Magical Moment #2

We were so glad to see more snow coming down today. Eleanor's favorite song this year has been "White Christmas," so we were definitely hoping to have one!

Took some poinsettias to the cemetery today and that's when we noticed these amazing snowflakes. The conditions were perfect to see each individual six-pointed snowflake on the flowers and our coats for just a second before they melted. They were so beautiful it was like seeing jewels fall from the sky. Make this our 2nd Magical Christmas Moment (for #1, read our post from Thanksgiving). And this might be my new favorite catch-your-breath picture of the season.



It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas Visit

We were lucky enough to have my sister's family come visit for a week while her husband had a work conference in Denver. Don't often get to see them since they live on the east coast. Lilly is the only cousin on my side of the family, and it was so fun to see the girls play together. Katie took to Jenny and Christian really well too.

All the ladies went out to The Nutcracker together which has become a fun Christmas tradition.

Another favorite tradition is making Graham-cracker houses. Jenny made some nice observatories, Christian made a lovely snow-princess castle for Lilly. Eleanor created a nice A-frame house - requiring all of Gavin's engineering skill to hold up the decorations. I went for Tudor style this year.

It was so fun to have company to start off the Christmas season. Thanks for the visit guys!

Beloved Grandpa

Gavin's Grandpa Payne passed away this week. He was such a wonderful man. In my opinion, he is the perfect example of a family patriarch. Loved and respected by everyone. He's raised amazing children and left an incredible legacy for his grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Gavin, his dad and grandpa all share the same middle name, which we also gave to Solomon.

Love this picture of all of them together. Grandpa was a gifted pianist who recorded several cds for his family. Gavin even used one to woo me on one of our first dates! We will sure miss Grandpa, but always remember his talents and faithfulness.

Deck the Halls

I love the magic of decorating for Christmas. Especially when seeing things through a child's eyes. I sat Katie in a string a lights to catch this reflection. I have a similar picture of Eleanor that I've always loved.

Thanksgiving Vacation

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving vacation to Iowa last week. Never been to Nebraska or Iowa before, so we got to add two new states to our list. We had the best traveling weather we could have asked for and enjoyed spending some great time with the Iowegian Paynes. :)

We spent an afternoon touring the bridges of Madison County. This bridge is at the city park in Winterset, Iowa, which is famous for being the birthplace of John Wayne. As we looked around the park, suddenly all these Christmas scenes lit up. It was just a magical moment. Eleanor was running from scene to scene singing Christmas songs.

These are the cool skywalks that connect most of the buildings in downtown Des Moines. Brilliant idea for a cold city - need to get these in Denver!

We went with Ryan and Sara to the Omaha Zoo on Saturday. They have some really cool exhibits like this domed desert world. They have a great jungle exhibit too where we even got buzzed by some bats.

Stopped to see the Winter Quarters temple on our way back. They had a fun gingerbread house exhibit at the Visitor's Center. Got lots of ideas for our graham cracker houses this year!

Solomon's Birthday

Check out Solomon's blog to help us celebrate his fourth birthday!

Eureka!

I wanted to report on an experiment we undertook since the start of the school year. I knew I would go insane if I had to answer the "What should I wear" question EVERY SINGLE MORNING before school. So, the weekend before school we pulled out all the school clothes, layed them out on Eleanor's bed in outfits (about 20) and took pictures. I printed them all off as 4x6's, added a cute cover and stuck them in one of those $1 plastic photo albums, you know the type. The outfits are organized by short and long sleeve - the other question I get every day.

To date, I would say this experiment has been pure genius! It's so cute to see her little album open to the outfit-of-choice for the day. It also helps with rotating through all her clothes and not just picking the things on top! It might not be fostering creativity - she actually asked me the other day if it was ok if she wore something that was not in the book. :) We'll try to make up for that somewhere else. Otherwise it has saved us a lot of time and frustration in the mornings.

Two Toofers

I captured this picture of Katie today showing off her two new teeth. Doesn't she look like a Gerber baby? Such a sweetie. I can't believe she'll be 8 months old next week!

Summer Sessions

To read my blog you'd think I've been spending my time just taking pictures of my own cute girls. Not exactly the case, I'm just really behind in posting about all the cool families I've photographed this summer. Here are a few highlights!

I really enjoy spending time with families like these! Each is beautiful in their own way and so kind and fun to be with. Now to get to work on all my fall pictures!

Copy Cat Fall Project

I fell in love with this skirt I found on some expensive designer site. Knew I wouldn't be buying it, so of course I thought, "I could make that!"



