Carson's Prom

What a senior year it’s been! It’s been so nice getting to be a part of it. :) I love when I get these calls asking for photos. And prom was so fun! I just couldn’t get enough of all the dresses! And seriously, the styles changed so much in just the 2 years since she went last time. Not so many flowers on the dresses this year. They honestly looked kind of similar to the dresses we wore when I went to prom!

You’d never believe from looking at her how incredibly humid it was that evening.

Easter in Gilmer!

It took me a little while to get to editing these photos, but we had a wonderful trip to Gilmer to spend Easter with Josh’s family this year. I didn’t get any photos of it, but we (well…Josh and Sarah) even got to spend a day teaching his brother-in-law how to cook brisket, and Josh cooked up a bunch of ribs (my personal fav) while they were at it. It was so nice and relaxing.

Happy Easter yall!

Wallace's 5th Grade Photos

Wallace is graduating elementary school, and the teachers asked for a current photo as well as a baby photo for a slide show they do for the kids. This slide show meant a lot to Anna, but Wallace is more confused by it than anything. He just wants to make sure he’s not the only kid submitting photos. I’ve assured him that if he doesn’t submit photos, he will be the only one who doesn’t. And since I haven’t been the best at taking photos lately, I needed to get him out and actually take a current photo of him. I am so pleased with how well they came out!

He really fought me with getting dressed for this. He wanted to just wear what he already had on…or a sweatshirt that he wears every day. We compromised on this.

This is the photo we actually ended up using. :) So handsome!

And even though I hauled one of our super heavy iron chairs out to the trail behind the house, we didn’t end up using any of the seated photos. Oh well…at least I got a workout.

He decided to go with this baby photo. It’s pretty cute, and it was fun to go back through all the old baby pictures. I got my camera when he was a baby, so it was also interesting to see all of my original filters, and all that blur… yikes. Even Wallace was commenting on it.

Carson's Senior Pictures

I was so excited to get to shoot Carson’s senior pictures this year! What an honor. She drove all the way out here from Houston to take photos at some of her favorite summer places. Before she could even get here though, my computer hard drive crashed! Fortunately, my son just got a new gaming computer, and the components for gaming and photography are surprisingly similar, so I was able to make it work (even though I totally gave his computer a virus….so sorry buddy). Wallace helped me go through the processed photos this morning to pick out our favs to post here. :)

Beach House 2022

I love the beach! The trip I look forward to all year.

I was so happy that Ruthie and Hannah got to join us for the whole week!

I decided to try to learn all about fill flash on this trip. Meh…The verdict is still out. It’s obviously got it’s limitations. I took one photo of Henry without the flash, and the shadows across his face were definitely much more noticeable, but the bokeh in the background was also nicer. Tradeoffs.

Well…I mean, it definitely made a difference here. With his hat and his back to the sun, we’d never of seen his face.

Okay…enough camera talk. Cute kids playing at the beach!

Wallace got a pretty bad boogie board rash. He also realized that together we failed to pack any shirts for him. lol. So he got a couple of souvenir shirts to wear over and over again.

Ice cream truck! Meredith dropped her first one and came running back over before I even got a chance to pay…

I love all the different choices.

He’s such an old man. He’ll always go for an ice cream sandwhich.

Must be something about youngest children and Sonic…

This was such a long day for parents. I think we had gone to the big slide before coming out to the beach for several hours.

The rest of the photos I have are from our second day of crabbing, and Ruthie took all of them. I have to be honest, she did an amazing job! I love a lot of her photos. So we did two days of crabbing this year because we were planning on a large crowd for stuffed crab night. Good thing crabbing is pretty much my favorite beach house activity!

Yummy!

So, our regular place is under construction. We’ve crabbed in this spot before though. Last year Jen and I crabbed all day and ended up here for the last half of the day.

Don’t you love his souvenir shirt? :)

Anna caught a crab!!!!

You stand in the water a lot at this crabbing location.

And there were so many jelly fish. After she got stung the first day, Jen got some fancy pants leggings for the second day!

So, I saw that Jen brought this crab “hook” with her that she said Matt likes to use. I told her it looked ridiculous. But then when all the pots were being used by kids, I decided to give it a try and fell in love with it! I ended up buying my own, and then Jen got me a net for my birthday! It’s such a fun way to crab!

I might look bored, but I’m just very slowly “luring” crabs in.

The kids caught a flounder in one of the crab pots for the first time ever!

And this is the tiniest hermit crab we’ve ever seen.

On the whole, crabbing was a success. Jen only cut her foot once, and I only lost one crab hook to the rocks. So…not bad. Everyone enjoyed the crab. I even learned how to pick them this year.

Can’t wait to do it all again next year.