Bunny Trail II

More Bunny pictures... this time they're with my precious ones...

Clara

Lila

Mallory

And my proof that three girls and two bunnies do NOT look at a camera...

Precious Easter dresses & accessories provided by Nana & Grandmother. =)

Blue

My new blue paper totally rocks!

This little boy was such fun to take pictures of. He was a total ham! He had a precious little baby sister too. I love my job!

A Touch of Color

This was my entry for the "Hands" challenge on DPC. It placed 35th out of 281. :) Yay - my highest finish yet! My model (aka daughter #1) is making the ASL sign for "color." You make it by wiggling your fingers in front of your mouth. We thought we'd have a little fun with it. Mallory enjoyed the fingerpainting that came afterwards!

Hoppin' down the bunny trail...

Bunny pictures from my recent Portrait Party. I took over 300 photos that day!

Aren't they precious?!!

Nope, this one's not mine!

She's a cutie, though... from my shoot today. Almost 2 months old:

Realism

Kevin told me yesterday that I would make a good realtor. Now before you go thinking this is a compliment... he said it because of how decieving the pictures of our house are on my website. All the rooms are clean.

In reality, our room is ALWAYS a disaster. Now, this is not my ideal situation, of course. If it were up to me, I'd live in a calm, clutter-free environment. However, those of you who know me well know that laundry is the BANE OF MY EXISTANCE. And the way it's organized in my house is that the miles and piles of laundry in our bedroom are CLEAN (yes, all those are clean in the picture), and the piles of laundry in our bathroom floor is dirty (I'll spare you the visual).

Added to that, our room is the only room that we haven't completely furnished. So currently, we have the large tv in the floor, and still boxes of books, cds, pictures, etc. all shoved in the corner.

I love the color of my room. It's so tranquil - "Rain". But right now, it's not so tranquil. I have hopes that it will improve at least by the time we've been here a year!

The kid is cute.

Clara @ 7 months.

Self Portriat

So, I've been inspired to get my strobes back out and learn how to better use them. I got them in December 2004, but after we moved in May 2005 they just sat in the box until last month. There wasn't really room to get them out in the apartment. I did get more proficient with natural light during that time period, though, so I at least I was still growing in some aspect.

After being in Pearland for close to a year now (wow - has it really been that long?) my photography business is really beginning to pick up again. I'm excited about it, because I really enjoy taking portraits! It's so much fun. It's also a challenging hobby. I read once that playing a musical instrument was good for gifted children because not only is it mathematical, it's something you can always get better at... you never master it & there's always room for growth. I think photography is the same way. Just when I feel like I have something down - a lighting technique, a specific pose, a camera setting - whatever - suddenly something else pops up that I need to work on. The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know!

Oh well. I'll keep on plugging. =)

My girls

Trying to get a decent picture of all three of my girls can be quite the hair-pulling experience.

The typical photo shoot photo...

The finished product...

Toofies... We have toofies!

Clara's finally showing off her bottom two teeth... you can see them in this picture, but you may need to click on it to see the bigger version:


And another cute pic for good measure.

Footware

So, before I realized you can only submit to one dpchallenge at a time, I set up this shot for the footware challenge... I was going to title it something like "Remnaints of Date Night with Daddy." It didn't really have "DPC pop", so I chose to enter my education submission instead... although my scores thus far aren't too awesome with that one, either.

A Trip to the Museum

Kevin and I always seem to have differing opinions of what should go on during the weekends. He's such a great dad, and is always wanting to "get out and do something as a family." On the other hand, I'm always happy to have him home, and would like to get things done around the house while I have help with the girls! I realized today that his goal is better. 20 years from now, the girls aren't going to remember if my house was cluttered or not (hopefully, anyway!)... they're going to remember the fun things we did together as a family. So, I embraced todays outing and enjoyed every minute of it... even if I did have dishes in the sink waiting for me when I got home.


We ended up going to the Houston Museum of Natural Science. They had a new dinosaur exhibit, which we sped through (think short attention spans, *sigh*) but was pretty cool. Also located in the museum is a large butterfly museum. This is where the girls had the most fun. They state that there are roughly 1000-2000 butterflies in the pyramid at any given time. The girls all enjoyed watching all the butterflies. Even Clara! Mallory kept trying to get one to land on her. Lila had a tumble in the mud - always a fun thing. But was fine - caught herself with her hand (easily cleaned off with the trusted WIPEY). Another highlight was the huge iguana...


We ended up getting a membership for a year... even if we go back once, the discount is worth it with our large family. So, we'll be going back. Mallory got some glow in the dark butterflies from the gift shop that she and Kevin came home and put up in her room. She was so excited about them she could hardly see straight. Going to bed was a big challenge tonight. Hopefully the novelty will wear off soon -- at least enough that it won't affect her going to bed again! Of course, she also told me that she was having bad thoughts of dinosaurs chasing her... but I'm pretty sure it was a stall tactic.

Christmas in March!

The majority of Mallory's Kindergarten curriculum came in yesterday in our Sonlight order. Wow! We had a lot of fun going through the TWO full boxes. This isn't even all of the books... just the ones that would stack well for my picture. =) The K Core curriculum is a little more cumbersome than the PreK that we're used to. It's going to take me a little while to wade through it before we get started, but Mallory and I are both looking forward to it!

New Business Card?

I need to update my business cards, as I have a new phone number now. I'm thinking less is more... but I still haven't decided for sure. Opinions?

Your friendly garden variety

Lizards. Who knew they could be so much fun? =) Oh the joy of the little things in life!

The many faces of Lila.

Pensive...

Sweet...

And the Lila we know and love...

Playtime

Some friends of ours from church gave us this playhouse that their kids had outgrown. We were quite happy to take it off their hands - especially since we had been planning to purchase one anyway! The girls LOVE it & have spent hours playing in it already. It's so nice to see them getting along!

Comfort

This was the topic for a photography challenge I submitted an entry for recently. And yes, those are girl scout cookies! Here are the two I narrowed it down to... Kevin picked the one I entered, but of course, now I'm second guessing myself. Which one would you have chosen?