I come from a family of four children.  I am the third, and obviously, favorite child.  Haha.  And I love my siblings.  I realize, as an adult, what an impact they had in making me the person I am today.  I look at my own children, and marvel at this reality: I may be the parent, but I see the bond my children I have and fully recognize that their experiences with each other will help form who they become.  I see the love and respect they have for each other… even if they don’t want to admit it, and maybe don’t see it themselves all the time.

I saw that love and respect in these two siblings here too.  It was so easy between the two of them.  They were so ready to laugh, so ready to hug, so ready to enjoy their experiences together.

Such a joy to capture their bond.

Do you hear those squeals of laughter?  Me too.

I loved how easily they held each other.

I loved how easily they celebrated together.

I loved their tickles.

I loved all their moments.

I hope they look back on these images and remember a happy, carefree time.

I hope they look back on these images and smile.

Because, I’m sitting here right now…just grinning.

And as this little boy grows up, I fear that the snuggling time will decrease.

And that just can’t happen.

So, in my attempt to keep the snuggling time alive and well in my household, I have figured out a covert operation that allows me my snuggle time without the boy even knowing it’s happening.  Wanna know my secret?

We wrestle.

It’s like WWF all up in here.  Sort of.  In between throw downs, atomic knee drops, and death blows,  we laugh and smile and say “I love you.”  I love it.  Some day he might key into the fact that this is my tricky way to smother him with love, but for now, he thinks we are having a knock down, full out, BATTLE.

To shoot these as self portraits, I knew I would have to channel my inner MacGyver.  I used two backdrop stands, a tic tac toe type design with some curtain rods I had lying around, and random things around my house to hold my camera directly overhead.  And yes, this did include duct tape and string.  I then fired the shutter with my remote, which you will notice is in my hand in many of the shots.  I’m pretty happy with these pictures.  I now have pictures of my kids and me doing something that ALWAYS fills my heart.

And the fact that these are self portraits just tickles me pink.  :)

And so without further ado, I present to you The Story of Love and Wrestling.

The wrestling match always begins with someone standing on the bed, assuming the Battle Pose.

But no one stays on their feet long.

Battling now commences.

As you can tell, I am very, VERY fierce.

You can clearly see that this battling business is not fun at all.  Battling is hard work.  And it’s dangerous.  But someone has to do it.

I really take a punishing.

He’s ruthless.  You can clearly see that I can hardly stand it.

As the battling winds down, it becomes a little bit more obvious what all this battling is really about.  Hugs.

But someone else wants in on this game.  My girl.  My mini me.

And she brought her cats.

It started out innocent enough.

But soon….

But it always ends in happy sighs and snuggles.  I seriously just love it.

If you are now just tuning in to my blog and are wondering what this Life Story is all about, let me tell you.

Cuz it’s awesome.

And very very fun.

I teamed up with a group of amazing photographers and each month we are taking the time to document our own lives.   This is a challenge for us to capture our every day worlds and hopefully make us and everyone aware that our “ordinary” is actually “extraordinary.”  We’re calling the series “The Story of ________” and we’ll each be filling in our own blanks. At the end of this post is a link to another photographer who participated, and she’ll be linking to someone else. It’s a whole big circle of stories in pictures. Click through and enjoy!

To follow this story, click right HERE.

If you’ve missed my other Life Stories, don’t despair!  Here they are: Pumpkin Patch,  Best Friends, and Christmas Tree.

And I love new fans!  You can follow me on Facebook.

I remember these things because they were our traditions.  We did it every year.  That repetition makes memories stick.

I want sticky memories for my own children.  So, every Christmas, we go and cut down a tree. We go out to lunch, get treats, and we cut down that tree.

This year, we changed things up by going to a different place.  We found ourselves in Half Moon Bay at our favorite restaurant, The Flying Fish Grill.

My goal was to be as unobtrusive with the camera as I could, which is kinda sorta hard to do when you are taking pictures in a restaurant with your big ol’ camera.  But I tried.  Minimal direction from me…. just watching my family interact.

My goodness, look at my son’s and husband’s lips.  They look so much alike.

