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!
Our fall season has kicked off with pumpkin patches, festivals, and candy collecting. We haven't hit Halloween yet, but its just around the corner. This year we decided to do something new of us. Instead of the usual pumpkin painting, we decided to carve a pumpkin. We ventured over to one of the local churches pumpkin patches on opening weekend. Brenna searched until she found the perfect pumpkin!
Ok, I had to squeeze this in this week! Undefeated Mississippi State rolling into Tuscaloosa this weekend to take on #1 Bama! I should be a great game and we're excited! Go Maroon!
Dewberry Farms has become one of our favorite fall traditions. Check out 2010 and 2011! I look back at those pictures and can't believe how much she's grown up! I was worried how we would fit it in this year now that Brenna was in school and the weekends at Dewberry are crazy. Luckily, everything fell into place when we found out our first official school field trip was to Dewberry Farms!
Brenna spent all Summer asking when it would be Fall, because she was ready to start soccer again! This time we're the Kansas City Wizards and we kicked the season off with a great first game. We've got some old friends and new friends on the team. Here's some shots from her first game. She hustled hard and made her first goal of season!
This year we broke out the cowboy boots and hat to kicked off the Fort Bend County Fair. The fair opens with a parade through downtown Richmond. The schools even gives the kids a holiday for Fair Day, so Friday morning we met up with the Sanfords' and headed to the parade. She was the cutest cowgirl out there in my opinion!
This post is alittle late. The week before school started, we decided to squeeze in one last fun weekday outing. We got up early and hit the Houston Children's Museum. We got there before the doors opened, only to discover we weren't the only ones trying to squeeze in one last day of fun. The line ran out the door and wrapped around the side of the building!! Yikes!! Even though we spent the day shoulder to shoulder with everyone else, the kids still had a great day.
I'm way, way behind on the blog. I thought when Brenna started school I would struggle with what to do. I dreamed of filling my time with blogging, shopping, and other unnecessary pleasures. Boy was I wrong. We're almost 2 months in and I'm still struggling with my calendar. Between school, PTO, Drive at church, Junior Achievement, and Brenna's soccer I can't find time to even do some of my basic stuff (like blogging). I'm afraid in my efforts to ensure I used my new found time productively, I may have over committed!!!
Anyway, I ditched everything yesterday to just work on pictures and videos of all the fun stuff we've been doing since school started. So, now the pump is primed again and there will be some new posts flowing through over the next week.
The video below is a compilation of some of Brenna's many performances. She likes to put on shows frequently here at the house. She likes dancing, ice skating (in socks on the tile), hula hooping, jump roping (with two jump ropes), and the hop-skip. I make it a point to try and video these everyday one-man shows, because I know its something that I want to remember later when performing for Mom and Dad is long gone.
Well, the big day finally came! I can't believe my little girl is going to Kindergarten. Where did all the time go? I'm so thankful for the wonderful husband I have that allowed my to spend these first 5 years at home with her. It's been such a blessing to have that time and very hard to let go of it. She looked so grown up in her uniform on that first day of school.
I posted earlier that Brenna took her training wheels off. However, she continued to ride with the speed and assurance of someone with a safety net. With that information, the obvious next thing to expect was her first bike wreck, which came within 3 weeks of taking off the trainers.
We had friends over for dinner and afterwards the kids got out and rode bikes. Brenna made the turn to come back alittle too sharp and alittle too fast and ended up eating the concrete face first! Yikes! The initial inspection was horrifying. She had come down directly on the her chin, taking off all the skin and bit down on her lip in two places. So, when a neighbor pulled her from underneath the bike all you could see was blood coming from her mouth and chin. She was hysterical! After we got her inside and cleaned up we immediately started the inspection for loose teeth or the need for stitches. After she finally calmed down, we realized that while the total injury was ugly, we were very fortunate. She walked away with a severely busted fat lip and a skinless, bruise, swollen chin. Of course we had our bike helmet on, but that didn't do much to protect the underside of her head. Maybe we should consider chin straps.
These pictures were from the next morning. The bruising hadn't set in fully yet, so by the next day, her whole chin was black. Over the next week, we went through every shade of the rainbow as it slowly faded away.
