American Child Photographer's Charity Guild (ACPCG)

I am very honored and pleased to announce that as of today I am a member of the American Child Photographers Charity Guild. The ACPCG is a non-profit, volunteer organization that provides families of extremely premature or critically ill infants and children with a free photo session. This can be done at the hospital, in the NICU, or in their home. They are then given either a 4x6 proof album or a high-resolution CD with 5x7 files of all the images from their session. All of this is free of charge.

If you know anyone who might be in need of this service, please have them call me or email me ASAP. I would love to do this for them.

If you'd like more information about the ACPCG, you can view their website here:

http://www.acpcg.com

Forgot to include this in my last post...

How could I have forgotten to share the "blowing out the candles" pictures?!

I love how he's smiling in this one.

He just came in and saw these and said, "Mommy, that's me. And I go phooooooo to blow out my candles when I turn four."

I couldn't help it if I wanted to. I totally love the kid.

What a week!

Wowzers! This has been a busy week.

This past weekend (and the first half of the week) was spent painting the boys' room. Thank God it's finally done. It only took one coat of primer and four, yes, you heard that right, four coats of red paint. (That's a total of 3 gallons of Behr California Poppy Red.) I think my right arm is going to be non-symmetrical to my left after all that rolling. Sheesh! But it looks great. And my boys are really excited about it.

Tuesday was Owen's 4th birthday and we had a lot of fun celebrating at Chuck E. Cheese with a few close friends. Chuck E. Cheese on a Tuesday night (verses a weekend) is great. It was not busy at all and we pretty much had the run of the place.

Then Thursday as I was getting to all the laundry I had put off due to painting, my father-in-law called because he was really sick (my mother-in-law is out of state taking care of her mother's last wishes) and he needed someone to drive him to the doctor. Well, his doctor's office couldn't get him in until late that evening and they told him, with as sick as he was, to go to the ER. So I went and picked up and drove him.

Apparently, the hospitals in Bakersfield are terribly overcrowded right now. There are NO beds available. There are a lot of really nasty, mean bugs floating around and our hospitals aren't equipped to handle the amount of sick people needing care. We sat in the waiting room at the ER for 3 hours before finally being called back to see a doctor. When we finally got him into a bed, it was against the wall in the hallway of the ER (along with about 12 other people). My poor FIL was so exhausted from being up sick all night that he immediately went to sleep.

We talked to the doctor for about a minute and she prescribed some anti-nausea medication and some IV fluids to be administered. So for the next few hours I just sat with him while he slept. I talked a little to the people in the room across from our hallway spot and they said that their dad had been in the ER for three days. He had been in the hall like us until that morning when they finally moved him into an ER room. They said on Tuesday he was #8 on a wait list to get a bed in the hospital. But here it was Thursday and they were still in the emergency room. I felt bad for them.

Luckily, it turned out that my FIL had a nasty bug and nothing more serious, so after some fluids, they sent him home. We had been there 8 hours at that point. I made hime come home with me and stay at our house so we'd be close by if he started going downhill again. But by morning he was feeling much better and that was the end of that.

So that's the excitement that was my week. Don't you feel informed now? =)

Baby Kyler Revisited...

I gave Kyler's mom her CD of proofs tonight, so I can share a few more favorites....


I love the moody lighting on all his little baby wrinkles...


This was my first time trying out this kind of shot. I think it turned out rather nice. =)


And this one is probably my favorite image from the whole session. He looks so sweet and new. And I love his feet.

Happy Birthday Owen!!!

Owen turned four today! My baby is four! While it's hard for me to think of him getting bigger sometimes, I am also so proud of him. These last four years have been amazing. He is such a gift from God. I am truly blessed to have him.

So today we went out to lunch together. Just Owen and Mommy. His restaurant of choice? Denny's, of course! So we had Little French Toast Dippers and shared a caramel cappuccino and talked and played with the little paper mask they give to kids and basically had a really fun lunch together. Tonight we're going out to Chuck E. Cheese's for some family fun and celebration.

