Christmas '08

We had a great Christmas this year. I was a little slow to get into the spirit, but I came around in time to enjoy the time with family. I'm going to intersperse the narrative with the pictures this time to better describe the activities...
We spent Christmas Eve at our house with all the Wiemanns (and Zingales now too). Emma's cousins got her to wear the antlers for just long enough for me to get a picture.
Emma surveys the carnage of wrapping paper after the majority of the gifts had been opened. Believe it or not, the whole side of the room that Jill is sitting on was full of gifts.
This was Emma's reaction to almost every gift that she opened. Needless to say, she made out like a bandit.
Mark settles down to play some Guitar Hero after Emma went down for bed. He truly believes that he is a rock star.
On Christmas day we traveled over to my parent's house. Emma had another pile of gifts. The Christmas tree light spinner will keep her occupied for a long time.
My mom bought my dad a new laptop with much trepidation. I think he liked it...
Emma gets her first spin of TMX Elmo (or is it Elmo TMX?) Did I mention she made out like a bandit?

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I'm enjoying my time off work and spending time with family for the rest of the weekend.

Santa

I have been harassed for weeks by some of the women at work and others that Emma had still not gotten her picture taken with Santa. Apparently the sin is only compounded by the fact that she has a photographer for a daddy. Not being one to allow peer pressure to dictate my life, I was fine with another year going by without a Santa picture. My main concern was Emma's fear of almost any unknown man lately, which I figured would certainly include the Jolly Man. My secondary concern was for my wallet and the fact that I was going to have to pay 20 bucks for a crappy picture of my kid screaming. But alas, I found a solution...

Bass Pro Shops was offering a free picture with Santa, so since I had the day off I figured it was worth a shot. I talked Santa up to Emma all morning and then called in the reinforcements in the form of the Natzke kids. It was a handful running around that huge place with four kids, but it was fun. In the end, Emma was fairly ambivalent about sitting on Santa's lap, but at least we have a picture...

Wii

We went to a Christmas party last Saturday where they were having a Wii Tennis tournament. Emma is in love with the Wii since the girls across the street have one and she sees them play with it all the time. Here she is holding on to some of the extra controllers with a look of glee thinking that she was playing the game with everyone else.

Natzke Xmas Pics

Here are a couple of pics I took of the Natzkes yesterday evening. It was a quick 20 minute run and gun shoot, but we had a lot of fun. What a good looking family.

Trike

Emma has had this trike for quite a while, but it's really just been a seat with some wheels on it for her. Her legs were long enough to reach the pedals, but if the front wheel turned she couldn't reach. I think her legs are finally long enough and more importantly she now has the coordination to start pedaling. It's still slow going, but fun to watch. I'm sure she'll be a pro by the time spring rolls around.

Family Pic-Take 2

Since Jill decided that she hated the way she looked in our other family pictures, she made me set up in the back yard for a re-shoot. I think I still like the first one better, but she's sold on this one. Any thoughts???

Family Pic

This afternoon we did a bit of a photo trade-off with the Weavers. Carlos took our family pic and I took theirs. Here's one of my favorites from the shoot. Jill is not in love with any of them as she says that they all make her look fat. Last time I checked, she's pregnant not fat. And can you tell that Emma was totally into having her picture taken???

Shaving Cream

Emma's new obsession lately is playing with shaving cream in the tub. She would easily play in the bathtub for an hour as long as there's shaving cream in there. It also works very well as a motivator to get her in a real bath. Lately she's been rubbing the shaving cream all over her face. I think she's been watching her daddy shave too much lately. The bottom frame is what happens when we (or should I say Jill) tell Emma to say "cheese." These will work great when she's 16 or so...

Couple Random Pics

It's been a while since I've had the time to post anything on here. I've been keeping quite busy with shoots lately and most of my time on the computer has been spent editing pictures for clients. I plowed through three projects today, so I'm pretty much caught up now. Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of non-work pictures to post. Here's a couple that I was able to round up. The first one is Emma walking around the house in her princess/pimp outfit. The second is of Emma's friend Luke from the other night when he came over to visit.

