Horsemeister boys & Mia

I had a session last week w/Mia who has turned one. Her momma had this shoe idea and brought a whole laundry basket of really cute shoes. I thought it was a darling idea, Mia didn't. I've been photographing Mia since she was just a tiny infant and she has been nothing but smiles, but it's just so typical of kids. You get this awesome idea and have the best layed plans and for no reason at all, THEY DON'T LIKE IT.
After a little play time w/mom though & a few goldfish, she decided it was the most fun ever to grab the shoes and throw them off the chair...and then she'd smile:)
Here are a few highlites from that session..





And then the Horsemeister boys. I had a session last week in the rain w/these guys and although we got some decent shots I was just not happy w/them. It was just ugly outside. So when we woke up to fresh snow yesterday, I convinced Judy to pull them out and let them run around a little. I knew I was getting some awesome shots of these guys. Evan (blue halter) is a huge show off and the camera LOVES him.


Valiant, the other hand (purple halter), is all about the LADIES. Judy would walk him out into the snowy field and let him go and instead of showing off for the camera he'd head straight back to the paddocks where the mares were. He had absolutely NO interest in getting his picture taken.



These 2 remind me so much of teenage boys, they can't just walk normally, they've got to contantly be jostling and goofing off the whole time. They were cracking me up.

feb rush?

Usually Feb is known a the slow month for a lot of photographers and has always been pretty low key for me too, only not this year.

I've finished the main directory pics for my church, other than a make up date in May and a few out at our retirement home, they are about done...except for keeping up with the emails/orders. I wasn't counting on how much work that part was going to be.

Yesterday, because my kids were off school and I still try to be a good mom, I took them ice skating. On the way I stopped to see if any orders were in and found a mountain of boxes! I guess I didn't realize how many small orders I had coming in. So when orders come in I usually spend a large part of the next day getting them sorted and in mailers, and addressed, mailed, and setting up pick up times for those on a deadline...get the picture of what I've been doing all day???

The other thing I did yesterday was run over to Horsemeister Farm and take pics of their 2 awesome stud colts...in the rain. We talked about cancelling but decided to give it a try. A grey day, taking pics of black horses, in the rain, I wish the sun would have popped out but we just had to deal with it the best we could. When the subjects are so beautiful I can at least get a few but I can't wait to do a summer session w/these guys. Even though they don't look it, they are actually supposed to be in their "ugly duckling" stage....if this is their ugly stage, I can't wait to see what they end up looking like when they come out of it!
The first weekend in March they will be at the state fair in Springfield, IL and they've hired me to come along to photograph that so that should be fun. These 2 collages were designed to be framed for the stalls.




My older 2 boys are part of a band called high time and are recording some music here at the diningroom table while I'm blogging and I just took a few candids of that...




playing w/the dof a little here...
They actually sound pretty good!

Now I've got to tackle some laundry before making a post office run...Luke is out of socks:)

How cool is that??

Today was a first for me, I actually shoveled snow in the middle of a wedding session! Of course that goes right along w/it being my first winter wedding.

I saw this cool pure white hill and thought, "what an awesome background for the wedding party". I'm pretty sure they thought I was crazy but my assitant and I got to work clearing a path for the party to walk through. Some places were at least a couple of feet deep, so we got a work out in the process. We were joking that we need a "there will be an extra fee for shoveling" in my wedding contracts:)

Anyway, here are a few shots from today....




Just to give you an idea of how deep the drifts were, here I'm standing on top of one.






The wedding party got pretty "into" it...

snow days

got dressed and went out w/my camera for a few shots. i had every intention of shoveling our sidewalk but it was under a 3 foot drift so i just took a pic of it. maybe we'll not see our sidewalk till spring?



our snow dogs...


sasha had a little frozen treat she had hidden...make that a 1/2 of her frozen treat...a bunnysickle.



i tried to get our horses to come out to the field to play and they just looked at me like i was crazy and went back to their shelter.



jess had some fun, too bad she had no brothers around when she picked up this snow ball...


look mom, no legs..


a little present for aunt karin:)

spotted the incredible hulk..aka logan


we walked over to the horsemeister farm and this is how raven decided to deal w/the snow, pretty smart horse....he too thought we were crazy and didn't bother to get up and say "hi".


some of our crazy neighbors came over skiing behind their horse.


We are actually enjoying being stuck here playing games, watching movies, & just hanging out. Which is a good thing because no matter what the groundhog says...i'm pretty sure we'll be looking at another 6 weeks of winter.