This was a great shoot! The sweetest couple and a little over 2 week old baby girl! Dad is a busy guy and they hadn’t been able to get many photos with him so he made it home from work in time and we had some fun. Grandma was visiting and helping out with the new addition to the family (her first grandchild so she was thrilled :).

You can tell this couple will be so great, they already have 2 birds, 3 dogs, and a horse…I am sure I am missing some of the pets but that is what I can remember. They are already taking care of so many they won’t even notice the extra work that this little angel brings.

Life has gotten in the way of my editing and this took me longer than normal to get done but I think the pictures turned out great!! I hope you all enjoy them too.

I really love all the pictures from this shoot but one of my favorites is the one with the mirror! You can see Dad's huge grin in the reflection:)

She started preschool in the 3 year program this past Wednesday.  She was a little hesitant (as usual) and now she is loving it.  She goes MWF. Here are a few shots from the first morning.

She was very excited about having her new lunchbox!

Here she is with her teacher, such a sweet lady!  This is Niya's "you want me to do what with who, you do realize I don't know this person Mom???" face.

But when I am by myself I am all yours:)  She takes a lot longer to warm up to people and now talks about her teacher all the time.

Funny Macguire story to end this.  I picked him up from school on Friday and then we drive over to get Niya...he says "Mom, I am really sad that I HAVE to miss 2 days of school" and I didn't understand at first and said "why hon, are you getting sick or something".  He straightens me out and says "NO, it's the weekend and I can't go back until Monday!!!".  How cute is that!!

I am hoping to finish the second shoot in my backlog (the newborn) this weekend.  We have opening day soccer today and Marc and Macguire are out golfing now...I think they left at 6:30am, Niya and I "slept in" she got me up at 6:50:)

This was a fun and challenging shoot, 13 people and a RUNNING 16 month old. They were all great and we just took our time and got what we needed. They were after a large family picture and a lot of combos of that family and I think they turned out great! I know they are anxious to see them so here they are (you will recognize some of them, they are some of my favorite clients:).

<I will try to get Niya's first day of preschool up tomorrow!>..or this weekend:)

The matriarchs

...says Nemo's voice in my head.

I have 3 shoots to edit and I know I need to get them up but today was a huge day for our little family.  Macguire started Kindergarten.  He loved it!!  It was sad for me to see him go...he didn't seem to mind one bit and can't wait to go back tomorrow.  California schools are just a half day for Kinder, so Macguire goes from 9:30 - 1.  Which I used to think was silly but now I think it is just fine.  Today would have been a lot harder for me had I dropped him at 7:50am and not been able to get him until 2:30!!! It was pretty cute though he wanted to make sure we knew that he was going to be going to school the same days that Daddy works, but that he would be home on the weekends too!  It was a huge success!!

So here is our photo journey from today...

Me:  "How excited are you to start school today?" (plus, check out how is sister is just adoring him!!)

Daddy joined us for drop off.  I needed him there, I think I would have been a bigger baby without him.

Seeing our good friend there is always a plus!  This girl is his good friend from his preschool class last year and they got the same class here too!

(Also, I have to add that she is the same height as most of the kids in class, Mac is a giant!)

"see ya later!" There was not one ounce of hesitation.  I guess somewhere inside I wish that he would miss us a little:)  That is his teacher in the door way, we already really like her!

These are shots of his classroom.  I forgot my camera on meet your teacher so I snuck in this afternoon and took a few. It's a huge room.

Niya starts M/W/F preschool tomorrow!  It's a big week around here.  I have 2 shoots to post and then I will get the shots up from our Monterey trip, where we saw family.  I took some senior pictures for my cousin out on the coast too!

I have been super busy this past week. My parents came in from Nashville for a visit and I had 2 shoots in one weekend. Which I usually don’t do but one was a newborn and well…you can’t really schedule those . So I have TONS of editing to do.

We had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa here, they took the kids to the Laguna Beach and San Diego to the zoo. We all (minus Marc) went to Newport Beach yesterday as the last beach day of summer and my parents were off to the airport this morning. Both kids start school next week on Tuesday!! We had a meet your teacher for both of them this morning and that was a lot of fun. We found out that Macguire is in the same class as his good friend Jaycee (they were in the same preschool class last year) so that was great news and we supposedly got “the best” kindergarten teacher…so yeah for us!  Niya got the teacher we requested for her too!! So a very successful day!

Back to the busy, so on top of a visit from my folks, back to school, photo shoots, and all the other stuff. We are heading to Monterey tomorrow for the holiday weekend. My cousin who plays Volleyball for University of North Dakota has a tournament there and my grandma is flying in too. It’s been a while since we have seen them (Aunt, Uncle, cousins, grandma) all so we are driving the 4+ to watch some games and hang out with the fam! I am going to take pictures too for my cousin…I can’t wait to see them.  It should be a fun weekend.

With the kids going back to school next week life should be a little more normal for me and I will get back to my at least 2 posts a week.

So this post isn’t too boring here are a couple of shots of the kids jumping in to the pool.