Class Parties

Happy Halloween!!!

Grace's whole class:


Grace singing "Witches Brew"


Anna's teacher, Mrs. Blair, who looks NOTHING like this!


With her child witch...


Anna with her stash of gnarly gummy "body parts" candy, which she picked up with chopsticks


I'll post pictures of trick-or-treating tonight!

What I've been doing lately...

So, I feel like I've been consumed by photography lately, what with mulitple shoots in the past few weeks, getting a new lens and computer, and pre-ordering a new camera, so I thought I'd share a few of my favorite recent images. Looking through these, I feel so lucky to get to do this at all, much less make a little money doing it. I especially love getting to share in little ones' lives and watch them grow up: the girl in the buggy is the baby in the basket of yarn from my business card. And, then of course there's Peter, who I can always take a couple hundred pictures of (which has become a problem now that he lives here!). The weather has been particularly lovely lately, too, which makes planning and doing photoshoots SO much easier. So, not much news about the rest of my life and no news about the girls, but I will write after all the hullabaloo tomorrow: two class parties, dance, violin, and THEN trick-or-treating. I'm exhausted just thinking about it! :-)

Continued...

New Hat

[This is Adam.] Karyn didn't want to post a picture of her new hat (taken by the camera on her computer), but I am just so bold as to post it for her.

It looks even better in person and in the right light.

[I'm probably in big trouble.]

OH, and the story about the hat is it is my "get well soon and be happy" hat. I was sick this weekend and after being sent home early from the yarn store on Saturday, I got the most colorful yarn I could find (and still liked), took it home and knit up a hat (being a fast knitter helps me get my immediate gratification fix!). I absolutely love it and the following picture doesn't do it ANY justice. I'll try to have Adam get a better picture of it tomorrow.

I love...

...my girls.

Pumpkin Patch

Wow, it feels like much longer than a week since I last posted! We've had a lot going on. The weather has been super crazy: snowing one day, then seventy degress the next... It's made scheduling my recent photo shoots very interesting (I've had two photo shoots since I last wrote (and I have two more this weekend! Yippee!!).

Gramma and Poppy have been in town, and then out of town again for their trip to Moab, and they'll be back tomorrow. Even though they were staying with Peter, we got to see them a lot, especially since Grace didn't have school for three days last week. We even got to go to Treehouse and the pumpkin patch with them--on top of eating lots of great meals together. We're excited to see more of them when they get back. Here are some pics of our trip to the pumpkin patch:





We also had parent/teacher conferences for both girls. It's so nice to have kids who make parent/teacher conferences such fun! They are both doing very well in school. Anna is still shockingly smart and is flourishing in the 2nd/3rd split she's in this year--and she's now reading in the middle of the sixth grade year. Grace is settling in nicely to Kindergarten, has some nice friends, and is participating and comfortable in class (whew!). She is busily passing off on her Kindergarten skills--and is becoming very interested in learning to read. I'm just so happy that both girls are doing so well in school and have such great teachers and nice classmates. I was just helping in Grace's class today making waffles (it smelled so good in there!) and they really are a cute, cute group of kids.

Violin update: Anna's been learning the A string and "Mary had a Little Lamb" this week. Dude, the A string is squeaky... I'm already nervous about the E string. :-) Even though violin is hard, Anna has become quite the dedicated student and is very concientious about making sure to practice five days a week--and her hard work is paying off; she's getting better every day. Slowly. But. Surely.

Thumb update: Still not sucking it. Looks like she licked it! I don't know who's more proud: us or Grace. This is a big, big accomplishment for Miss Grace.

In more selfish news, I've been busy getting used to my new imac (with a 24" screen!!!!) and photography software, Aperture. It's all very exciting--and will really help me manage my photoshoots better--once I learn how to use it all!

Brownies!

We had our first Brownie meeting today--and it was GREAT! The girls are adorable, Jenn was great, and we had lots of fun. I think the girls had the most fun with "knots," where they held onto random hands and then tried to untangle themselves--it looked pretty hopeless for a while, but they did it! Right now, we have nine girls in our troop. Grace will sometimes be there as a Daisy Girl Scout, but she got to play with her best friend from kindergarten's house instead (Mikah, Annakai's sister) and had an even better time doing that, I think.

Here's the group:


It was actually lucky we had Girl Scouts at all today, because Anna got the stomach bug that's been going through our house and was sick last night. So, I kept her home from school this morning to make sure she could keep breakfast down. By 11:30, she was dancing around the house, so I took her to school and she's been fine ever since. Whew. Apparently, Anna being gone this morning completely stressed her troop-mates out, worrying that Brownies would be canceled, so Anna's teacher was almost as glad as her friends to see her after lunch!

Also, Anna has turned a corner with the ol' violin. She is practicing even MORE than she needs to now. Wow. It's amazing what actually trying to learn a song will do for motivation! Who knew "Hot Cross Buns" could be so hard?!! And, on Sunday, her teachers all played in the Weber State Symphony, which we went to and she was completely blown away by how good they were (and they really were, too--I was inspired!). But, I told her they all started out playing "Hot Cross Buns." :-) I'll try to figure out how to get video on here so you can see and hear her in concert.

Grace is finally all healthy and now doesn't have school for the rest of the week because of Parent/Teacher conferences... Ah well. Gramma and Poppy will be here (but staying at Peter's this week), so she'll have plenty to keep her busy.

Thanks so much for all your recent comments! This is actually fun when I know people are out there! :-)

Violin

So, after about two years of Anna begging to play violin, she started a few weeks ago...




You can tell, from these pictures, that she absolutely LOVES it! :-) (The solemness of these pictures cracks me up!!) No, she says she does and she really likes her lessons, but getting used to practicing has been an entirely new thing for Anna to adjust to (and me, too, quite honestly!). She has just learned how to turn her "D" string into an "E" and an "F sharp", so she's playing "songs" now, which is making things much more interesting to Anna. Coming up is "Hot Cross Buns"--and Anna can hardly wait!

And, because many of you never get to see the wild and crazy side of Anna, here's a silly shot (with a nicely colored tongue thanks to orange kool-aid--wonder why she was so wired?!?):


In other news, we did get to go to Build a Bear with Grace on Friday (we're coming up on three weeks without the thumb!!). It was a BIG decision once we were there and she had to decide between all the bunnies, bears, dogs, cats, turtle, etc., but she finally chose the very cute cheetah. Her name is Lily (not to be confused with Anna's dog, Lilly (two Ls as opposed to one, just to keep them straight)) and she is fitting in nicely with the rest of the brood on Grace's bed. Grace doesn't even mention sucking her thumb anymore and really seems to have moved on. Truly a miracle!!