Day 2

Well, the fortunes have decided that I needed to post another daily picture. Today our friends Keith and Katie had their second child, Reagan. Jill and I were lucky enough to make it by the hospital tonight despite the torrential rain. Of course the camera came along, so I bring you Reagan Rose Waltemeyer:

One Shot

Happy New Year! January is rapidly moving by and I haven't taken any time to put anything up on the blog. That doesn't mean that I haven't been thinking about it-actually quite the contrary-I have several posts in my head that I will get around to some time in the near future. Stay tuned.

As usual, when things start to get busy around here, the camera has a bad tendency to stay in the bag and not come out. Days off that used to be spent with just Emma and a lot of photo ops have changed quite a bit now that there are two kids to attend to. So it was great that good 'ol cousin Paul Gero started out his year with a new blog. It's called "One Camera. One Lens. One Photo a Day." Quite a simple concept, but also a Herculean task. I can't possibly accomplish that task, especially since most work days mean I leave for work not too long after the sun is up and walk out of work in the dark. Not exactly the best photo conditions...

Keeping Paul's blog concept in mind, I decided that on my day off today I was going to take some photos and pick my favorite to post on here. I stuck with Paul's rules of one camera body (much easier for me than him I'm sure!) and a 50mm lens (like Paul, the type of lens I learned photography on). I don't know if Paul imposed any rules involving the exposure of the image, but I decided that all of my images would be available light only, no flash.

Obviously the kids were going to be my subject for the day, although I did toy with the idea of finding some interesting rain related images with this crazy storm system we've had rolling through here. The toughest part of photographing the kids was going to be getting them in one frame that wasn't a simple side-by-side shot. I took quite a few images and here is the winner:

Josh laughs at Emma while she plays him a song on one of his toys. I love the soft morning light coming through the window to the left of frame. It's not exactly the kind of picture that you would put on your wall, but I think it really captures the dynamic between these two. Josh just loves his sister and Emma loves having a little buddy around to play with and care for.

So there you go, one frame from today. Maybe I can do this once a week and keep it going. Maybe not... Stay tuned and see.

Josh's First Haircut

Josh has been growing quite a head of hair for a while. For some reason the top is growing way longer than the sides and the back, meaning that about the only hairstyle that works on the kid is a mohawk. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the top of his head was the only part spared from his helmet, or maybe its just his anatomy. Either way, I've been begging Jill to let me trim his hair with the clippers for a few weeks now to at least even his hair out. She was insistent that his hair be cut by a professional, but tonight while our friends Jen, Derek, and kids were over, she was somehow convinced to let me do it with Jen supervising. Here is the before picture so you can get an idea of how long his hair was. Some of the strands actually made it almost to his eyes:
The beginning of the haircut:

He really handled it well despite the horrible faces:

And the final result:

Needless to say, I'm considering a career change to barber. Thanks to Derek for reluctantly taking the pictures so we could document this great event.

Jill and Josh

Here is a picture I took on Christmas Eve of Josh and Jill. I love this picture and the smiles on both of their faces. Maybe they're just happy that Emma is napping...

Christmas 2009

My wife beat me to the punch on posting about our Christmas festivities, so instead of repeating everything that she posted, I will just link to it for anyone who didn't get a chance to read it. Click Here

Long Time

Its been quite a while since I've posted anything on here. In fact, the other night Jill asked me, "Have you given up on your blog?" The simple fact is that life has been a little hectic these last few months. Work keeps me busy and when I'm not there, the kids need attending to. The camera hasn't been making its way out very much either lately, so there haven't been tons of pictures to post.

So let's wrap the last couple of months into one blog post. There are a few pictures below to show some of the highlights...

Halloween came and went quickly. We spent the evening at my boss's house for a party and were back home in time for the kids to go around the block for a little trick-or-treating. The whole time that Halloween was approaching, I was secretly planning (and stressing about) Jill's surprise 30th birthday party. It was quite a surprise for her and I ended up running around doing so much that I didn't even take my camera out of the bag. Next up was Thanksgiving, which included an early one with my family and a Black Friday Thanksgiving with Jill's family. The first week in December included Josh's surgery and me throwing out my back as a result of holding him for several days straight. Fast forward two weeks, Josh is doing great and we're in the present. More than two months since my last post on here and less than a week from Christmas. Where does time go???

And now for the pictures. As a disclaimer-these may look a little off in color and that's due to the fact that I haven't posted pictures on here that I literally forgot the format that I normally used. It's 10:30 PM and I'm not in the mood to go re-format them, so these will do for now:

The first two are from when Josh was first starting to sit up independently. At least I was mindful enough to get out the camera and capture some pictures of the time. I swear he cries from time to time, but the kid honestly is as happy as can be most of the time.



And then there's Emma... I took this picture right after she got her trampoline for her birthday. I wanted to get some pictures of her on it and she obviously didn't feel like posing.


This one is from a couple of weeks ago right after Josh had his surgery. We had the Natzke kids over and someone was coming to buy our couches (0verturned in the top left). For some reason I felt the need to capture the chaos of the moment. This is what five kids in one space looks like.


This is from Black Friday at the Wiemann's. I took a bunch of family pictures which I'm not taking the time to post here. This is our family pic and I'm about 95% sure that this is the same one that went out with the Christmas cards this year. There were three that were almost identical.


So there you have it, the last 2.5 months in one post. I don't expect to go another span of that length before posting again, especially with Christmas next week. And now it's time for bed...

Costumes

Here's a sneak peek of Emma and Josh as Mickey and Minnie. It was our trial run to make sure the outfits were the right size. Hopefully we'll have a chance to get an official shoot before Halloween.