Sneak Peek: The O'Neill Family

We are lucky enough to have these guys as neighbors.  I have loved watching these kids get bigger and grow!

It is inevitable, whenever you are going to have pictures taken of your kids.....that is when they will scrape their head, get a black eye or break a bone.  Never fails.

Last year, Kaden ended up with a black eye.

Before and After Editing

This year....it was Layla's turn.  Thankfully, I know these guys.  And I know they don't give their kids black eyes on purpose!

Luckily, her swollen eye isn't that noticeable.  Poor thing.

So parents, don't worry too much.  My photoshop skills are pretty good and even if they aren't, years from now, you will remember what it is like to have little children and how it is a miracle that they make it through life at all!

We still had a good time (cold, but good) downtown.  Layla didn't really want to smile very much, but when you are 2 years old, that is your prerogative!  This little family is still a treat to hang out and live life with.  Thanks for making it fun for me (and for the Starbucks when we were done).

For more pictures of this family and other families, visit my website or my Facebook page.

Sneak Peek: The Bane Family

I love when I get to work with family members.  This one might be a bit of a stretch, but they are family nonetheless.  Troy is my brother-in-law's step brother.  How is that for crystal clear?

No matter.  They are a great family and I have know them for a long time.  I can't believe that their oldest is getting married in January.  Feeling old.  Sally got a hold of me and asked me to do one last family shoot before they add a new son in law.  I was happy to oblige.  After we figured out a date (much trickier when you have teenagers who are working and have their own lives and schedules) we headed out to one of Troy's coworker's house.  As I was driving toward the property I thought I had died and gone to photographer heaven.  Picture long dirt driveway with huge, beautiful, trees with leaves bursting with color.  The rest of the property was full of old tools, sheds, fences and tons of other interesting places to shoot.  The only downfall was that it is private property and I can't shoot there again unless I get to know the owner!

We almost had to cancel because it was really cold and misting most of the afternoon.  But, with the difficulty of getting everyone's schedule to mesh, we kept our session time.  It was meant to be.  The lighting was perfect and the rain/mist stopped just long enough for us to get these pictures done.  As soon as we were done and I got back in the car the rain started up again.  We couldn't have timed it better!

I am so used to young families with little kids that I have to entertain with a song and dance (literally sometimes) to get them to laugh and smile.  It was nice to have a family with older kids.  They were very happy to oblige and look at my camera and smile.  Easy peasy and relatively painless.  After we were done Sally remarked that it was easy and FUN!  What a great compliment as that is my goal:  Fun and easy family pictures.

This session made Sally so happy.  Men, take note.  Want to make your wife really happy?  Schedule a family portrait session.  They will be so happy and thankful that you are thoughtful and on board with getting pictures done (instead of dragging your feet and showing your dislike of having your picture taken).

Enjoy your last few months as a family of 5 Banes!  It is a pleasure to know you and be related (however distantly) to you.

For more pictures of this family and others visit my website or Facebook page.

Sneak Peek: The Barnes Family

Here we go again!  I love that I get to take so many pictures of this family.  It has been so fun to watch them grow and change.  And now we have a groove.  The kids know me and what they are supposed to do.  It is nice.  It was fun to head out on a beautiful Colorado day and get some family pictures.  Little Andrew wasn't really into smiling for the group shots.  He just wanted to eat all of the dried leaves all over the ground.  I guess that is what you do when you are an 8 month old little boy.  You can also tell that he is child #3 because there was no great alarm in the fact that he was eating said leaves.  Granted, we tried to get him NOT to eat the leaves....but it proved to be a difficult task.  And in the end, he would at least look at the camera (as opposed to crying if the leaves were taken away) if there was a leaf in hand/mouth.

I love how the boys in this family look just like their dad, and Katelyn looks just like her mom.  Just as it should be!  Can you believe how blue her eyes are?  And how brown Nathan's are?  I am still trying to figure out Andrew's eyes.  They are pretty dark, but look like they might turn a little hazel.

At the VERY end, Andrew pulled out all the stops and decided to be extra cute and smiley and even show me his two bottom teeth (my favorite!).

For more pictures of this family and others visit my website or my Facebook page.

Gratitude: Day 6 (Book Review)

Day 6:

Today I am grateful for education.  All I wanted to be when I grew up (other than a mom) was a teacher.  My sister and I (and our friends) spent HOURS playing school.  My love for school started when I was young.  I loved to learn (and boss teach).  I had wonderful teachers in elementary school who fostered and nurtured my love for school and for learning.  One of my favorite teachers was my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Pyle.  He also started my love for social studies which is what I eventually got my college degree in.  We worked on and entered a map contest and spent HOURS and days and time after school perfecting that map.  We ended up winning the contest and got to meet the Superintendent and had a special ceremony.  I was the group leader and I LOVED participating and creating this map.  I still love maps and think it traces back to my sixth grade year.

