What a crazy weekend, on Saturday I got to tag along with Teresa of Wiz of Oz Photography for a wedding, we had a blast. The most entertaining part was chasing down a particularly adorable camera shy flower girl. Great time.

Then today was such gorgeous day! I’m so happy that spring is finally showing it’s face. I was so sick of being stuck indoors. Cory & I got a chance to shoot the fabulous Melissa today for her senior pictures. It was great getting outside for a shoot, and it doesn’t hurt having someone as fun & pretty as Melissa to shoot. Afterwords Cory’s parent’s took us out for dinner for Cory’s birthday, which is coming up Tuesday (yep St. Patricks day). So a pretty great day.

Here are some of my favorite shots from today’s session.

Look at those gorgeous eyes.

Her parents made us put her behind bars, lol.

Cory took this one, I love it.

I’ve been meaning to write some if this for a while now, but it seems like the last couple weeks have just blown by. Autumn is almost over and winter is really setting in. I’ve been crazy busy with work the last few weeks and we’ve had a ton of stuff going on.

Halloween was a blast. We have this huge football rivalry going on. My husband Cory is a huge Green Bay Packers fan, and he’s pretty much alone, everyone else we know are big Bears fans. So every week the guys have phone calls back & forth depending on who’s won. At one point my mom & step-dad Jay bought my son a full bears outfit & got his pictures taken in it. My daughter Crystal is also a Bears fan (although when she started talking my husband got her to say “kick da bears” to everyone), and they write messages back & forth with the fridge magnets. So it was no surprise when my mom, Jay, their son Stephen (who changed before I could get a picture) and even their dog showed up for trick or treating in bears costumes.

Crystal went as a “Bratz cheerleader”, which I wasn’t really excited about, but it turned out pretty cute.

Anakin went as Spiderman. He wasn’t really loving the mask, so he only wore it long enough for me to get a picture. He really liked the jumpsuit though.

Cory went as the guy from the Saw movies (I think it’s Jigsaw maybe?), creepy.

I wussed out this year and didn’t wear a costume for trick or treating, although I did dress up to go out with a few friends later. I don’t normally go out much, but Halloween is so much fun. I love the bizarre crazy costumes people come up with. I was wishing I’d brought my camera the whole time. Shannon took this with her camera phone, yeah we’re dorks.

Crystal had to get glasses this year. She did pick out some pretty cute frames though, & now she wants to wear them everywhere. Of course if you know any 8 year old girls, you know we had to pick up the “Hannah Montana” case to go with the frames. You can’t go anywhere without seeing some kind of “Hannah Montana” products. Jeez.

We elected a new president, I’m feeling pretty good about it, all though it’s too soon to tell. I’m really excited we live in a country where we can vote, so I get pretty jazzed up when we have an election. Hopefully we can get things going in a positive direction now.

Cory & I recently finished reading Jenny McCarthy’s two books on autism, Mother Warriors & Louder than words. Really informative and inspiring. There is so much research that needs to go into potential treatments for autism, and it’s great to see someone who has the ability to get some of the information out there. We’ve had our son on a Wheat & Dairy free diet pretty much since he’s been diagnosed with Autism, and it’s exciting to hear about some other dietary interventions that might help him out. After the holidays we’re going to be trying some of the interventions she used in the book and hopefully seeing some more improvements. I’m feeling really optimistic about the whole thing. I will say I was a bit disappointed that she didn’t go into more detail about possible treatments, but there is a huge message of hope there & I think that’s what’s important. If you know anyone with autism I really recommend these books & checking out the TACA website.

When my mother-in-law Jean asked me to take Easter pictures of the kids(my two and my niece Autumn) this year I was a bit stumped on what to do. Last year we just did a white backdrop with flowers, so I wanted something different this year, so we headed out to the Pioneer Village out by Scott County Park. Unfortunately nothing wanted to go right, Easter was super early this year and so the grass was still mostly dead and even though it looked nice out, it was pretty cold. The poor girls didn’t want to take off their coats, so most of the pictures they’re doing more shivering than smiling, lol. Anyways it was at least a nice drive out there, and we had some fun playing. I did manage to get a few decent shots out of the whole thing too. The one at the top was my favorite.

My favorite shot of Crystal, she looks a bit grown-up in it.

My adorable niece

Anakin wasn’t going to have anything to do with looking at the camera, but he’s a cutie anyhow.

My beautiful daughter

Proper little ladies.

After sticking a camera in their face the whole trip I thought it was only fair to let the girls throw eggs at me.

Ok, I freaking love that picture. My cousin’s daughter is probably one of my favorite people to shoot, because she is just full of attitude, and adorable. That picture about sums her up. Anyways, had night 2 of “Trick or Treat”. We hit up Moline with my mom and their family again. Anakin didn’t quite make it that long, I think he had it with the whole thing so we cut it short. Which worked for me, because it was way to cold and I actually decided to dress up.

I’m a witch, although you can’t tell because I had to take the picture myself, sometimes it sucks being the family photographer. Although I can’t have anyone else take my picture anyways, I hate having it done and I am always the one in the picture blinking or making some horrible weird face. ugh.

More of the “Gouhls” (yeah, I know that was bad).

We had “Corpse bride”, “Mad Hatter”, and a cat.

Oh and how could I not mention that Jay dressed up their dog as a “glow stick” he’s too cute. Didn’t get a great picture, because their dog is more active than Anakin.

Yesterday was Davenport’s trick or treat night. I took it off work to go out with the kiddies. Usually we wind up buying the ready made costumes, but this year we kind of improvised. Anakin picked out this goofy hat so we came up with the mad hatter costume based off of that.

And Crystal had her outfit picked out for months. We were checking out goodwill for photo props (they have some awesome stuff there on occasion) and she found this cool white “veil” ponytail holder thing, and decided she was going to be a Corpse bride. I was utterly shocked when 3 months later she still wanted to be Corpse bride.

This is the first face she wants to make everytime I break out the camera. Total ham.

Oh and we decided to stick with the Tim Burton theme (because we’re huge fans) and have a “Nightmare before christmas” pumpkin. Here’s Jack.

Anyways we had a great time, the kids got a ton of candy, and we’re headed back out tonight for Moline’s Trick or treat with my mom and their kids. Oh speaking of which, my little step brother Stephen went with us yesterday (actually we had a pretty big group of family). He totally scared all the little kids.