I love watching my husband play with our kids.  He does so many things just to make them laugh.  Here, they were adding all sorts of weird stuff to his water and then he would drink it.  As you can plainly see, Daddy is hilarious.

My loves….

Daddy love is awesome love.

And then off for treats.  Seriously.  This cookie was enormous.  And my daughter is part monkey.  She is always climbing.

And finally… to the Christmas tree farm.

It wasn’t long before we realized, these trees were seriously UGLY.

Look at this one.  It was missing a whole section in the middle of the tree.

My daughter was less than thrilled about the choices of trees.

My son didn’t seem to mind.

The dude is slightly insane.  And no, I didn’t ask him to pose.  He does this all by himself.  haha.

He’s so cute.

But c’mon…  Look in the background at the choices.  I’m telling you.  Pickings were SLIM. Good thing my cute daughter added some beauty to the place.

As the search went on…and on… crazy started to set in.

And daddy made an executive decision.

“We’re getting this tree.”

I was too tired to argue.

My boy hurt his knee but quickly recovered so he could watch his daddy cut down that tree.

But how would we get that tree onto the car?

Daddy lifted the tree.

By himself.

Cuz he’s wicked strong.

See?  Look how strong he is.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!!  Sorry.  This was taken earlier in the year, but I just wanted to show him off.

OK, back to the regularly scheduled program….

My son

My daughter

My family

I’m a lucky girl to get to build these traditions with this bunch.

And if you don’t know what this whole Life Stories is about, you’re about to be in for a treat.  Click on this link right HERE to see another amazing photographer, Claire Hunter.  She’s participating in this big ol’ circle of Life Stories.  You can see her amazing pictures, and she’ll link you to another amazing photographer.  If you keep on going through the circle, you’ll find your way right back here.  I’m doing this all year.  If you missed my last Life Story, you can see it right here and here.  And you can follow my work on Facebook.  Thanks for looking!

First picture, and I pretty much knew this session would be magical.

Yep.  This was gonna be fun.

I love this family.  Like, really.  I love them.  Their love for each other is so evident.  You can tell the parents are soul mates.  You can see the love they have for their children.  And they are all really wonderfully incredibly FANTASTICALLY good looking.  :)

We played.

The stars aligned….

They hugged.

SHE hugged.

I swear, she’s beautiful.  Crazy crazy beautiful.

And his hair…. his eyes…. his smile…. his soul….  Such a doll.

I…can’t…stop…sharing…..

OK OK OK.  I’ll stop.  No more sharing.

Thank you, M family for allowing me to capture the love and laughter that surrounds your family.  My heart felt joy throughout our session and as I edited them.

Just one more… to say goodbye.  You can follow my work on FACEBOOK.

My kids have some really awesome friends.  And so this is the story of them.  The story of the kids that make my kids better people.   My daughter’s best friend just happens to be the sister of my son’s best friend.  And guess what?  Their parents are pretty awesome too.  It’s just a huge gigantic friend jackpot!

We had them over for the entire day this week.  They got here right after breakfast and stayed until right before dinner.  What a day!

This pretty much sums up the day:

The kids were pretty excited.  Where to start?  All kid visitors always want to start in the kids’ secret room–a crawl space, converted into a fun area for the kids.  Adults have to crawl in.  I painted some of the walls with chalkboard paint, which makes for fun times.  This particular day the kids were not allowed to look at what was being drawn on the wall behind them until we were done drawing.  Ha!

But no playdate is complete without playing in their rooms.

And no playdate is complete without a fun new art project.  This one was extra fun.  My friend had shared this idea with me and the kids were eager to try it out: handprint snowmen on ornaments.

Step one: paint hand with white acrylic paint.

Step two: hold an ornament and carefully place your fingers along the sides of it:

Step three: let it dry while you play Twister.

Yes.  Really.  If you want your snowman ornament to turn out right, you must go play Twister.  I know it seems weird.  But it’s true.

I can hear their giggles.  I love how well they play together.  I actually get a little emotional looking at all of these.  Friends rock.

We wanted to be sure that the paint was dry.  So they had to play a little more.

All this waiting for paint to dry can make you crosseyed.Is it time???  Yes.  It’s time for Step four: draw the faces on the snowmen.

