Happy Halloween!! From us!!

Bottoms Up

Lia has this little habit in the bath. She likes to take nice, long swigs from this plastic jug. It's really the only thing she likes to play with in the bath at all. And she just throws her head back over and over. It's kind of cute, in a pre-alcholic kind of way I guess. Oh Lia, sweet little thing!







Oh, and did I ever mention how cute Max is? I can't seem to remember if I had. Here's proof. Cute thing.

What we did this morning...

Tyler took the morning off to carve pumpkins with us. Max was pretty excited about the whole thing until we told him he had to stick his hand inside and pull out the seeds and squishy guts. He was NOT having any of that. I finally convinced him to do it and he just about had a meltdown.



He was really excited to draw the face on his pumpkin. And I have to say, he did an amazing job! It's the first time I'd ever seen him draw a face before. He's not much of a colorer or art kind of kid. He will rarely sit down and draw stuff or use a coloring book. But he took that sharpie in his left hand and drew a perfect set of eyes, a mouth and "teeth" and said, "YAY!! JUST LIKE THAT!!!" like he was as surprised as we were that he actually did it.



I cut it out the best I could, following his instructions every inch of the way, and he was pretty happy about the whole thing. Cute boy! He's so dang proud of that pumpkin.





Tyler carved a pretty cool pirate pumpkin. I carved one happy faced one, because honestly, in times like these everyone could use some cheer and who can't help but smile back at a pumpkin? And I carved one scary-ish looking pumpkin. Oh, and after Max saw that I had cut noses on mine he decided he wanted one, too. So he drew a circle right in the middle and I cut it out for him.



I seriously love lit pumpkins. Happy Halloween!

Play Time and a PSA

Oh Lia...

We love Halloween!!

There's no surprise there. We love Halloween. Max has loved Halloween since he could understand that pumpkins and candy and costumes were something. Anyway, as part of our festivities we headed over the Bakers for an afternoon of cookie decorating! The kids thought it was pretty fun. The moms had fun, too, although the excessive asking of WHEN and IF the cookies were ready got old pretty fast.

And Max even ate a cookie with stuff on it! If you know Max at all you know that he is the pickiest eater alive. I was shocked when he actually took a bite of the cookie with frosting and decorations on it. Anyway, LOTS of fun!!

A Quick Family Reunion

While I was off shooting runway fashion shows and Hollywood parties Tyler's whole family decided to pay us a visit. And I mean everyone! It was so fun to have everyone together (especially since the holidays this year we'll all be doing our own thing). Anyway, I wasn't around to take many pictures, but here is one with all the cousins together. Cute, huh?






And here are a few from the family photo shoot we did. Cute grandbabies!

She likes to yell.

A lot. But she sure is cute when she does it!

We love to rock!

One of our favorite things to do after dinner is to kick back with some good tunes and do a little dancing! Max's thing is to play the drums. Loudly. On anything he can find. And Lia has started joining in on the fun, too. Max is very particular about his music, too. His current favorites: Meatloaf, ABBA and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.





Oh, and did I mention Max likes to rock in his underwear? Yeah. I think we might have a future rock star on our hands afterall.

Published!

In case you hadn't heard, a few of my pictures have been published lately. I do a lot of work for True Birds, this amazing hair accessory line started by two awesome friends of mine. Their stuff is really taking off (you can see them on celebrities, TV, magazines, on the runway, in Nordstrom). Anyway, cute stuff! So my pictures were in Boho Magazine recently -- this really cool "green" magazine.









I've also had photos featured on teenvogue.com. Check out this link to see them! TEENVOGUE.COM

I've also had a few more publications on the web:

HERE and HERE.

And... I shot my first two runway shows a couple of weekends ago that was soo exciting!! Jerell Scott (from Project Runway) teamed up with True Birds for some amazing designs at this year's LA Fashion Week. Check out my photo blog for pictures from the show!! BLACKBIRD INK PHOTOGRAPHY. And then check out THIS POST for the Hollywood after party.


