Christmas Portraits

I take alot of pictures.  But, like I've mentioned before, they're never portraits.  They're just snap shots of our life as we live it!  As I work more and more on photography and with my camera, I've come to realize that's all I really want.  I want picture memories of our life as we know it now.  I admire pictures from professional photographers and the engineering side of me enjoys working out the mechanics of how they took the picture, but that's as far as my enthusiasm goes.

With that in mind, as Christmas time approached I began to dread Christmas cards!  I knew I wanted a cute picture in a cute dress that captured just how spunky Brenna is right now.  Unfortunately, I also knew that Brenna would not be thrilled to set out on a mission to take posed portraits.  Brenna can't be still, ever!  So anything I did would have to be fast and candid and that didn't exactly jive with the beautiful, timeless portrait I had in my mind (which I probably wasn't technically competent enough to produce anyway!)  I had images of beautiful landscaped backgrounds and sunset lighting with styled hair and perfect smiles!  Ha!  What was I thinking!?!?  In the end, my extravagant photo opportunity turned into an impromptu walk down to the creek behind our house and just praying that something would turn out!

The actual picture taking was painful, since Brenna didn't want to cooperate and my patience was running thin.  We gave up after only 30 minutes!  I had way more outtakes than smiles, but we did walked away with a few that I loved!  Here's my spunky little girl!  Christmas cards are on they're way!  I hope you enjoy the outtakes too!

Thanksgiving Play and Turkey Parade

So this holiday season has been filled with lots of school related fun.  For Thanksgiving Brenna's kindergarten class got to create their very own unique turkey feathers, turkey float, and participate in The First Thanksgiving play.

We worked tirelessly on Brenna's "Rainbow" turkey feather and float.  She did a great job!  They both came out looking great!  After looking over all the feathers and floats, it was very evident which parents did their kids homework and which parents let the kids do their own homework.  I'm pretty sure a kindergartener can't understand the mechanics necessary a equip a turkey float with flashing Christmas lights and a remote control driver!

Proud of her creations! 

Kindergarten School Picture

Here's Brenna's Kindergarten school picture.  I'm not really sure why she didin't smile, but in her case no smile is better than some of her fake smiles!

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!

Happy Fall Y'all!

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! 

Hail State!

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!

Kindergarten Field Trip to Dewberry Farms

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!

Ready to get the day started!

Fall Soccer Season

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!

Fort Bend County Fair

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!

One Last Outing.....

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.

Brenna's Many Talents

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.