really.. but my hubby and I are going to Rancho Mirage today to lead worship for a marriage retreat and to hang out with friends and relax! It should be super fun, but I wanted to let you know that if you leave me an email, it won't get returned until Monday. Ok!! :)

Not wanting to leave you without a picture or two.. I just had to also share what we did for Father's Day. My husband is a pretty easy going guy when it comes to holidays, in that... he doesn't care if we celebrate them or not. I, however, am a huge holiday fan, and can't let one go by without some remembrance.

So this year, while Daddy was at church, we created a hallway of.. well this is where Todd and I argued.. I wanted to call it a hallway of blessing, but he thought that was lame, and wanted to call it a hallway of awesomeness. So you get to choose which hallway name you prefer, and we will move on from there. :) It was basically a bunch of notes that we decorated and hung up for him to read as he walked down the hallway.. and interactive Father's Day card, if you will. And we also made him his favorite dinner... meat! Yep, he's a man. :)





He is a great Daddy, and we just love him.

The Schwartz Family...

So, I had the pleasure of meeting a sweet family last week. Sherri got my name from the wonderful Dan Watkins, and booked a beach photo session. She lives in Missouri, but was out here on vacation.

Sherri and her boys were one of the easiest family's I have worked with. The boys sat and posed themselves.. I didn't have to tell them to change a thing. They made my job soooo easy. Thanks guys!! Here are a few of my favorites from the day.

Great to meet you guys!!

The staff huddle I have been longing for....

So my husband works at a great church and though there are many reasons why it is a great church, I am only sharing one with you tonight.

Since Journey has been around, Mike Burns, the senior pastor, has taken the current staff for a mini retreat somewhere in the desert. He does this to build the team, provide a rest for the staff, and communicate where the church is headed. In all the churches that Todd and I have worked at.. Journey is the only one that does this. It was sooo needed. I took my camera, but was having such a great time relaxing that I didn't get it out much.

I did happen to capture a few pics from our last night there. Mike took all 40+ of us to Kobe, a Japanese steak house ala Bennyhana's...meaning, the crazy chef cooks your food at the table and does fancy tricks and such. I am all about the experience and had way too much fun. :)


Here is the chef pouring a lovely ginger sauce into our little bowls.. I just liked the way everything was lined up.




Here is our teaching pastor and wife, Ed and Linda looking in awe at a fancy fire trick.... Oooooooo....



We were all sitting in groups of 6, and we kept hearing the occasional sad "aww.. man" coming from the other tables. One of the tricks the chef does is to pop a piece of shrimp into the customers mouth with his spatula. I am proud to say that all of our guys caught them.. There were no aww...man's at our table! And seeing as how you probably get out much more that I do, you probably already knew all this.. but I didn't... Let the simple girl live a little!! :)

Here are Rod and Jason looking lovely! And for the record, my man also was on the top of his game.. but he was too close for me to photograph...





A close up fancy fire trick... I am easily impressed. Oooooooo.. oh wait, I already said that.



Tara took a snap of Todd and I, and seeing as my husband doesn't like his picture taken, I am always happy when we get something... anything... even grainy, dark, ones like this. I am rocking my glasses, after trying very hard to be super cool all day with my Hollywood shades...but my contacts were starting to glue themselves to my eyeballs, so out they went. I am sure the 108 degree weather didn't help....



Thanks so much Mike. You don't even know how much we love being back in the family!! :)

And for all you couples whom I photographed as we were waiting, send me your email in a comment, and I will forward your picture to you.

And.. if you work at a church that doesn't take yearly retreats as a staff... get on it!!

Random thought time....

I am woefully behind on posting. I have a few sessions to get up, but the end of May and the entirety of June is turning out to be extremely busy. So, I thought I would kick off the weekend with a Random Thought posts... I know how you all love those!!

-We finally got a kitty. My man has wanted one for a very long time, and 2 weeks ago he picked up a fluffy, gray tiger striped beast.. I mean kitten. It took us a while to name him and we settled on Buster, realizing later as we were watching the second season of Arrested Development that we had named our kitten after the crazy brother. Such is life in our house. And the name fits as our kitten/beast/predator of walking feet is completely pyscho!!


Here is the beast! He is ferocious.



-Last week I fell as I was doing something very dangerous... walking... yep. Don't try that at home. I actually slipped on Buster's food plate and my arm caught the corner of the stove. Nothing hurt at the time, but now I am sore all over.. and it's been a week... I probably should have gone to see a chiropracter!!

-School is out for us, and without the structure of homeschool... and by structure I mean in the most free-spirited, relaxed way... my kids are already claiming boredom. My new favorite phrase to them is... "Wow...I think you forgot about being grateful for all the wonderful things you have... and if complaining continues, said wonderful things will be taken away." So far... it works. But I am going to be really stuck if I actually have to take away wonderful things because then they will be realllllly bored. I love it when my discipline backs me into a corner. That is some good parenting.

I should write a book.... ;)

-I am getting partial highlights today... just thought you would want to know. It has been years since I have had my hair professionally colored... and I don't mean that it hasn't been colored. Oh yes, it has been lots of different shades of brown. There was the lovely shade of Olive Green Brown when I went too ashy with the color. The was the Burnt Orange Brown when I tried to color over a bad highlight job that I gave to myself. :) So now, I am trusting my hair to Emily Benitez who does a fabulous job!! And maybe if you are lucky.. I will post some pictures.


Here's a random pic of my kiddos. If you have seen my hallway canvas, you know I have a great shot of the 2 of them.. but that was 2 years ago. I am constantly trying to get another shot of them for another canvas.. and have yet to attain that shot. I will prevail one of these days...

My 100th post....

This is actually closer to my 200th post, but since I have combined blogs, I lost all of the other posts.. such is life! :)

This past weekend, I had the absolute pleasure of helping Carey Shumacher of Barefoot Memories and Me Ra Koh of Me Ra Koh Photography with assisting at one of their workshops for women. They needed photographers who already knew their camera to come and help workshop attendees during the photoshoots as there were only 2 of them, and 30+ attendees. On Saturday, I met them at the beautiful Rancho Bernarndo Inn for a Mom and Baby photoshoot... I didn't take any pictures that day... I was just so pleased to be able to meet these two phenomenal women photographers!!

On Sunday, we met at the Wind and Sea Beach in La Jolla, and I will definitely have to add that beach to my list of locations. I am taking my family there next week! :) It was beautiful, and this time I did take some photos.


Here is a few of Carey.. teaching what she does best.. beach shots!




And, here is Me Ra... helping out...



And here is Brian, Me Ra's husband not paying attention, and taking some scenic shots. :)




Then the workshops gals were split up into groups of 5-6 and given a photographer and a family. I wasn't there to shoot pics, but to help the women.... but you know me.. I couldn't help snap a couple. This was an adorable family!!






I wish I had gotten a tiny bit lower on this shot... that is their parents feet in the background and I just loved the moment...


Again, thanks for letting me help out, and I am so glad I was able to meet you both! If you ever need assistants again... give me a holler!! :)