Meet the Grayson Family

This past weekend I spent about an hour with this family (one of my playgroup friends) and her extended family. I took tons of pictures and did a lot of posed positions (per their request). But my favorite photos to take are those fabulous candids that reflect so much personality. Here are some of my favorites from the day.








Definitely the most challenging of all of the photos...the big one! I learned a lot just from trying to take this one picture.

July 20th, 2010

We had a fun day celebrating Jaedyn's birthday this year. He got to make lots of decisions on his birthday starting with breakfast. He wanted pancakes followed by a trip to Sea World. We spent the morning there visiting his favorite exhibit (the shark one) and ended our time there with some play time at Elmo's Bay play area. We ended the day with some macaroni and cheese (Jaedyn's favorite thing to eat) with a trip to Coldstone for a birthday ice cream treat. Thanks everyone for all of the fun gifts!

A fun musical guitar card...

A dinosaur that hatched over a 24 hour period of time (even I thought it was cool!)


New drumsticks... A new book about volcanoes...



Video at Coldstone below....he looks totally stressed. Not sure if it was the candles that wouldn't light or the fact that the ice cream looked so good!

So in the world of photography things are looking up! I have been trying to take lots and lots of pictures (as you know by my blog) in order to hopefully some day make money taking photos. I know I'm not quite there yet, but I'm constantly encouraged by so many people's encouraging words and compliments and am hoping in the near future to take the plunge and start a business. I'm slowly learning the quirks of photography...lighting, composition, shadows, etc. and will hopefully have a tighter grip on those elements as I continue to practice. I am super excited as I have my 3rd photo shoot tomorrow with a 4th one to follow soon after that. I'm soooooooo excited about this new development in my life as photography has always been something that I have loved. We had a play date with some of our favorite little friends last week, so here's a peek at some of my favorite shots. :0)

Drum roll....

So Jaedyn had the opportunity to play the drums during one of our songs at Vacation Bible School last week. He practiced for a total of about 15 minutes the day before this video and pretty much knocked the socks off of everyone, including David Toney the worship leader. He then played again this past Sunday during our Church service. God has amazed us with this amazing gift of drumming that he has and we are so excited to see what the Lord has in store for him!

Hilltop Park Birthday Party

We celebrated Jaedyn's birthday with a nice toastie day at one of his favorite parks with some of his favorite people. Other than the blazing sun I think everyone had a good time.

Introducing his buddies....

Espen found this giant tennis ball in the bushes!

Ashlyn and Lynne-Anne...

Leif...
Riley...
Connor and Lynne-Anne...
Connor demonstrating some hippity hop skills....

Before...

After... (notice the many white candles..at some point during the party Jaedyn secretly inserted 16 candles in the cake)

Some frisbee playing...Present opening...
Harmonica playing...
More present opening..

Leif...
Lilly gettin' some love...

Thanks everyone for coming and celebrating with us. Jaedyn is still talking about his party and how much fun he had. :)

we Finally Made It to the Del Mar Fair!

So after many years of residing in San Diego we finally got our buns down to the Del Mar Fair (a HUGE event here). Some friends gave us tickets so at that point we had no excuse. I'm so glad that we went..it was well worth the money we spent just to see Jaedyn and Ashlyn smile like crazy and have tons of fun.



As you can see below...our first ride was a roller coaster ride and I honestly think I had more fun than Jaedyn. I laughed HYSTERICALLY throughout the entire ride...it was like I was possessed or something.







Forget the helicopter ride...check out that wicked fun slide!






Ashlyn's first ride on the carousel...she was beyond happy!



Giddy Up!

Farmer Ashlyn and Farmer Jaedyn in action...





A garden section w/ my favorite flower friends...sunflowers!

These guys were just slightly exhausted...slightly.