Life is back to normal!!!

Can I say how excited I am to finally have gotten rid of the backlog!!!  I now have a normal workload scheduled for the foreseeable future.  Lovely.

We only have just over a week before we head to Atlanta, Tampa and then the fabulous Miami.  We are starting to get all excited for our trip.

On Sunday I edited all of our personal images from February.  I'll share a few {hundred...  lol} with some comments about our month.

We spent a LOT of time in the bathroom with potty training.  We do find it somewhat annoying to have to drop everything to take one {usually both} to the bathroom.  But I wouldn't want them back in diapers again either!

She may have been tired of me taking her picture here.  Or she was just playing at making faces.  This forgetfulness is why I should process and blog our images much faster!  

There were so many images that jumped out at me as my favorites.  This is one of them.

She looks happy.  And talkative.

I love to capture all the daily moments.  Someday we won't have brightly colored dishes just for them.  The sippy cups will be gone.  Well, we already stopped using these, but Maddy {the milk LOVER} pointed at the cup in the image expressing her excitement and calling it milk.

Blake is Mr. Expressive.  He has so many faces expressing every nuance of his thoughts and feelings.  The saddest and sweetest look he gives is in the car.  We are often out in the car right up to nap or bed time.  He falls asleep easily.  We ask him to stay awake.  He does, but the look he gives us is so cute and sad.  I need to capture it one of these days.   

Waffles are yummy.  My friend gave her kids waffles with peanut butter when I was over at her house.  Genius!  The kids love it.   So the one shown has some butter and maybe syrup, but I wanted to share about the peanut butter.

Another favorite image.

I saw this frozen puddle while out at a photo shoot.  No matter how I edit the image it doesn't even compare to the beauty of this puddle and the patterns in the ice in person.  It was captivating.  To me anyway.  

This girl loves hats!  Loves them.

Satisfaction.

My funny little man.  We were playing tickles.  Starting a couple weeks ago they started verbally asking me to tickle them.  We usually have tickle time at least once a day.

I love this face.  He always gets me.  Oh, and he tries to get out of being in trouble with a cute smile.

But I usually stick to my guns with the discipline he needs to learn and grow.

One of his favorite things is throwing items.  Pretty much anything.  Tonight at my baseball game he clocked our friend's daughter in the face with a softball by accident.    

I have no idea, but love it!

And both their faces here too.  Oh, another new development, besides speaking in sentences!!, is to smile on command for pictures.  Someone told one or both of them to smile recently and there it was.  Not a funny weird picture smile either.  Lucky!!

Blake spotted this image on Sunday and said, "Blake helping Daddy."  It amazes me how much they remember and are reminded of when they see images.  The cruise collage we have up definitely keeps their memory alive of our trip.  They spot the pictures and start talking about the various things we did on the cruise.

Blake and Madison both love to help.  Especially Blake.  He loves to go and do and figure things out.

It is now Way past my bedtime so I'm off to bed.

We are

We are so happy!  Check out the photography blog and the Lifelong Impressions Facebook fan page to see some of the sweet images I've been able to be a part of recently.  The great news is my backlog is finally gone!  It is now onto a normal manageable work week for me.  Love it!  Here is a picture that just made me smile while editing a session.  So cute!


We are enjoying the visit of Guy's parents.  The kids get so excited every single time the see them after a nap or sleep.  It's like they are completely surprised they are still here.  The twins birthday is very close to their great grandmother's birthday.  She passed away just before they were born.  Today Guy's dad requested a picture of him, Guy and the twins.  We made it into a card he sent to his sister.  I love it!



We are headed to bed now.

More cruise pics & conversations

Here are some of my favorite images from this next batch of cruise photos.

I hardly ever get them in the same photo together.  Yes, for me this means maybe a couple times every other time we take pictures.  It still feels like they are few and far between.

I love looking at the kids natural expressions of curiosity.   It looks like Maddy got my big ears without the stick out part.  This means they will not really be noticeable in most cases!  

Blake has the most interesting and expressive eyes.  He can communicate volumes with his eyes alone.  They also photograph big with bright clear whites.

These two are so sweet and loving to each other most of the time.  I love how they share and show affection.   The other day Guy was having an ice cream pop dipped in chocolate.  He was sharing with Blake when suddenly Blake ran out of the room.  Guy hears Blake telling Madison there is ice cream and to come.  

My conversation with Blake:

Me - Blake say 'My'

Blake - My

Me - Mommy

Blake - Mommy

Me - is

Blake - Awesome!!!

He said it with tons of excitement.  That boy just melts me.  That evening I excitedly tell Guy about what happened.  Here's what happens next....

Guy - Blake say 'My'

Blake - My

Guy - Daddy

Blake - Daddy

Guy - is

Blake says nothing.

Guy says while gesturing to Blake to say something - is.....

Blake - Daddy

LOL.  Now that is funny.  Daddy is daddy and Mommy is AWESOME!

Here is the toddler pool slide Blake cracked his chin open on when the seas were so rough.  

They loved going on it.  Blake ran to get back on as fast as he could each time.  

Madison loved it.  She was also happy watching Blake's excitement as he ran & squealed.

Awesome splash

This photo is so cute.  She is listening intently to Guy.

They had music playing over the loud speakers.  Madison is showing us her moves here.

This face cracks me up with his anticipation of the super wet face.  Check out his hand too.

He was so excited to go down he would fling himself down without sitting down.  This is one of the few times he mostly sat down before letting go.  The tongue out is so cute.

YEAH

The big pool with daddy.

I think only Guy is super dad enough to hold a kid while catching another jumping at him while not really touching the bottom.  I was surprised at how deep it was.  I could barely get a toe on the bottom in the shallow end!  We were both surprised at how comfortable the kids were in the water.  I think they definitely need to learn to swim since they have NO fear of the water.  

Our little lumpa love.

Mr. Interesting

We were out on the  dance floor learning to salsa dance, but we decided to hang out over in the lounge area after our potty time break.

The kids are starting to want to take lots of pictures themselves.  This one is my nicely focused teeth.  lol They haven't quite gotten the focus concept yet.  They do know the buttons to take a picture,  show pictures and navigate through the images.

Cool Maddy with Daddy's glasses on.

Blake is doing his thing.  Maybe he was spotting a ship out the window or just loving the water. 

Another kid shot.  This time I'm nicely in focus & the composition isn't too bad.

He did NOT want to leave the lounge for lunch.  They pretty much hated every meal we had on the ship.  Other then meal time they did so well the entire cruise.  But they didn't whine any more often then they whine at home so it was still awesome!  

I love pretty much everything about this photo.  The wind, soft light, her body movement, the profile, her dress, how all the colors work together.  She loved how the wind came in from between the glass panels.  

Love this one too.

And this.

This shot screams a warm summer afternoon of happy family time.

This was a test shot for the exposure that I love.  Maddy and Blake are talking to each other.  He loves to give her instruction on what he thinks she should be doing.

If Madison had her way we would have been out on the deck every waking moment.  She would have come home way more tan then she already did.  That girl got my tanning ability.  

We took a shot similar to this {on a sunny day} on our first cruise printed as a 20x30 and is hanging in the guest bedroom.  Now we plan on doing one as a family on any cruise we do in the future.  

"The wheels on the bus go round and round"  The song has been a favorite they ask for every night before bed for a long time.