Trick or Treat

Ah, Halloween. It's that time of year when I spend more money on making costumes for the kids than I intended, which is usually more than buying a costume at the store would be.
However, it is usually worth it.
Tye was Jeff Hardy this year. In case you don't know who that is, he's a WWE wrestler. The most important part of his gear is the cut up arm warmer things he apparently wears. Tye showed me a photo of them weeks ago and I knew they would be fairly easy to create. He tried them on tonight and said to his friend, "Dude, check em out. They are so sweet & perfect. And my mom made them." That made it so worth every dime.
So here is is all dressed up with purple hair & face paint.

Then he did the Jeff Hardy pose.



A G.I. Joe character named Snake Eyes showed up (a friend of ours).

Then a demon tried to attack us (another friend)...

And from out of the shadows, rose a werewolf (also a friend)

But then another WWE wrestler, John Cena, aka Bodie, came to the rescue. First he showed off his muscles...

Kissed his guns...

Showed off his championship belt...

Then defeated the monters!

Actually, Bodie satyed back with Grandma & me to hand out candy. He's never been big on trick-or-treating. Tye on the other hand lives for it. He and the other boys went out for a bit & came back with a bucketful! They were worn out & went to bed early. Thank goodness we get an extra hour of sleep tonight!

Paying It Forward

As many of my family & friends know, I was an exchange student through Rotary during my junior year of high school.It was definitely one of the best experiences of my life.
I volunteered to photograph the current exchange student this year. She is from Japan, vibrant, gorgeous, and a sweetheart. She made me a beautiful decorative ornamental ball as a gift, that I will have to photograph tomorrow to show you all.

Being an exchange student can be very difficult at times, especially when you are trying to master a language and culture. But she seems very eager to make the best of her time here. I hope for all the best for her.

H1N1?

Tye had a fever over the weekend and is still home from school today. He feeling much better, but I thought I should keep him home one more day. One of the kids in his class has H1N1, so we are assuming that's what Tye had. Early this week, there were 6 kids or so gone from his class.
Last night Bodie, John, & I all came down with fevers, body aches, and headaches. John decided to go to work, but Bo & I are home today.
Tylenol seems to help, but I'm feeling pretty dizzy now. So I'm off to lay down.

Redheaded Beauty

Finally getting back on track! Still behind, but its looking up.

In my next life I want hair like this...

This was an interesting shoot for me because her dad is also a photographer. It was strange but inspiring to see how he would have composed some of the shots compared to what I was doing and the ideas he suggested for posing. It mde me stop, think, and try to look a little differently. My mind was really trying to think outside it's box!

Woe is me

My computer is...broken. Not dead, yet. Just broken.
I crashed 2 days ago. And I was really on a roll, too. In the 2 days before, I had finshed editing 3 sessions in record time. I just needed to burn them to disk.
I am really pretty handy when it comes to this sort of tech-y stuff. I am known to some in my family as "Nick Burns, your company's computer guy" (SNL fans will get that joke).
But when I looked up the error message I am getting, the term I keep reading all over Google is not a good one. They call the error....are you ready for this?....The Blue Screen of Death or BSOD for short.
Not good, right? So I ran through all the procedures I could find and nothing worked. So I called HP for support. They told me my warranty expired just over a month ago. I paid a nice chunk of change for them to tell me try everything I had already tried, to no avail. Nice.
My father-in-law help me figure out that the hard drive is still good, but the thing just won't boot. My recovery disks are apparently bad, so I had to pay a little more to HP so they can take their sweet time to send me new disks.
In the mean time the in-laws are being very gracious, letting me pry open their nearly new computer, and put in my hard drive. It works, so I'm happy. I can still use all my files, nothing is lost other than time. None of my photo sessions were lost, nor were my edits.
I will still be able to work on photos once I can get all my programs installed on their computer. So all is not lost and I am not nearly so woe as I was 2 days ago, even though I am typing this from the dinosaur-aged computer in our basement.
Thank you everyone for your patience!

Dakota-Senior 2010

The Feind Wedding

AJ & Amber were married in early August, on one of the hottest days we had all summer.






One of my favorites...

This is one of the best accidents I've ever had. The flash did not fire when it was supposed to, so all I got was this gorgeous silhouette...

The bride's mother & niece...

I love her expression here while he was retrieving the garter...

This is my Uncle Glen and Aunt Linda, who are firends with the groom's father.

Sean, as always was the life of the party!