One of our last days of Summer we spent with the Strickland crew. The Stricklands' and their extended family have been very good to us and we are blessed to have such wonderful neighbors and friends. We started off the morning at the pool where the kids played and burned off some energy. Next it was back home so everyone could have a nice nap and a quick rest. Then, back to Stacie's for some fun back yard playtime. Everybody had dinner together, and then it was off to the pool again. Our group closed the pool down and then headed over to the playground to wait while the crew set up for "Movies Under the Stars". Our neighborhood association sponsors these events several times throughout the year. Tonight's movie was "We Bought a Zoo". The kids stretched out on blankets, help themselves to popcorn and gummy bears, and settled in for the show. While we didn't stay for the whole movie, our young bunch managed through more than half thanks to the energy boost from the gummy bears. Just before 10 pm, we loaded them all up in the back of the SUV and headed for home. I was a very fun, long, and exhausting day. Brenna was asleep before her head hit the pillow. What a great way to spend one of our last days of Summer!
Ok, it's been a while since I posted. Those last few weeks of Summer really kept us busy! There's lots of fun stuff to catch you up on so I expect you'll be seeing several post over the next week. Including Brenna's first day of Kindergarten! I'll save my thoughts on that for another post......
While Mom and Dad were here we decided to visit the Museum of Natural Science at Sugar Land. This museum has been on our hit list for sometime. This is actually the closest Museum to us, so its funny that it took us so long to get to. While this is not as big as the downtown Museum, it did not disappoint. There were several things for Brenna to enjoy. I actually thought it was alittle more kid-friendly with all its exhibits and hands-on experiment stations. Not to mention less crowded and easier to manage with smaller children.
We all tested our skills at the Discovery Works experiments. We enjoyed seeing Dinosaur Discovery. Brenna liked exploring the Animal Secrets exhibit with its caves, trees, rivers, marshes, and naturalist tent. We took time out to see Earth's Wild Ride on their Digital Dome Theater. They have several different shows a day. Earth's Wild Ride was set sometime in the future as a Grandfather describes Earth's past to his grandchildren as they view it from their vantage point on the moon, where they live now. The actual dome theater is inflated from within with air and you lie on your backs on the floor (although there were seat available along the edges of the theater) and view the movie projected on the inside of the dome to give a 180 degree prospective. It was very neat! And finally before we ended our day we visited The Dig Pit where kids were equipped with shovels, buckets, and brushes to make their own dinosaur discoveries.
I can't believe my little girl is 5 years old and about to start Kindergarten. I'm so proud of the little girl she's becoming! She's happy and sweet and smart. Now it seems like she keeps me in line as much as I keep her in line.
Her actually birthday was on a Tuesday but we celebrated all week long! On the Monday she was excited to see Mawmaw come visit with my Aunt Shirley, Aunt Juan, and Uncle Sal. Brenna played cards with Aunt Juan for most of afternoon. Aunt Juan kept asking her if she was cheating, to which Brenna quickly replied "No!" But, she picked up on the thought and then started asking Aunt Juan "Are you cheating me?"
On Tuesday, she started off the morning opening a few gifts. She had ice cream for lunch and played all day with Mawmaw. We celebrated that night with a cupcake cake and more gifts.
Brenna got her first "big girl" bike for her third birthday. She nearly rode the wheels off of it. The training wheels on that bike are almost completely bare. She also outgrew that bike very quickly because she's so tall. So, for Christmas she got a "bigger girl" bike. At first I was alittle nervous, because that bike looked so big compared to the other one. But she hooped right on and took off (with training wheels, of course). Recently, she's been asking to take the training wheels off. After weeks of asking, and her birthday coming up, Jacob finally consented.
She started off a bit shakey with Jacob following along behind her. But within the hour she was asking for him to "Just let go!" and she was off! Now it's like the training wheels were never there at all. One more milestone down. Too bad swimming didn't come this naturally!
Houston Zoo in the summer time is HOT! Very HOT! But alittle heat never stops us. We met up with friends there a few weeks back and braved the heat to enjoy everything the zoo has to offer. And I do mean everything! We got there as the gates opened at 9 AM. We enjoyed the animals, watched the 4-D Dora and Diego Rainforest Adventure at the new theater, feed the giraffes, ate lunch, rode the Wildlife Carousel, toured the Dinosaurs exhibit, hit the splash pad, and finally caught a train ride around Herman Park. More than 5 hours later we had 7 exhausted kiddos and 3 worn out moms! Here's some shots from the day!
