Photographing my kids and whatever else strikes me
This is a space for me to display my budding photography skills and also brag a little (maybe a lot) about my kiddos!
For Nanny's birthday we all drove down to Victoria to surprise her for lunch! And boy was she surprised! Jenny organized the whole thing and we all managed to keep it a secret. :)
Her reactions totally cracked me up. She's looking over at the table where everyone was sitting. :)
I can only imagine she's thinking "Well shit...she's taking my picture."
It's probably not the smartest idea to startle your 90+ year-old grandmother, but I'm glad we did! :)
This summer my family rented a beach house. I guess they've been doing it for a while, but I haven't had enough leave from work to really partake in a few years. "/ I'm glad I was able to make it work this year. It was nice to get to spend so much time with my kids, my Mom, and my sisters and not have to worry about work or swim school or any of that kind of stuff that typically eats up my normal week.
I'm having a difficult time deciding which picture to lead off with today. But, I think I might give the honors to Wallace. Wallace has had a rough summer with all of the water-based trips we've taken. He seemed to hate the lake, he liked the Frio (but only in small doses); I really didn't have much hope for the beach. He didn't like the ferry ride over, and certainly didn't want to get out of the truck, but I made him anyway. Needless to say...things weren't looking so great for hommie and the beach.
Our first evening there Jenny took the kids down to the water so they could play around in the sand and maybe stick their feet in the waves. After about an hour (literally an hour) of picking up sand and throwing it into the water Wallace stuck his big toe in. And within just a few more minutes he was 100% sold on the coast. I don't know what exactly caused the switch to flip, but I'm so glad it did!
And now...I want to buy a beach house. I've never seen him so at ease around the water. And of all places...the beach. I think he's more like my Dad than I realized. :)
The water on the east Texas coast is not what you might call pretty... "/ It's really just clay and silt. Contrary to popular belief, it's not caused by dirty people, dredging, or oil drilling.
I used to always walk in tire tracks too. :)
Hunter made it down for a day!
I decided to try to do some silhouettes of them. I don't really know what I'm doing and had to doctor them a bit in Lightroom...and then Anna walked up and said she didn't like them because she couldn't see who was in the picture. "/ whatever. I think I like them.
While they were all in one place together we got a shot of all the grand kids! :) Meredith was thrilled.
My sisters got a good strong dose of the power of Meredith's temper. Haha! I couldn't go in the water or lift anything since I had just had the appendectomy...so everyone else had to deal with getting Meredith out of the water when it was time to go back to the beach house.
They say I used to be just like her. So, according to my family I've got about 5 more years of this...
...sweet...
We jumped back on the ferry to take the kids to the Rain Forest Cafe, and I was so excited because we got a place in the outer lane, and Wallace would be able to see the water from the car!
But look who'd had a complete change of heart about boats! Or at least ferry's. It was like a Utopian experience on the ferry that day, both ways. On the way back someone gave us some bread to feed the seagulls, and they were so tame they would take it right out of your hand!
Since Wallace and Ruthie were the only two on the back of the ferry with me when we fed the seagulls, the other kids were super bummed they hadn't gotten to do it too.... So we tried to recreate the experience on the beach when we got back to the house.
It took some time to convince the seagulls to stop eating fish. Ha!
But they finally came over.
They weren't as tame and the ferry seagulls though.
We pulled out the slip and slide Brittney and Duncan got Anna for her birthday!
The hose didn't really have enough water pressure to create the water effects that the slide was supposed to have. "/
It gave Wallace the awesome job of getting to spray everyone with the water hose though! :)
sisterly love. :)
Cora is not the biggest fan of the beach. "/
On Sarah's last day we took the kids to the big water slide!
Ha! Wallace didn't seem too sure about going down feet first...
There were a few big storms while we were down there, so on our last day we spent some time walking the beach to look for shells. Anna and Jenny found a huge one, so we were pretty excited to look. My one direction to Wallace was to not get wet...
He was running down the beach on all fours like a bear.
And here he is making a sand angel...
It was my birthday, so everyone got cupcakes! Well...the kids got cupcakes anyway.
Rainy day activities at the beach.
We loved our beach trip! And now that I know just how much my kids love it, I can't wait to go back! :)
We got a fish!
After fish-sitting for Rachael and Justin and seeing how much fun the kids had with him, we decided to get one of our own. :) So we loaded up the kids, and my two nieces who are visiting, and went to the pet store. This place was awesome! They even had a tank devoted to Finding Dory with a bunch of the characters in it! It was adorable. And to top it off, it was feeding time when we got there! People in the store were literally laughing at all these kids going bananas over all the fish! Ha!
