Expose Yourself!

I'm not quite sure what words to put into this post. First, I suppose I could say I absolutely love this family. My great friend Sarah (dead center) is the main reason but I love the time I get to spend with all of them! Here they are!



Sarah and her baby Benji. You've seen a lot of both of them lately!





This is the first we've seen of Olli since very early this year. They live in Finland so we don't get to see them every day. :P




This is Benji with his aunt Rachel.


And aunt Rachel with her husband Paul


I looooove this one!



and the parents!


This one was supposed to be cheesy when we were taking it, but I actually really love it!







Family, thank you so so much for spending the day with me!
xoxoxoxo, denise

Ben: 1 Year

The last time our Finnish friends were here, little Benji was only four months old. Now he's a year! And he couldn't be cuter! I met with Sarah a couple weeks ago and just kept clicking away at Ben playing.




He can almost walk -


and he was completely cuddly



and funny



We walked over to a corn field and got a few with mama



Cheers to one, Benji! ♥

Preview! Matthew and Mia

I can't wait to share more from this session. These two little ones were seriously adorable!

Stripes

If I could put the way I feel today into an image, it would be this one.



More from this series later.

Cotton Grows on Plants

Please don't think I'm a total idiot after reading this post. My goal this month is to see my friend from Finland Sarah as much as possible before she returns to Finland until 2011!!! So yesterday we went to shoot a cotton field 0.7 miles from her house.

I've seen cotton fields while driving by. My mom says, "Oh look, a cotton field." and I look and see little tiny white balls of fluff and I think, "I wonder what those look like up close." Thinking that cotton really starts out as something called cotton first and THEN they make it into things we know as cotton balls etc.

Not so.

I approached a cotton plant and there were perfectly formed little cotton balls on these plants! Just like the ones under my bathroom sink! What? I tell you, it's true. And it looked so odd. Like I was in a fictional field of random things growing on plants. As odd as seeing a roll of toilet paper growing on a plant, or a remote control. Or a snickers bar. Why not?

So here's my proof. Look at these little guys!!







Sarah and I both spotted one of the unopened ones at the same time and both thought, "These look like Little Shop of Horrors."

'FEED ME'

Ahhhh geeks.




And here she is shooting in the cotton field.

Shooting with Sarah

This week has gone by fast. It seems like every week goes by fast right now. So fast I hardly have any time to blog all the fun things that come up throughout the week. Like Monday. Monday I got to see my incredible friend Sarah for the first time in forever. Sarah lives all the way in Finland and has recently started up her own photography venture over there. I can't believe how quickly she's been able to learn her camera - she's gotten so good so fast.



I've always wanted a photograph of me taking a picture and was so glad she caught this one of me testing out her Nikon.



We went to shoot for a little while at the Ghost Town near my house - these next few are ones she caught.





Nikons can shoot blue like crazy! Look at that sky!!




And these ones are some of mine. Shooting the same thing with someone else can definitely be an eye opener. Even if we're shooting the same thing, we each have a completely different artistic eye and capture things in our own style.

First Day of School

Kayden's first day of school was over six weeks ago and I'm just barely blogging it now...

He's going to preschool at the elementary school by our home. Four times a week they send a bus to pick him up at 7:54 and the bus drops him off at 11:15. The first day was hard. I woke him up much eariler than he was used to, got him dressed and ready, and took his picture. All the while he has this look on his face like "WHAT is going on???"





The bus arrived and he was immediately terrified of it... and so was I. What the heck was I doing putting my baby on a bus to go to school? He's just a baby! So I walked over holding his hand and the assistant attempted to take him from me but Kayden held tight to my hand.

So I carried him on and sat him down and took a heartbreaking shot of him getting buckled into his seat. Then I turned to leave and heard his little voice screaming for me to please come back.



Over the next week he got used to going on the bus and now he quite enjoys it. He even fell asleep on one ride home and he usually exits the bus happily and holding a small piece of candy in his hand. Maybe this is why I held off blogging his first day for so long. It's actually one of my sadder memories!