On a work note, if you're interested in Christmas pictures please get in touch with me this week. I'm keeping quite busy and my turnaround times have lengthened a bit. I don't want anyone to miss out on pictures, so be sure to let me know if you're interested. Have a great Thanksgiving if I don't get another chance to post before Thursday!

Fountain

At the end of last week we met up with the Natzkes at a local shopping plaza for dinner. We beat them there by a little bit, so we took a walk around to kill time. Emma was enthralled by the fountains. After walking around, we let her go up and play with the water. She decided to lay down and run her hands through the water for about 15 minutes. She was completely entranced. Afterwards, she hammed it up with mom's glasses.

Halloween '08

Here are a few pictures from Halloween. The first two are from Thursday night after we finished carving Emma's pumpkin. The rest are from Halloween night at Derek and Jen's house. They have a tradition of projecting movies onto their neighbor's house every year. The kids had a fun time watching movies and it gave the grown ups something to do while handing out candy. After a while, we ventured out to try trick or treating with Emma. She wanted to eat every piece of candy as soon as it hit the bucket and she eventually got her hands on some chocolate. We cut things short to get her home before she got chocolate all over her princess dress.

Afternoon Outside

I ended up coming home early today since Jill was not feeling well and made a doctor appointment. After she got home we took Emma outside for a while to play. Some of the neighbors were out and Emma enjoyed having a few friends to play with. She got herself nice and dirty with the chalk before the neighbor boy Fred brought out the golf clubs. She must have learned quite a bit from watching golf with her daddy because she was swinging like a champ at the balls. Remember these pics in 20 years when she's on the LPGA tour...

Stacey and Reggie

I spent last weekend in Georgia shooting the wedding of Reggie and Stacey. The weather was beautiful and so was the ceremony. I've posted some of my favorite images on my website due to the fact that I couldn't quite get them to format correctly on Blogger. Click on the link and check them out...

Note

For those of you who haven't heard (or we haven't had a chance to tell) Jill had her first ultrasound on Monday morning. It was exciting to see what the sex of the new baby was going to be. I had already come to the conclusion that the baby was a boy, but Jill had her doubts. It was great to get confirmation that I was right. The neighbors across the street who watch Emma were excited to hear the news. I found this note on our dryer this morning when I was getting ready for work. One of the girls had decided to give us a few options for names. It was so cute I had to take a few pictures.

Plumber's Crack

It's getting to be pants weather around here and we're still trying to figure out exactly what size Emma should be wearing. Here was one of our first attempts, as you can see they are not quite the right fit...

The weather is starting to cool off here in the evenings, so its the perfect time to take Emma outside to play. Today she wanted to play dress up and push her new baby stroller around. I'm sure you could hear her down the block clacking away in her dress up shoes. Emma is loving the fact that we can spend so much time outside.

Emma's Birthday Party

Here's a few images from Emma's second birthday party on Sunday. We had a much smaller event than her first birthday party, but it was still a blast. My mom made an Elmo cake for Emma, which she loved. It's hard to believe that Emma is two already, time just flies!

Emma's First Haircut

This morning I took Emma for her first haircut. Her bangs were getting out of control and we figured that she should get a "big girl" cut before her second birthday. Emma was a little concerned when she was first sitting in the chair, but she handled it pretty well. She wasn't too big a fan of getting her bangs cut, but it was over quick. Once the blow dryer came out, she was happy again...

Mexico-Personal Pics

At the request of my wife, here are some pictures that we took while we were in Mexico:

Jill was looking particularly happy after our saga at the airport in Phoenix. I think she was just excited that they had hamburgers in Mexico...

I was warned not to drink the water, and I was super cautious. Luckily beer was plentiful and cheap.

This was the view from the patio bar at the hotel. We sat out there on our first night to watch the sunset.

Yes, you can do this kind of shot with a $5K camera too.

There was a train that ran between the two adjacent hotels on the property. I think the thing ran off a small block 350 Chevy engine, at least that's what it sounded like.

Jill at the rehearsal dinner. Isn't she cute?

And the coup de grace...one of the many poor translations that we saw down there. Needless to say, we didn't sample the cocktail winnies.

Ahh, what a fun trip! Besides the weather being what I can only describe as sauna-esque, it was a beautiful location and a wonderful experience. I'll still take 120 degrees with no humidity here in AZ any day!