2012 Soccer Season

We finally closed out the 2012 Soccer Season. I can't say I'm disappointed, with practice every week and games every weekend for 9 straight weeks, I was ready for the break.

Overall, our team stunk this season.  Although they don't keep score in our age bracket, if they did, we would have lost every game.  Brenna was the only kid on our team to score all season!  Brenna really likes soccer and she's gotten pretty good at it.  We plan to take a break from soccer until the spring, but we may fill the winter with one season of basket ball.  Here's some shots and video of our little soccer all-star from the season.

Trying out my new panoramic!  Friday afternoons on the soccer field. 

Crazy Socks Day

I'm behind on blogging!  Again!  I've been caught up in too much Holiday shopping lately!  But, on a positive note, I'm nearly done with Christmas shopping and its not even December yet!

This was from earlier this month.  The kids had Drug Free week at school and each day Had a theme.  Here's Brenna's crazy mis-matched socks!

Drive at Grand Parkway Baptist Church

Every week since August we've spent Wednesday nights at church building a soap box derby race car. Brenna has moved up from our church's preschool program and into the K-5th program.  No more Noah's Ark Rainbow Club.  But, big kids have big fun too!  For our fall semester we took part in Drive, a program focused on this verse.

"12 Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.  13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, 14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus"  Philippians 3:12-14.

Each week we used race car terminology to teach the kids about the "race of life" and to press toward the mark for the prize "Christ Jesus".  After each lesson the kids got the opportunity to build their own race cars.  We started with wood blocks.  The kids got to pick their own race car pattern.  They had to cut the pattern out, tape it to their wood block, and trace it so that the blocks could be cut to match their pattern.

Halloween Haunts

Another Halloween has come and gone.  Each year it's more and more fun for Brenna.  This year she asked to be Strawberry Shortcake, one of her new favorite characters.  So I snatched up a costume the first week of October to avoid the rush.  I brought it home thinking she would be thrilled, only to discover she was very upset that the hat was too floppy!  "Strawberry's hat isn't floppy, it's tall!"  So after some engineering from mom, we came up with a nice muffin top hat that we could both be satisfied with.

Our month was packed with pumpkin patches, fall festivals, and general halloween happiness.  This year we did our usually trick-or-treating with our neighborhood friends.  We were short a few kids because the Helmcamp's skipped out on us in favor of going to Disney World for Halloween.  We wish we could have tagged along with them!  But our kids had a great time here in Texas!

Portrait Practice

I've been at this photography thing for a couple of years now.  I really enjoy it!  I've captured so many beautiful moments of Brenna's life that will last forever.  However, most of the photography I do is "life" photography, just snapping pictures of what looks like a good time.  Very seldom do I purposely venture out with the main objective of portrait photographs.  I've maybe taken Brenna out 3 time to try and capture posed, planned portraits and even that hasn't been in the recent past.  I will be attempting this again soon, for the sake of a Christmas card photo, fingers crossed.

So, its always good practice and a nice challenge when friends ask if I can take pics of their kids.  I have no intentions of ever taking this any further than a hobby, but its fun to play photographer sometimes.  Here's a few shots of some beautiful kiddos that I got to pretend with recently!

I've done both of Grace's brothers pics a couple of time, so it was time she got her chance behind the camera!