Anyway... I guess that's all the exciting news I have so far! Oh, and be sure to stop by your local Nordstrom in the spring to check out some more of my photos with the new True Birds spring line. Fun fun fun!

Nature Girl

This is one of the many nicknames for Lia we use, mostly when we're outside and all she wants to do is eat leaves and dirt and grass and little pieces of wood. I wish I knew how much of that she's actually ingested since we've been bringing her outside to play... probably more than I want to know! But I swear, it never fails, a soon as she sees grass or dirt or leaves or anything nature-like thing on the ground it's in her mouth. Even pumpkins!



Our little nature girl!

Why don't my kids sit still?? Or: Our Trip to Bates Nut Farm

I swear, if you can take pictures of my kids together, both looking at the camera and smiling, you are a MASTER photographer. As you can see, I'm not quite there yet.


This one is okay. But you should see the ones I didn't even save... most of them were of Max choking Lia trying to get her to stay with him, or Max moving and scowling and Lia running away and NEITHER OF THEM LOOKING!!!



We still had fun though! Despite not being getting a decent picture of the two of them for my Halloween cards this year. It was Lia's first time to a pumpkin patch (well, not counting when I was pregnant... do you count that?) She thought it was pretty awesome. We sat her in the middle of a pile of pumpkins and let her try to pick each one up. And she tried hard!



We each got a pumpkin and they are now sitting on our landing waiting to be carved. I love this time of year!! Autumn and Halloween and crisp cool weather -- oh wait, we live in San Diego, we don't get that weather here. Well, I still like it, even if I don't get to feel it!



Anyway, we had a great time at the pumpkin patch this year. It was a little more hectic because we had gone to Julian that morning, but we chowed on some hot dogs and checked out the arts and crafts stands Bates had on the grass. Max was on top of the world there. He loves Halloween more than most people I know, so you can imagine how crazy happy he was there. He kept loading our wheel barrow up with all kinds of pumpkins and gourds and Indian Corn (am I still allowed to call it that or is it not PC anymore). And he loved feeding the goats they had. He thought it was the greatest thing that they would eat corn right out of his hand. He really likes animals, he's rarely afraid of them. Which is a good thing, makes me proud of him.


Tyler likes to pick the funky pumpkins. I like them, too. Lots of character!



Danielle and the Bakers came with us, too, making it even more fun!! We had a wonderful time and can't wait to do it again next year!

She Walks!!

So she's been doing this for a few weeks now, but she's getting so much better at it! She walks everywhere now. I rarely see her crawl anymore... oh, makes me kind of sad to think she's growing up so fast!! But proud that she figured out how to do it!!

UPDATE: I picked Max up today at noon and, no surprise there, he didn't want to leave and threw a mini tantrum about it. His teachers said he is very strong willed and independent but that it was a good thing. I think maybe that's nice-teacher-speak for wow your kid hates being helped or told what to do and makes sure we know it! I hope he gets better at being nicer. I think he just has to get used to the student-teacher environment. Right? I hope! They also said he was great and jumped right in, unafraid to try anything. So... good? I think so! I took him to McDonalds for a happy meal and told him that I would only get him one if he was good when I came to pick him up next time for school. So we'll see!!

Oh, and he picked out his own outfit today! Right down to the underwear (pirate). Maybe he wanted to intimidate his classmates? Wouldn't put it past him.

First Day of Preschool!

Max had his first day of Preschool today! He walked right in and didn't even look back. He doesn't really have separation anxiety... I do a little bit though! He's getting so big. He wouldn't stop smiling on they way there. It's just across the street from our apartment at the Mesa Child Development Center. It's brand new, just opened a few months ago. It's a half-day program perfect for him. His teachers are Mr. Matty and Miss Mary -- they seem really really nice!

He was just so so so excited to go to school, finally! We've been telling him he could go for so long! Look at these smiles!!









Excited much?? I think so!! He saw Sienna and Chloe on their way to school and was kind of sad that he didn't get to be in their class, but then he remembered that he actually got to go to school and he got over it pretty quickly!