The other thing I loved about Mr. Pyle was that he read aloud to us after recess every day.  One of the books he introduced to us was an autobiography by a local author who lived very close to where we went to school at the turn of the century.  Mr. Pyle read with such emotion and I will never forget a particularly touching scene in the book that brought him to tears in front of his whole class.  What a way to show the growing youngsters in his class what a true man is made of!

Since my time in 6th grade I have read this book over and over and it is one of my favorites.  My favorite thing about the book is the way the little boy in the book talks about and reveres his father.  His father speaks such wisdom and much of the book teaches life lessons and how to build good character.

This summer I did the adult reading program through the Jeffco Libraries and one of the Bingo Squares you had to complete was to read a book written by a local author.  I remembered this book and decided to dust it off and read it again.  The only problem was that it was checked out!  So, I read his next book (Man of the Family) and LOVED it just as much or more as the original.  When the book finally made it back to the shelf I checked it out and decided that it was time to introduce the Lord boys to this literary gem.  Much of it is over their heads and they have a hard time picturing all of the farming equipment he describes (to be honest I have a hard time too, but it still so rich with other stuff that it doesn't really matter).  I have already gotten emotional in the book several times (it means so much more that I have children of  my own- no wonder why Mr. Pyle got emotional).

In the book, Ralph (the author) is 8 years old.  His family has moved from the east coast to Colorado to become ranchers.  The book is about their struggles, triumphs and stories.  My favorite chapter in the book is called "My Character House".  In this particular chapter, Ralph wants to haul up some rail road ties from a gulch near their house.  His father had mentioned he could help haul the ties when they got a new horse. So the day after they got the new horse, he fibbed and told his mom that Father said he could haul the ties by himself. She was surprised, but let him do it (reminder: this kid is 8 years old and was going to use an unknown horse to haul a huge railroad tie out of a gulch).  When he failed (and got mildly injured) to get the tie out of the gulch before dark, he went home to confess to his mother.  She makes him stand in the corner (missing dinner) until his father gets home.  Here is the interchange between Ralph and his father when Father returned home.

Hard as Father could spank, he never hurt me so much with his stick as he did when Mother stopped talking.  He cleared his throat and didn't make a sound for at least two full minutes.  When he spoke, his voice was deep and dry.  "Son, there is no question but what the thing you have done today deserves severe punishment.  You might have killed yourself or the horse, but much worse than that, you have injured your own character.  A man's character is like a house.  If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep himself warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin.  If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn't do but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin.  A man with a ruined character is a shame on the face of the earth."
He waited until his words had plenty of time to soak in, then he said, "I might give you a hard thrashing; if I did, you would possibly remember the thrashing longer than you would remember about the injury you have done to yourself.  I am not going to do it.  There were eighteen cross ties in the gulch yesterday, and the section foreman told me they were going to place twenty more.  Until you have dragged every one of those ties home, you will wear your Buster Brown suit (which had caused him to be bullied at school) to school, and I will not take you anywhere with me."
It was a half mile from the house to the gulch.  Father showed me how to hook onto the ties with a chain, and how to pull them up through the head of the gulch.  By getting up early, I dragged one tie home each morning and two after school.  With a half dozen on Saturdays, I had the job done in a couple of weeks.

The book is full of stories about accountability, honesty and how to be a good neighbor.  It has prompted so many good discussions at our house and the kids are always eager for me to read them a chapter before bed at night.

The book is Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers by Ralph Moody.  It is a quick, easy read and he has several other books if you like this one.  All of them are about his family and their life growing up in Colorado and around the country.

Another favorite quote from the book:

There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men.  Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest.  The same God that made you and me made this earth.  And He planned it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man.  Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.

Don't you just love the wisdome of this man, who probably had no higher than a 9th or 10th grade education?

I hope some of you check out this book (or series).
You can find it on Amazon (they even have it for your Kindle) or at your local library (although if you use the Columbine branch, you might have to wait for me to return my copy).  You might even be able to find it at your local book store (if you live in Colorado).

Happy reading!

For days 4 and 5 of Attitude of Gratitude hit the "older post" button or scroll down.

Attitude of Gratitude: Day 4 and 5

Four days in and I am already behind! (I wrote that yesterday).  Now I am even more behind!

Day 4:
I am so thankful for home movies.  The kids have been on a home video kick.  They are having a ball watching themselves when they were little and seeing all of the cute things they did and said.  It has also been fun for Chris and I to watch and remember all of the things we loved when they were little.  It is amazing all of the things that you never thought you would forget and in just a few short years, you forget.  For example, when Tanner was just starting to pull himself up on things, he would go over to the Leap Frog Table that we had.  It played music and had all sorts of toys and noises.  He LOVED it.  He would pull himself up on it and dance around.  Then we would say "shake a leg" and he would shake one leg really fast like a dog does when you scratch its belly.  So funny!  Totally forgot about that.  We rewound that and watched it over and over.  We also had a good laugh at a CBS program in which a 3 year old Makai yawned his way through it and his cousin had his hands down his pants.  It was good for the soul.  And a little convicting that we don't video nearly as much as we used to.  Time to pull it out and starting taking more videos before the kids are grown and gone.  Ugh!

