1, 2, 3, 4, 5 people are in my family

Last weekend we decided to attempt to capture decent family photos that include the newest little one. The week before I rooted through all of our closets and cast aside multiple outfits and finally settled on pinks and blues since we all had something that would coordinate in those colors. The morning of the shoot, we got the girls ready and then the battle began. Stasa didn't want to wear her dress because the lines on it make her itchy. Why does Lexi get a bow? I want a bow! I don't want a shirt! I want a dress!! And on and on and on.

With Tom's patience and help we were able to get them all in the car and took off for Claude Moore since it's right around the corner. Next time we'll just go back to our common grounds in the neighborhood since it's even closer and has more open shade. But even with a perfect location there's still the challenge of getting three kids to smile or at least look at the camera at the same time.

This nut was both cracking me up and trying my patience.


She had her own agenda and no amount of bribery was going to get her to cooperate unless she wanted to. Stasa was great. She sat when we told her to, smiled when we asked, and even snapped a few pics of me and Tom with my phone. I must have taken 300+ pictures within a half an hour. It was a super fast shoot. My kids don't have any patience for sitting for pictures. All in all we ended up with some shots that I'll be happy to frame.



And my absolute favorite one:


You can see all of the shots on Flickr - just click the My Pictures tab at the top of the blog.

A DIY Maternity Shoot

We spent our day today documenting my baby belly. Well, not the whole day, although we started in the morning and didn't really finish until late afternoon, but that included multiple breaks for kid time, lunch time, nap time, and many wardrobe changes. Tom helped me out with most of the pictures and played photographer for me and then I made use of my remote while he took a break. He didn't realize how exhausting it can be shooting someone else. Here are my favorites.

Girls and goats

Wonder what a sick Stasa looks like?


Yes, she still chews on her blanket(s) - I have no idea how to break that habit. At least we've got her down to only chewing on them at nap and bed time (and when she's sick). Her cheeks are pinkish (as are her arms and legs) from fifth disease. The good news is, she's much better. This kid truly has 2.5 speeds: On, Off, and Sick. And as soon as she's on the mend, she back to On.

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The other night Lexi was so smiley, so I decided to take advantage of her good mood and set up my seamless paper for a quickie photo shoot. In hindsight I should have either waited until Stasa was napping or for a time when Tom wasn't cooking dinner. Oh well, I managed to get a couple of decent shots of Lexi before Stasa crashed the show.


Can you tell she wasn't feeling too hot?



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My goal today was to get us out of the house for awhile since Tom would be at the Skins game most of the day (and night). I woke Lexi up from an early nap (in the hopes that she would then nap longer in the afternoon) and we headed out to the Reston Zoo.

Self-picked outfit, natch

I had never been to the Reston Zoo, but figured we'd try it out since it's local. Turns out it was the perfect choice for a 2 1/2 year old. It's small - only a few animal exhibits, but so easy for a small kid to navigate on their own and easy for parents to keep an eye on them while they do. Of course we spent the majority of our time in the barn, feeding the goats and sheep. It was pretty much Cox Farms revisited. She got all sort of upset when this huge sheep snatched her feed cup, flipped it up, and ate all the food.

Blurry greedy sheep eating all of the food

Other than that incident she had an absolute blast. 

LuLu's photo shoot

Stasa and I went to Lesli's early on Saturday to snap some pictures of her daughter, LuLu. Here are some of my favorites from LuLu's photo shoot.

Our big photo shoot

Here are my favorites from our photo shoot with Mike (thanks, Jennifer and Josh!). I hope you can handle this much cuteness in one post.

Sneak peek

Our photographer, Mike, sent over a sneak peek from our photo shoot yesterday. I love that she's crying in this picture - it's so cute!