After bouncing around from fun birthday party to birthday party today (you can sort of make out the face painted cheek below), we beat the heat by staying inside and completing Nate’s first homework assignment this afternoon. The kids were supposed to go around the house in search of labels they could “read” and paste them onto their worksheet. I’m not sure that Nate really searched for labels he could read, but rather he ran around looking for brands he recognized. Labels that represented items he really likes to eat, places he likes to go, and something he really likes to watch/play.

Fierce concentration.

And voila! The final product.

Their smiles are contagious and their positive energy, infectious. You just can’t help but find yourself happy and upbeat when you’re around this awesome family. I was so happy to spend my Sunday evening with these guys, capturing a bit of their beauty and documenting a lot of their love.

Witness some of the beauty and love for yourself.

As much as I love the portraits above, I think my blog readers know that I actually prefer and love to document the candid moments like the ones below. The images where I can feel the love and the connection, where I can hear the giggles. Those are the ones that warm my heart and the images I love to produce for my clients.

Before I sign off, I just had to find a couple snaps to represent this little guy’s current obsession with his favorite character.

Here was Brek’s expression when Mario made his first magical and surprise appearance during our session. Love it!

Tiff and Scott, we did it! We finally pulled off the shoot and have some beautiful images to show for it. Hope you will feel that all the effort leading up to yesterday’s session paid off. I’ll be in touch soon!! xoxo

My big guy started K I N D E R G A R T E N today.

Although it was tough getting him — and me — out of bed so early (none of us are early risers and lately, I’ve been having to *wake* Nate up around 9am!!), I’m happy to report we made it to school on time. Early, even. (For those of you who know me, I’m guessing you are having a hard time believing that …)

We even had time to do the obligatory “stand in front of the door in your new back-to-school clothes on the first day of school” photo session. I remember my mom dragging me and my brother out on the doorstep every year to document our first days. Although dreaded back in the day, those photos are now so much fun to look back on as they documented our growth and wardrobe choices over the years. I definitely plan to do the same for my kids, starting with this silly, happy and excited one:

I wonder if he’ll look back on this photo XX years later, thinking, “How coule my mom could let me wear those shoes with those tacky red laces?!”

We arrived at school and when the classroom door opened, I nudged Nate up to the door so I could get a shot of him at the entrance with teacher’s name, classroom, etc. As you can see, he wasn’t too happy about that. I think more than anything, he was embarrassed since a lot of his peers and parents were watching him/us.

He looks a bit nervous here.

Standing in line, waiting for the teacher to direct them inside. There’s something about this photo that really gets me. Not sure what it is, but I see it and it makes me happy.

Love the variety in shoes.

Not in preschool anymore. Parents don’t go inside and help the kids transition. Instead, all of us parents hovered around the door and window trying to catch glimpses of our children and snap a few shots like this:

Seems like we’re off to a good start. I’ll look forward to finding out how all of these fun supplies are put to use.