Kids Kids Kids

As you can all imagine, I have been taking a LOT of pictures lately. And one of my favorite things is capturing those cute moments from the kids I shoot. The family shots are fun too, but there is just something about kids. Here are a few of my favorite kids pics from the past two weeks!

Here is "M"! He is on Thomas's baseball team. I did a whole family shoot with them, but his mom wanted some of him too...doesn't he look like a model?


Next are the precious "G" girls. I took tons of fun pictures with dogs and mom and dad in their amazing front yard. The girls are so sweet, and check out the freckles and manes of gold on these cuties!


Next was the adorable "S" kids. I have never had such an easy time shooting a 4 year old boy. And his sister was fabulous too, not to mention gorgeous!!


And here are my good friends, the "Ms". I also took some really great shots of the family, but what a fun shot of these 4 cute kids.


The "D" kids are neighbors and it seems the little 4 year old in this family runs the show. He really hung in there though, and was such a hoot!!


Last but not least the "B" boys. They were soooo easy. Really. And boys usually aren't. I just LOVED this shot. Precious.

My Big boys are still Little

Time goes by so quickly, and my boys have gotten so big. They are constantly walking a line between being little and sweet, and big and pushy and making their way in the world. In spite of it all, every now and then I get a glimpse at how little in spirit they really are.

Thomas got to bring Franklin the turtle home last weekend to take care of. It is the 1st grade class pet. He was very excited to pull him out of the backpack and show me. He decided to write a story with Franklin watching. (this is Thomas's favorite past time. We are hoping he is a famous author someday) Notice how he placed the pencil on Franklin's lap, as if he is going to pick it up and add a paragraph to his story.








I need to remember these sweet pictures when he is yelling at his brothers or rolling his eyes at me because I asked him to pick up his socks.
And little Charles has gotten so big too. He is reading as well as a 5 or 6 year old and seems to know just about everything that his big brothers know (almost). But deep down, he is really still so little too. The other day, he drug his Thomas tent downstairs and decided to watch cartoons inside. First he got a snack of peanut butter crackers and then moved the coffee table out of the way. He got all situated and began enjoying some Clifford the dog cartoons.

Chirstmas Card Photos

I just wanted to share a couple of pictures I took the past weekend of two great families. These are just a couple from the day that I liked, but there a lots more great ones coming. The "L's" were so much fun to work with. They said they hadn't had a family picture since their little boy was born. Can you believe that?
Here they are:

And the "M's" look so great all in brown. What a photogenic family.

Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone! We had a great time trick-r-treating again this year. We met for hotdogs, chips and drinks in our neighbors garage, then off we went. Thomas was Boba Fett (from Star Wars), Charles was a Clone Tropper who would NOT wear a mask (also from Star Wars) and Joshua was a Mexican bandido. Isn't he a riot?!
(ps.click on this picture to enlarge it and check out Thomas under the mask. I think he saw a ghost)

The boys were very proud of their pumpkins this year. We decided to go old school and carved some plain old Jack-o-lanterns. Joshua and Thomas actually cleaned, designed, and carved their pumpkins all on their own. Charles drew his design on a paper, and I copied it the best I could when I carved his pumpkin. Here they are showing off their finished Jacks.

Just in case you weren't sure...here is Thomas without the mask. His pumpkin was screaming.

Photo Session

I decided to open up my Christmas card business again this November. So, I dusted off the camera and headed out with Charles for a quick practice photo session to get my fingers working on the camera again. (And because I never took an official 4-year-old picture of him and he is so darned cute in those glasses). Charles is generally not a great subject. Pictures are NOT his thing. And he is at the age of the goofy grin. But he was quite cooperative today! I was so proud. I am just having a hard time deciding which one to print and hang on the wall.

Lacrosse

Well thanks to his Aunt (who played Lacrosse for Stanford) and cousins in San Antonio, and with a little nudging from his dad (ok, a lot) Joshua decided to try Lacrosse this fall. To my surprise, the YMCA started a Lacrosse league for kids, and we signed up. He started practicing in September, and the the plan was that the coach was going to sign the team up for some tournaments. He decided that since not only the team but the sport was BRAND new to our YMCA, we would get killed not do well at a tournament. Instead, he found a Lacrosse team in a nearby city that he set up a mini game schedule with. Our first game was this past Sunday, and what fun it was! Our boys (team Force is their name) held their own. We scored one goal, and yes the other team scored 5, but it was still a really competitive game. The team we played has been together for 3 years.

Joshua played defense the first half, and was a midfield man the second half. While playing midfield, you really don't stop running. He was BEAT when it was over. He did really well, though, and almost scored at one point in the game.

Here he is mixing it up at midfield.

It was pretty hot! And Joshua was soaked!

Charles and his little buddy were riveted by all the action!

Cakes everywhere!

The boys had a cake decorating competition at cub scouts last night. There were three themes they could enter: "Halloween", "Scouting" and "Favorite Team". Joshua chose to do a scouting cake, and Thomas chose Halloween. So Joshua and I came up with a cake with the shape of the Webelo symbol on top. Oh, by the way...He won first place in the scouting theme!



Here is the winning cake.









Of course Charles wanted to get in on the fun too!







Thomas wanted to make his cake a witch. I found a "pattern" online, so we cut it out and followed the pattern. He wanted to make her face green, and then we had the idea of putting gummy worms for her hair. It turned out really cool. In fact, we think he should have won for his witch, but he didn't. In fact, he didn't even place. There were a LOT of Halloween cakes and very few scouting and team cakes. So he had a lot of competition.


Here is his cake. Pretty cool, huh





He REALLY liked this project. He took great pride in making it look just right. He meticulously put each oreo on the hat in just the right spot. He couldn't wait to eat it when we got home later that night.