you're killing me smalls.....

remember the movie, "the sandlot"?  

we have our own version of "squints" living with us....

and his female version sidekick....

after seeing "toy story 3" last week austen latched on to the 3-d glasses instead of recycling them at the theatre...i wasn't sure why he wanted me to put masking tape on the frames, but when he put them on, we laughed and laughed.  

if you haven't seen the movie, rent it!!  it's wonderful...

he wanted to wear these to tessa's birthday party last saturday because he is always looking to get a laugh and he ended up wearing them the entire time.  

except when scarlett got her hands on them...

happy birthday my little tessa-butt!!!

it was an adorable farm themed birthday party with cow patterned balloons

and a real barn....(with a bubble machine in the loft)

hay, what's going on here?

a hayride...

where there was more hay outside the wagon, than inside, because throwing hay is just so much fun....

there was a farm animal themed cake, too.

i can't believe that you are three already...

we had to light the candles 5 times because she kept wanting to blow them out...

needless to say, i did not have any of that spit factory cake :P

but i did have one of these dirt cakes.  see? nice and germ free :D

they played an egg on the spoon race..

with raw eggs...but why worry when you have this beast to clean up after the little ones..

he actually loves raw eggs, so i guess i'll never be able to have a chicken coop in my yard.

then they played "eat the donut off of the string without touching it with your hands"

that was fun...

'tho, she cheated a little bit....

a nice and messy game...but cute results!!!

let's just call it fairy dust, shall we?

then squints drove his 72 year old grandmother around in the go cart...

and since it didn't faze me that i let my 13 year old drive my mother around in a death-trap vehicle, i thought i''d let him drive me around in the go-cart too!

but i wanted proof that i would actually take that chance myself, so i asked don to take some pictures of me in the go-cart.

heh!!!  what the heck was i thinking????

this is what i got when i handed him the camera....

and the best picture yet??   sigh!!!

isn't he cute???

champ managed to entertain us during the party,

but i think he entertained himself even more!!!!

:D

missing in action......

wow, it has been a long time since i have posted.  my life could not have been busier these past couple of weeks.  three birthdays, 3 photo shoots and austen has had 9 baseball games in the past 2 weeks.

on top of this fabulous wedding i told you about before, 

i was able to reconnect with some wonderful old friends 

by shooting their son's high school graduation party.  

don and diane, it was so great to see you both again and it has been far too long seeing as i had never even met your boys.  who are fabulous, by the way!!!  

if you are from michigan, you know about the university of michigan/michigan state rivalry in college sports.  and if you follow sports at all in michigan, you either root for the wolverines or the spartans....the rivalry is legendary and don and diane have two sons who went to university of michigan and their youngest who just graduated from high school will be starting at state this fall.  so theirs truly is a house divided.  :D

you both should be very proud.  your sons are fantastic.

baseball is fun but, really...9 games in 10 days????  we barely had time to breath. 

i love this shot of the ball hitting the glove......sa-mokin' hot.

they did well and lost the championship game by one run!!  he still has another few weekends of games coming up so life will continue to be busy around here.  

in a side note, austen got his report card today and his final marking period was all a's and b's.  in fact, his report card for the entire year had just two c's and the rest a's and b's.  quite a feat considering that we almost held him back going into 3rd grade.  you can read about that here in a post from my old blog from  april of 2007
this boy.....

got one A, four B's and one C on his report card this semester. we couldn't possibly be more proud of this great kid. he has come so incredibly far this year. last year we had actually talked of holding him back in third grade because of his progress (or lack thereof) in school. he was doing terrible and was working at a second grade level or lower in most of his subjects. he hated getting up in the morning and would whine and tell me he didn't want to go to school. he was frustrated when it came time to do his homework and he would lay his head down on the table and sob. he was required to read for 20 minutes every night and we made him read out loud to us. his face would get red and his eyes would start tearing up and usually would collapse in a heap because he just couldn't read.

teacher conferences were a nightmare. grades going down every semester and she told us of lack of participation from austen. it spilled over into his home life as he was so unfocused that asking him to simply clean his room brought a torrent of tears and temper. his teacher finally asked us to have austen tested for ADD. 

we did this toward the end of third grade and after months of waiting (and through the summer) we finally got a call from the school social worker who informed us that austen did indeed have ADD. we got this news about two weeks into his fourth grade school year. i took him to our doctor who started him on concerta for the ADD. we decided not to tell his fourth grade teacher that we had started the medication as we wanted to see if there would be any difference in his school work. about 4 weeks later we had his first teacher conference. while we were waiting for the parents ahead of us to finish their turn, my stomach was sick. i felt for sure that there was going to be no change and he was just going to struggle through the rest of his educational career. but when we walked in the room, his teacher greeted us with "i cannot believe the change in your son over the past month". 

i almost started sobbing with relief. we let her know that had started on concerta over that last month and she told us that he was on the perfect dose...not sleepy or lethargic and had a healthy appetite. she told us that he was participating in every aspect of the day. he volunteered to read to the class and raised his hand when she asked questions of the kids. this also spilled over into his home life as he readily reads to us daily and can clean is room in 10 minutes flat (without crying). he comes home from school and doesn't need to be told to get started on his homework, he just does it. and he gets good grades to boot. he still struggles in math some but we are working on that. we had a conference with his teacher last week and she tells us that he continues to improve in all of his subjects. we are beyond relieved....and so proud of our son.....

father's day was so much fun....i had a photo shoot with a family where i have literally watched their girls grow up.  

this one

and her sister

and their cousins here

and here

could not have been cuter.  i could have just eaten them all up.  

i mean, really, how stinkin' cute are they???

oh, yeah, i got to watch some nature porn too....

more to come soon....i promise!!!!

my baby is a teenager today.....

sniff, sniff......

sigh......

probably the most fun i've EVER had at a wedding....

just a sneak peek of a wedding i shot!!!!

threatening weather all week, supposed to rain all day saturday, and in fact, it rained on the way to the brides house.  but the clouds parted and there was the most beautiful light filtering through the trees for the rest of the evening.  it was truly magical light!!

seeing his bride for the first time....

husband and wife...

this is some of what we did for the reception....

D & E, you guys rocked the wedding scene...

more to come later.....