Birthday Party – Seattle Child Photographer

Somebody turned five last weekend and enjoyed celebrating her birthday with some of her friends. These are just a few pictures that Chris captured while I was herding a bunch of kids around our house. She’s really growing up entirely too fast.

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Christmas 2008

Although a little late, I wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I am still trying to get caught up after what turned out to be a very busy December. It’s obvious that my regular blog posting schedule has been significantly impacted. In fact, this is the longest that I have gone without posting; a whole week. I’ve learned that balancing family and my business around the holidays is challenging at best. I’m extending some grace to myself and expect that come January 1st, I will be back to my regular schedule.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a few images from the past week. These were all taken with my point-and-shoot. This first image is one of the pictures from our family Christmas card this year and was captured on the first day of snow that we had on Sunday December 14th. Let’s just say that our kids have enjoyed many more days of sledding since then.

These next few images were captured at my sister’s house on Christmas eve. Santa and one of his elves made an appearance to deliver presents to all the good girls and boys that were there. The first shot is of my two oldest kids and one of their cousins looking out of the upstairs window for Santa and his sleigh.

The next two show how patient my kids can be when they are expecting (and hoping) that one of the presents might have their names on them.

That last picture shows my son continuing to exhibit something he struggles with greatly; patience. Just a quick anecdote regarding my son and receiving presents. On the way home that evening he asked us, “Mom and Dad, if Christmas is the celebration of Jesus Birthday, why do we get presents”. I know how my husband and I responded but I’m curious to know how you would have answered this question from a 6 year old.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and enjoy the rest of 2008. We’ll get back on the regular blogging schedule in January.

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Star Wars Birthday Party

This weekend we celebrated my son’s 6th birthday. Given that he has somehow become a big fan of all things Star Wars, there was little doubt about the theme he would choose for his birthday party. So, on Saturday afternoon we had a lot of fun watching as all of the party guests arrived in their costumes.

Given that Halloween seemed to have arrived early, I had to try and capture a few images. Not the easiest thing to do while also trying to keep 10 kids and numerous adult family members entertained. Nevertheless, the following should provide a small flavor of what the day was like. And, luckily for us, we’ve been enjoying 80-degree weather for the past few days.

And, I have to give a shout out to Jason Miller from Jason’s Coffee Shop and Fine Baked Goods. My husband went in earlier in the week explaining that we were hosting a Star Wars b-day party and wanted a cake to match the theme. Well, Jason ended up designing and baking a cake that looked exactly like the Millenium Falcon. Not only did it look great but it was oh so delicious. The cool thing was all the adults that dropped their kids off at the party had to come in to catch a glimpse of the cake. Check out the pics below and even more important, pay Jason a visit.
Here’s my three little ones preparing for the guests to arrive.

Here’s the lineup. I had to get a group shot early on in the party in anticipation that they may end up shedding their costumes as the party went on. Surprisingly, they didn’t.

Some of the boys have gathered to get their game plan together.

The kids participated in a relay race to free Han Solo from his frozen fate.

Almost free!

The two teams waited patiently for their turn to try and free Han.

The kids also had fun trying to pop each other’s balloons that were tied to everyones ankles. You can be sure that we had to lay down some serious ground rules before we played this one. And, I am happy to say, that we navigated our way through the entire 2-hour party with no injuries.

I had to get a shot of the cake. Too cool!

On this one you can see that the birthday boy got a little help blowing his candle out.

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Reflections of Summer

I was cleaning off some memory cards that had some personal photos from this past summer and this particular image jumped out at me. I noticed Chris and Adam out on the dock fishing and I wanted to use the great natural light to capture a nice silhouette of the two of them. For some reason I really like this image. I’m sure it’s because it contains my two favorite guys. It’s also just a quiet, peaceful moment with a father and son spending time doing their favorite thing in the world. No, not fishing. Just being together.

Any guesses on whether this is sunrise or sunset?

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Clara the Explorer

So, after she came down stairs from her bedroom holding a dress in her hands and requesting to put it on, Clara went straight outside and decided to hunt for bugs. Somehow, despite my level of discomfort around small creepy crawly things, both of my girls are fascinated with (and unafraid) of bugs. Bees are another story. If they even hear a buzzing sound while they are outside, they freak out and start screaming about bees. Yet, they are perfectly comfortable reaching their hands into every nook and cranny of our rockery looking for spiders, ants, beetles and “rollie-pollies”.

The spot that Clara picked to look for some new friends was under a maple tree in our backyard. The branches of the tree filtered the sun so that the only place that had direct light was on Clara. It looked very cool and I don’t think I could have planned the light any better as it really created some interesting highlights and shadows. Check out these few photos that I was able to capture of her while she was digging through the rocks. Although the last picture is a relatively straightforward sepia tone, the others are an experimental recipe that I came up with while having some fun in Photoshop. How do you like it? I guess if I get favorable feedback on the treatment, I’ll record it as an action so that it’s ready to go at a moment’s notice and easy to duplicate on other images.