Day 5:
Christmas coming!  I know.  Some of you are gritting your teeth at me right now.  I am usually one of those people.  I sigh and get cranky when I see Christmas stuff in the store even before Halloween is over.  In the past Christmas has been hard for me.  I have lost the joy of it.  It became too many things on my calendar and a cluttered house.  I started to hate putting up our Christmas stuff.  We have a pretty small house and it already feels cluttered with so much stuff that it almost made me feel claustrophobic when the Christmas decor came out.  As the mom of three little kids the season was exhausting.  This year is different.  The kids are in a much easier phase.  They don't have as much wonder, but the excitement and joy is catching!  It also helps that they can (and love to) help with the decorating (so it is not just one parent decorating while the other parent is trying to keep the kids occupied and out of the way).

I used to hate hearing Christmas music in the stores and grumble about it.  This year, I have found myself singing joyously along.  I also think that part of my Christmas season readiness is that we are going to DISNEY WORLD the week before Thanksgiving.  We started a countdown and when we started it was 69 days away.  Now we are 12 days away and I felt like all I did was blink.  Where did the other 57 days go?  So I know that the (close your eyes if this is going to stress you out) 47 days until Christmas is going to fly by.  47 days.  What?  That is all there is to enjoy the season? To decorate, buy toys, attend Christmas parties, get a tree, make cookies and treats, wrap, listen to Christmas music.  That is just a blink of an eye.  When we get home from DISNEY, it will be a mere 32 days.  Not much time to enjoy a season that requires so much prep work.  So today (and this year) I am thankful that I am able to start early and get going on celebrating the whole reason why I live and be thankful for the Gift God gave us so many years ago.  Shouldn't we be celebrating that every day anyway?

Sneak Peek: The Fieselman Family

Elly (love that name) gave a call a few weeks ago and wanted family pictures.  Boom!  Within a few days her beautiful family was in front of my lens.  I love it when things come together that smoothly.

This is one great momma.  She has 4 kids under the age of 6 and makes it all look easy.  She also works from home.  I find it hard enough to work from home with one 5 year old around.  She does it with a 4 year old, 2 year old and a 4 month old.  Way to go Elly!  We had a nice chat about the benefits and frustrations of working from home and feeling like whenever you are at home you should be working or doing housework (so it feels more like a workplace than a home sometimes).  However, we both came to the conclusion that we are thankful and get to spend so much time with our kids, even when we are "working".

I must confess that I have spent a lot more time "with the kids" (read: attending Halloween parties, taking care of sick kids and driving them to appointments) than working lately, so sorry to my clients who are waiting for pictures.  I promise, I am back to working hard!

So feast your eyes on this family!  You all know that I have a weakness for boys and these boys are particularly cute.  Seriously.  Logan (who I wanted to call Landon the entire session, sorry buddy!) looks like he should be a model for Abercrombie and Fitch.  I mean if Abercrombie models actually wore any clothing.

Same picture, but I couldn't decide if I liked it in color or a moody black and white.

These two make some seriously cute little kids!

It was so much fun to work with this family.  I love how the boys wrestled their way through the session (glad that my boys aren't the only ones who do that).

Thanks for letting me capture this time in your life!  For more pictures of this family and others, visit my website or my Facebook page.

Gratitude: Day Four

Today I am thankful for allergies.  Say what?    We have a LOT of food allergies at our house (thanks Chris).  It sucks and I hate it, but I have learned to live with it and have come up with some great allergy free recipes!  One of the only things that gets me through the days when I am frustrated is that it could be worse.  I have some friends that I grew up with whose son is battling cancer for the second time in his short 13 years of age.  My heart just aches for them and I say to myself......you can deal with the stupid allergies.   Just be thankful that you have healthy active kids (even if I have to read every label in the grocery store).  I am also thankful for all of our supportive friends and that they are so accommodating to our boys.  I know it is a pain and I appreciate it!

So today when I took Makai and Jameson to get their flu shots at the allergist.  I had to keep reminding myself to be thankful.  All through the 2 hour appointment.  Through the 30 skin pricks on their backs.  All through the 30 minutes after the injection to make sure the egg cultured in the flu shot didn't react with their bodies.  And through the news from the doctor that Makai has now developed a severe allergy to tree nuts like his dad and that chances are slim that he will outgrow that allergy.

Gratefulness and thankfulness get you through.  Otherwise you become resentful and bitter.

So thank you Lord for allergies.  And thank you even more for Benedryl, Epi Pens, modern medicine and little boys who have great attitudes and hardly complained today!