So, out of the blue Anna came up with the name Scottie. Here's praying the little guy makes it for a while. I managed to keep Rachael's fish (Blaze) alive for a whole week and a half, so I guess we'll see how we do with our own. :)
Yay for Frio family fun time! :)
I went ahead of Josh by about a day and a half this year, and the littles made me pay for that. "/ We had fun and all, but man...they wore me out! (photo courtesy of Dillion - I'm starting to get braver with letting the kids handle the camera).
The face/body painting tradition continues. :)
A family....
divided... hisssssss. ;)
Anna was all ready to do her Frio River song (an original song no less) for the talent show. Only she hates face paint...and we ended up not having the talent show until the following night.
This is her literally telling me that I'm taking up all of her time (messing with camera settings and taking like 20 pictures) and that she needs to be rehearsing her song...
Although there was a water balloon fight, I missed it with the camera. "/ Meredith's form of entertainment for the week was picking up the spent water balloons and asking me to blow them up for her. Turns out the new water balloons that self "tie" will let you refill them with air if they don't break on someone. Some of the kids found it almost as fun to squirt water out of the balloon through the tie as it was to throw them at people. :)
John hung up a tree swing!
The kids had a lot of fun swinging out over the water and then landing right back on the bank. They scared a lot of tubers who were right below them. Ha!
Yikes! One of the girls found a coral snake!
Everywhere we go I make my kids form a human chain now a days. Grocery store, swim practice...So, they tend to just do it on their own out of habit. :)
Lots of time spent lounging in the River. *
Meredith is a little water bug just like Anna. She just couldn't get enough of the water.
Poor Lily was down and out the first day I was there with a little foot infection, but man she perked back up really quick the next day. Nice to have so many doctors in the family. :)
She swam until she pretty much fell asleep...
Wallace really surprised me when he got up and sang his favorite song (Everything is Awesome!) during the talent show. He sings it in the car all the time, but when I've tried playing it for him to sing in front of other people before he's totally clammed up every time. Apparently after seeing a few of his cousins get up and do their thing he was ready to go, even managed to remember some of the rap part of the song. :) It was probably one of the most adorable things I've ever seen one of my kids do. Reminded me a lot of Anna's first talent show at the Frio when she got up and killed "Let it Go" and then proceeded to M.C. the rest of the show.
The Minion pinata. The kids didn't seem to mind whacking a minion one bit. For Meredith the minion was another "surprise egg". I guess anything with a surprise inside is a surprise egg to her. Ha!
Wallace acted like he was all ready for this pinata. Grabbed the bat, walked up to it, and then proceeded to just barely tap it. "/
Candy break!
and my flash died right before the talent show started. It was probably a good thing. The blinding flash is kind of annoying.
(photo courtesy of Dillion) I can see where Josh gets his love for having his picture taken. ;)
Thanks so much for having us all out to the Frio Big Momma (Ha! I'll be damned if I didn't see it spelled differently again this weekend...I like this spelling. I'm sticking with it.) and Joe-Joe! It's always so much fun getting the kids together. I can't say enough about how excited I am that my kids have so many cousins and they all have such a blast together. I love all of the little traditions that have been started at the Frio, and I can't wait to see them all grow up and create more every summer.
After a less than stellar first attempt at photographing our fireworks this past New Years, I decided to try again with my shorter lens and my tripod. I'm so excited with how some of these turned out!
I struggled to get any good ones of the kids though. "/ We had the twins over, so there were extra kids. And they were moving super fast! I had my shutter speed pretty slow since it was so dim when we got started, and I wanted to capture some of the light trails.
You get the gist. Lots of fun! :)
I failed on the sparklers again. So, apparently I should get giant metal sparklers. The morning glories in general suck! They'd break off, and even though I got the big ones, they still were fairly short-lived. "/
The kids liked them in spite of the fact that flaming torches would break off of the stick they were holding.
We pulled the Expedition out of the garage so Wallace could sit in it and still enjoy the show with us. On New Years he ran in the house and watched from the windows upstairs which just seemed sad to me. I think he appreciated the new set-up. I did the same thing when I was little. I wouldn't even get out of the car for the tanks or chickens. If it made noise, I was gone. I laid up there in the back window of my Mom's old t-bird for the entire time sparks were flying. By the end of it last night, all 3 of mine were in the Expedition. :) Next year I'll be sure to turn on the AC for them. "/ They were little sweat balls before it was all said and done.
I think this was my favorite picture of the fireworks, but I'm not really sure how impressive it will look on a tiny cell phone screen. I think I just like the orange against the blue.
And I decided that the actual burst of the explosion didn't look very pretty, so I deleted most of those.
It was super windy, so everything trailed off to the left. :)
This one reminds me of jellyfish. :)
The finale was a bit crazy. :)
Anyway. That was about it. I still think shooting fireworks from below has an element of luck to it. You don't know which direction one might fire off toward, and you almost have to anticipate when to fire the shutter...Anyway. Can't wait to try again in January. :)