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Pictures of The Kids in San Diego

I know it’s been a little over a month since my trip to San Diego but I just had to blog about it one more time. The reason is because I finally got my hands on some pictures that some of the other photographers were able to capture of my two oldest kids while they were playing on the beach waiting for mom to be done with her photo session.

In addition to admiring the gorgeous photos taken by Tana, Katie and Erin, notice also that my kids didn’t come to the beach prepared to play. Actually, the plan was that they were just dropping mom off at the beach for her photography workshop on their way to the San Diego Zoo. Well, let’s just say mom convinced them to hang out and be available as “models” for the other photographers to use. They had about a 30 minute wait until we were to start taking pictures and in the meantime, dad wasn’t about to keep them from having fun and enjoying themselves. The end result is two kids in full street clothes soaking wet before they even had a chance to start posing for photos. But, I wouldn’t have it any other way. And, as you can see, Tana, Katie and Erin are so wonderful with their cameras, they got some great, authentic shots of the kids just enjoying themselves. And just a warning – lots of photos below.

Here they are running down the beach together holding hands.

Here’s Adam after picking himself up out of the water after being knocked down by a wave.

Kelsey enjoying the view.

Finding out what it would look like if they had no feet.

Playing in the sand together.

Taking a break with sandy feet.

The thing I love about this one is how you can see Adam in the background looking at his sister with the most precious smile.

Posing together.

I have to admit, looking at these photos makes me wish that I could take photos at that beach every day. It was absolutely wonderful. And thanks again to Tana, Katie and Erin for sharing their wonderful talent and capturing such precious moments of my children.

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Camber’s 1st Birthday

After a fun but very long day at Alki beach on Saturday, I joined the celebration of my nephew’s very first birthday. My sister and brother-in-law hosted a very nice party complete with customized buttons celebrating their precious little boy turning one, a wonderful spread of delicious food, and even sno-cones. My brother-in-law makes a mean sno-cone and they were just what to doctor ordered on such a hot day yesterday.

Given that I had just come from my three family portrait sessions at the beach (I’ll be highlighting each individual family over the next few days so be sure to check back), I had all of my camera gear with me and was happy to capture some memories so that one day, Camber can look back and see what a wonderful party his mommy and daddy threw for him and how many people that love him were in attendance.

Camber’s actual birthday is on July 2nd so it’s still not too late for you to wish him a happy B-day. In the meantime, I’ve included a few pics from the party for you to enjoy.

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Dance Recital

So, the day after we celebrated the kids preschool graduation, Kelsey had her very first dance recital. She’s been taking classes at the Children’s Dance Theater since the fall of 2007 and has really enjoyed it. Saturday was the culmination of all those weekly classes as she and all of the other darling little girls in her class had the chance to show their stuff on stage.

As if their tap routine wasn’t cute enough, they got to wear the most darling dance costumes. I was too busy helping out back stage on the day of the performance so I didn’t get any images of the recital but I have posted a couple from their dress rehearsal and a couple of Kelsey after her performance. She was so excited to come out after the performance and see her daddy, big brother, little sister, grandma, aunt Jennifer and uncle Richard and aunt Lori, uncle Byron and her youngest cousin Camber.

I feel like the last week has been packed with so many milestones for our kids that it makes me realize how quickly they are growing up. All the more reason to cherish these images that capture such wonderful memories. Enjoy!

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Canon G9

So, one of the things we’ve allowed our kids to do is to use our point-and-shoot digital camera. We had a little Canon Elph that has captured many memories over the past few years including the births of our last two children. It’s always fun to download images off the memory card and get a surprise look at all of the images that the kids capture while it’s in their possession. Talk about photojournalism. It’s the closest I have come to understanding what the world looks like through the eyes of a 4 and 5 year old.

Well, the freedom that we provide for the kids to use the camera also has inherent dangers and recently we realized one of those dangers. One of the kids dropped the camera and it stopped working. We were relatively disappointed but not in the kids. Hey, we’ve dropped it plenty of times too. But we were sad to lose our point-and-shoot. Well, we decided we couldn’t live without the convenience and simplicity afforded by a compact camera, especially with our trip to San Diego coming up. So, we scrounged up enough money to treat ourselves to the Canon G9. We’ve only used it a couple of times so far but for a point-and-shoot, this is a serious camera. After really putting it through it’s paces, I’ll be sure to write a thorough review but for now, enjoy a few shots that Chris took on our Friday evening excursion to Alki Beach. This was our maiden voyage with the G9 and given that we had only owned it for all of 4-hours, we’re very pleased so far. Enjoy the pics!

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Mother’s Day

Our preschool hosted a Mother’s Day tea on Friday for all of the moms of the students to enjoy. Each class had a special presentation to the moms in the beginning and then the classes combined for refreshments. Given that Adam and Kelsey are in different classes, I did my best to be in two places at once.

As you can see, Clara really enjoys the opportunity to participate in circle time with her big sister. Even though she still has two years before she’s old enough to enroll, I think she’s ready.

This is a shot of Adam giving me a card he made for me at school.

And here’s me enjoying all the attention that my three wonderful children were giving me.

Thanks to Chris for being willing to take some photos.

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