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?