So, about a month's worth of stitching later... here is my version. Eleanor took this shot for me. I chose to make it on a darker wool so I can wear a cream top with it. Not sure what would match the above skirt. It was a fun time-consuming project. I "listened" to a lot of movies while making this, since I am not talented enough to embroider without looking! I was just hoping to finish this while it was still fall.

Big Top Halloween

Our theme for this year... drumroll, please... was The Circus. Eleanor loved being a clown, especially the face paint. My sister-in-law connected us with this awesome Dumbo costume for Katie. Gavin pretty easily stepped into the Ringmaster Roll and I got a lot of funny stares as the Bearded Lady! My favorite part was the circus music Gavin carried around in his pocket, I think it helped us all get into character. :)



We discovered Eleanor's big clown hair would help her keep up Dad's huge top hat.


The only way to capture these cute ears is to lay her down. I'm glad it was a warm costume with our huge snowstorm this week!

We made dozens of witch hats this week for fun Halloween treats. Just Bugles, Ritz crackers and Eazy Cheese!

This doesn't do justice to the amount of snow we got this week, but I thought it was cute. We really had about 18 inches at our house!

Vampire Coincidences

I think you gotta take a little extra effort to make holidays fun for your family, so yesterday I turned our pancakes into Vampire Pancakes from this blog. They were fun and very creepy looking. That was in honor of Halloween, btw, not the other Vampire phenom out there.



Now, for the fun coincidence... I stuck my finger in Katie's mouth during the prayer to keep her quiet and found that her first tooth has poked through!! She hasn't even been that ornery, I just thought it was a growth spurt. Eleanor didn't have any teeth till 11 months and Katie is not quite 8. I'm hoping the vampire similarities stop right there since I will now be a little nervous nurser. :)

Momma's Girl

Just this week Katie has started saying Momma. She's already been babbling dadada for awhile. But Thursday she looked right at me and said "Mom." Love it!
I love this picture of Katie because this is "her" expression. She's content and very observant - not always really smiley, but this sweet placid look has been her since she was tiny.


And this is her favorite thing to do right now - chew on everything! Looks like her bottom teeth are getting close to coming through. Which means we have two teething girls since Eleanor has two brand new molars this week too!

Website Workout

Thanks to my husbands many skills, we've made some updates to my photography website including new galleries. If you're interested, check it out. I'm currently scheduling from January on. Send me an email and we'll put you on the calendar.

Darling 6... going on 17

We went out to take Eleanor's First Grade pictures yesterday. Decided it was silly to pay for the blue backdrop this year. These are much more "her." Although, this first one makes her look like six-TEEN, not six, don't you think?

Ah, this is better. A little silliness, missing tooth... there's my six-year-old.

Ok, nevermind... scary beautiful again.

I have to admit (as part of my penance!) that I was a little impatient with her while taking these pictures. I know... shocking! I can work around other kids' fake smiles, but she was driving me crazy.

At least this keeps me in touch with what my clients feel like when I'm doing their portraits. I know it's frustrating, you want to force perfection out of your children. Believe me, the most beautiful images come from relaxed kids being themselves!

Precious Pumpkin

I pulled out this fun little pumpkin outfit I made for Eleanor when she was a baby. Had to capture little Katie in it too. Love the hat, the shirt is more of a belly shirt on Katie. Maybe she's taller than Eleanor was.

And for comparison sake, here's Eleanor in it when she was seven months. Love the dimples!

Looth Tooth

Ellie's been waiting about a year to get her first loose tooth. When one started wiggling, ever so slightly, this summer she was so excited! Finally, last week she came home from school with it seriously flopping about.

Dad had been teasing her about using the pliers to pull it - which terrified her. However, after a couple failed attempts to bite her dinner, she asked him to pull it out on one condition. He had to wash his pliers first! Ha! Hilarious that she thought of that. Now she has that adorable semi-toothless grin.


The Tooth Fairy made her first visit to our house. To make it easier I told Eleanor I'd leave her door open just a tad. She said, "No Mom, cause the Tooth Fairy can just squeeze under the door." Of course, why didn't I think of that?

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Ok, for me that is fall. I just love it! So, I begged and pleaded with my family to make time for a little drive up to the mountains this weekend. I feel this incredible sense of urgency to get out there with my camera before it's too late!

We found a lovely little spot by a river and had a picnic dinner and everyone indulged me in my need to seek out the perfect tree, leaf, etc, etc. Here are some of my favorites.

A couple cute shots of the family.

Gavin insisted on taking the camera for a picture of me. Always nice to have proof I was alive that day! :)

And this is my favorite for the day. Destined to be a favorite family picture spot. Enjoy!