Aren’t they cute?  I  think we’re going to have to do this again.  I see grandparent gifts here, don’t you?

And now, time to go outside.

I MADE them take a nice picture.  Well, I TRIED to get them to take nice pictures. 

I love how much they love each other!

And I have a little something to tell you.  I know some cool kids.

Cool girls….

Cool boys….

Cool kids….

Hope you enjoyed this episode of Life Stories as much as I enjoyed shooting it.

And if you don’t know it, well, you’re in for a surprise.  Click on this link right HERE, to see another amazing photographer, Leah Jent.  She’s participating in this big ol’ circle of Life Stories.  You can see her amazing pictures, and she’ll link you to another amazing photographer.  If you keep on going through the circle, you’ll find your way right back here.  I’m doing this all year.  If you missed my last Life Story, you can see it right here.

Hope to see you back here really soon!

And I love new Facebook fans!  Feel free to like my Facebook page!

He’s a stunner. Check out his two different colored eyes.  Can you say “WOW!”?

Some of my favorites from the day.  There’s nothing quite like Daddy Love.And there’s nothing quite like Mommy Love either. So many favorites!

Thanks so much for looking!  And thank you C, S and C for giving me the opportunity to watch your family grow.  I look forward to next year!

You can follow me on Facebook!  I love new fans. 

The best part is that it will be totally candid, lifestyle shots of each of our own families/lives.  This is a challenge for us to capture our every day worlds and hopefully make us and everyone aware that our “ordinary” is actually “extraordinary.”  We’re calling the series “The Story of ________” and we’ll each be filling in our own blanks. At the end of this post is a link to another photographer who participated and she’ll be linking to someone else. It’s a whole big circle of stories in pictures. Click through and enjoy!

I decided to start with our annual trip to Joan’s Farm and Pumpkin Patch in Livermore, CA. We have gone here almost every year since we first discovered it, and it’s always so much fun.  This was a huge challenge for me, as these were shot in full sun in the middle of the day.  Photographers know what a challenge light can be at this time of day, so I did my best to just go for it, and enjoy capturing my family just doing what they do.

One of the things that the kids love about this place is all the cool trees.

This cracked me up watching my daughter try to make it up the tree.  When I saw that little hand make it’s way up the branch, I knew she was on her way!

Three years ago, I took a picture of my daughter on this tree, and this year I tried to recreate it.  It’s strange how much these images make me feel.  Proud for the wonderful person my daughter is becoming, and sad for the fact that three years flew by so quickly.  I am so very happy that I have this gift of photography to capture my children at this moment in time.

Time is so fleeting.

But while we loved playing in the trees, we were here for the pumpkins!  He loved seeing how strong he was!   haha!  I love that little man.

Some of my favorite shots of the day.  I stole borrowed my dad’s fisheye.  This lens is a lot of fun.  Cracks me up that you can see my finger on the pumpkin in the second shot.

And dang oh man, do I ever love these ones.

Leaving the farm!  We’ll be back next year!

And no trip to Livermore would be complete without a trip to In-N-Out Burgers!  Love that place!

Well, this was fun for me!  I hope you enjoyed it too.

Next up is Arna Photography by Rachel.  Enjoy!  And come back next month for a whole new story!

This is just going to be a hodge podge of images I’ve taken in the past several months.  I just felt like sharing, and I hope you enjoy.  Comments are always appreciated!  Thanks for looking.

I was playing with doing macro but without a macro lens.  These macro shots were all taken with my 50mm lens, taken off the body of my camera, and then just flipped and held to my camera.  Hard to do, but I like a challenge.

If you have followed me at all, you might already know how important my mom and family are to me.  This news has been devastating.  But I am so happy to report that she is doing better.  She’s had a few awful setbacks since her second diagnosis, but we are hopeful that she will be returning home with help next week.

I currently am not taking any clients so that I can focus on my family.