On a side note: the boys' room is coming along nicely. One good coat of pink primer and two thick coats of red paint are done so far. (Sunday was a busy day, so I didn't get any painting done.) But I think one (maybe two) more coat should do and and I'll be finished tomorrow! Yay!

On the agenda for this weekend....

My husband is going out of town today to see the new movie The 300 on an IMAX screen. He's such a guy. Ha!

Sooo, that leaves me here with the boys. And what are we going to do today, you ask? Why, we're going to paint, of course! I finally decided what I want to do with the boys' room. My oldest has wanted an outer space room for a while, but I knew I didn't have the artistic skill to paint an elaborate mural of a galaxy with stars and planets and such, so I was at a loss for what to do in there. I'm pretty picky when it comes to decorating. I didn't want anything too cheesy or busy or cartoony. So we decided on a crisp white ceiling, nice red walls (I LOVE red!), and a few awesome posters of our solar system that I found at art.com. There are nebula posters, and galaxy posters, and supernova posters, and planet posters, and a really beautiful photographic poster of earth from outer space. My son is going to LOVE it.

Oh, and I also found a really cool little rocket ship lamp to go on their dresser that will add to the theme. I just need to figure out what to do with the window and their bedding. But that can wait. I'm so excited!

I'll make sure to update with pictures once everything is finished. =)

And since I can't post without a picture...here is a picture of Sam from last week at his patriotic program.

He did amazingly great. He memorized a fairly long speech about the Statue of Liberty and also a speech called The American Creed. He was so relaxed and natural. I was so proud I wanted to cry. I'm such a mush.

I wish I could post pictures of the whole stage because the kids were super adorable and looked so sweet in their costumes. There were a few Statues of Liberty, a Betsy Ross, a few Abraham Lincolns, an Uncle Sam, and even a Dr. Martin Luther King! They sang patriotic songs and delivered speeches about our nation and there was even a slideshow dedicated to the men and women serving in our armed forces. After the slidewhow, the kids saluted members of the audience who have served or are serving in each branch of the military. One of the little boys in Sam's class has a Daddy that is serving in Iraq right now, so it was very touching.

I love how he's looking at his flag in this one. Isn't that a beautiful moment? =)

Reeeeally late Valentine's Day pictures....

I know. Valentine's Day was almost a month ago. I'm a bit behind in posting to my blog. But these pictures are cute. Way cute. (They're my own kids. Of course I think they're cute!) So I wanted to post them anyway.

I wanted to get some candids of my boys together to make a valentine card for my oldest to give out to his class at school. Getting any of my youngest is, well, let's just say....difficult. He's a busy-body and has been since the day he was born. The kid hardly stays in one spot for more than a second. And he thinks it's a fun game to hide from the camera. Or jump up and down as fast as he can while I'm trying to take a close-up. Or if I manage to get him to actually look at the camera, he makes silly faces. You get the idea.

So getting them both together, in the same shot, where they're not fighting, and are actually being sweet to each other, is a RARE treat.

And here's how the Valentine's Card came out. Isn't it cute? Which reminds me...I can design custom cards, birth announcements or pretty much any kind of mailer you might need so don't forget to ask if that's something you're interested in. I'm still working out a pricing structure for it which I will try to get up on the website in the next week or two.

Have a great week!

Baby Craving.....

My youngest is almost 4 years old. I think we're done having kids, but every once in a while something happens that makes me ache to have a baby in the house again. Something like this little guy.....

This is Kyler.....

Isn't he beautiful? He's such a sweet, sweet baby. Hardly cried at all. So alert and snuggly. And he smelled soooo good. You know that sweet baby smell that newborns have? Yeah. It's heaven.

So I came home and told my husband about how beautiful the baby was and how good he smelled and how he kept making these little cooing sounds. And how wonderful it felt to hold someone so tiny again....

I think he's wary of me doing newborn sessions now. Haha.