Cancer sucks.  No one will argue that.  It puts this awful fear in your heart that is hard to shake.  I was recently lamenting the terrible ups and downs that I have been experiencing as my mom’s health would wax and wane. A friend of mine who is fighting her own battle with breast cancer had some wonderful words for me:

This journey we are on, it’s a bit like being caught in a rip in the surf. You’re a California girl – how do we survive a rip? We don’t fight it, we don’t 100% let it take us away, we swim diagonally across it. We end up way down shore, exhausted and not at all where we planned to be, but we got there. What am I saying? For the most part allow yourself to feel everything this world is throwing at you but control it when it threatens to drown you.

Such incredible words of wisdom.  I find that I have been doing a lot of swimming diagonally lately.  And all this swimming has made me realize something: people are good.  Life is good.  I am well aware that there is a lot of bad in this world, but I am also completely amazed at the beauty that surrounds me.  My life is rich–rich with the love of my family, rich with the love of friends, rich with the love and support of people that I have never met that still have taken the time to hold my mom and my family in their hearts.

I look at my mom and this incredible woman that I quoted above.  They are fighting for their lives.  And they do it with such grace.  My mom says “I just take it as it comes.”  I have learned so much from that.  I, too, am trying to just take it as it comes.

This summer has not been at all what I expected.  I had big business plans, big hopes for new and old clients.  What I have is not what I expected, but you know what?  I’m okay.  And it’s all gonna be okay.  No matter what happens, it’s gonna be okay.

Devastation like the news of cancer tends to center you.  It makes you realize what is important.  I feel like I could have gone a couple of ways here.  I could have been angry at the world and stayed angry at the world.  What I have chosen to do is to have my moments of anger and frustration, sure, but not to live there.  No no no.  Far from it.  Instead, I feel like my heart has blossomed and opened.  I feel like allowing all the love that I feel for my mom, my family, and my friends, to just spill out of me like a rushing waterfall of light and wonder has helped strengthen me.

Love is saving me.

Recently, a friend shared a poem with me, that I completely adore.

I don’t think you need to believe in God to take something away from this poem.  We will all face troubles and obstacles.  Some that seem bigger than ourselves, and how we choose to handle these problems will in part, define us.

How will you define your life?

This weekend, he graduates.  And over the past couple of weeks, as I have pondered this momentous occasion, I have realized how much I will miss our little routine.  Just the regularity of it all.  For most of this year, this has been our routine:

Don’t step on the cracks.But, Mommy, if you do, it’s okay.  You can step on them twice.  And that will give you power.

I love that he gives his mama and himself the okay to make mistakes.  We all could learn from that: mistakes can give you power, if you’re willing to learn from them.

Once inside, he puts away his lunch box, his stuffed animal, and collects any artwork that has made its way into his cubby.

Then he signs in.  Every time, I tell him what day it is: “It’s T-T-T-Tuesday.”  “It’s Th-Th-Th-Thursday.”  And then he figures out where to sign his name. These pictures were taken on three different days.  But the routine is always there.  Always the same.And then his best friend comes over, hugs me, attacks me, tells me a something important, and the two get silly.

As I prepare to go, I need a lot of loving.  A lot.  This is best accomplished by telling him that he had better NOT HUG ME.

My son, such the rebel.  We kiss and hug, snuggle and giggle.

I seriously love it.

Then, he goes to the window to watch me go.

Every time.

I love it.Sometimes he gets lost in looking at the artwork hanging to dry or finds something to play with.

I’m seriously just dying.  I love his curiosity and lust for life so.dang.much.

Sometimes, his friend comes over to say goodbye too.Aren’t they perfect?As I drive away, I wave goodbye, my heart does a little smile, and I call my mom as I drive to work.

It’s always the same.

It’s my routine.  And I love it.I invite you to take a look at the routines in your life.  Pick up your camera and take some pictures to help keep those memories  alive.  This routine will end, and new ones will replace it.  And those routines will be special too.  But for me, THIS routine, has been nothing short of magical.  I know there will come a day where he will run off as soon as I drop him off.  He won’t linger to wave goodbye.  He will definitely not be interested in hugging and kissing me, ESPECIALLY in front of his friends, and very likely, his friends will have no interest in hugging me either.

My boy will grow up.

But maybe if I just keep not stepping on those cracks, he’ll stay my little boy just a little bit longer….