Kid Photographers: August 2013

Tonight I finally cleaned off the memory cards from both my 7 year old digital Elph and new Powershot point-and-shoot cameras. As I typically transfer photos I take on the Powershot right away, I knew that any on there long-term would be photos that the kids had taken. Turns out, they'd taken quite a bit and I forgot all about them! Note that I actually have far more photos they took on these days; I've chosen my favorites to post here. I love sharing the work of my budding photographers!

When we had such lovely weather through the middle of August, we spent quite a bit of time outside. Because of that, the kids were only allowed to use the old Elph, not my new camera! Natalie took a few photos of Henry

And Henry took a few photos of things he cares most about: honey wheels

Self-portrait work

The sky.

And the pond

Then, a couple of days later, Evan and Henry took Natalie to her swim lesson, as I was out of town that afternoon. To provide entertainment, Evan brought the Elph for Henry to use. He started with a portrait of his favorite man

And ended with further work on self-portraits.

More biking fun

Now I get to join in on the biking fun! My colleague gave me her daughter's old bike for Natalie; she was going to donate it, but preferred to give it to me so someone she knows would get use out of it. She thought Natalie would fit onto it in a couple of years, but looking at it, there's no way it would fit her until she's at least into double digits. In fact, I tried it out, and I fit on it rather well! It's not perfect - the distance from the seat to front is a little short for me - but overall it works well, and means that we get to ride together!

Natalie was not very happy that I was riding without a helmet, so that was next on the list to buy. Turns out that the seat on that bike is also far too small for me - I was HURTING the next day! So, we went to Target over the weekend and I got a helmet and new larger seat; so far, it's made all the difference and I can now ride with my girl!

Henry is also getting better at peddling his little bike himself (as I wrote earlier); he has a hard time on hills, mostly because there's not a lot of leverage on that bike. But he's getting stronger and better every time!

Since Evan took these photos of us last week, we've made two purchases: I bought Natalie a new 16" bike (it's on its way here now!) so that she can go even faster and farther. We also bought Evan a mountain/road bike at Target - very basic, but enough that he can go around with the family as well. Once Natalie's new bike is here, the plan is to paint her existing bike and put the training wheels on it so that we can teach Henry how to ride it. I hope by next spring he will be good to go on that bike, and then we can all hit the WO&D trail together!

Playtime in the fountains

A couple of weeks ago, I took Natalie to meet up with a couple of her friends for a playdate in the fountains. The kids had a great time at the playdate the week before, at Morven Park, which culminated in them all swimming in a fountain (sadly, I had no camera or phone on me at that time). Since we know how much they enjoy water-based activities, we thought we'd hit up these fountains.

 

What's more fun than sticking your butt into a fountain?!

 Her friends little brothers tagged along, and I loved this shot of Ryder playing with his bucket.

 The girls!

A weekend with friends

Two weekends ago, we were fortunate to get to spend a lot of time with our friends from college. On Friday night Evan and I headed to Wolf Trap for a rather unique experience:

That's right - the National Symphony Orchestra plays the music live to Bugs Bunny cartoons. All of the ones I remembered and loved from when I was a kid were played, including "The Rabbit of Seville", which is one of the most memorable ones for me. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take photos once the show started (which does make sense), but I managed to snag an "arty" one of my yummy lambik "beer". That's one of the things I love about Wolf Trap - you can sit out on the lawn, bring picnic items and alcohol, and just enjoy the show! It was a good time with some old friends.

Then, on Saturday, we headed out to Woodbridge for a game night. Do you think we had enough games?

I had to get a shot of the boys geeking out to playing the Star Trek version of Settlers of Cattan.

Another group was playing Trivial Pursuit for a while in another room, while 6 of us had a great time with Creationary - very similar to Pictionary, but instead of drawing you make the items out of legos. You can totally tell what this is, right?

Answer: it's a bear (chasing a person). What was awesome is that one of my team members made it, and the other guessed it very quickly. We were pretty in sync :)

As a fun party item, the hostess made these fantastic stickers (inside joke, and a pretty great one). The idea was originally done by another friend over Facebook; she just turned them into stickers we could put on cups, ourselves, and generally anywhere else we wanted.

All of us who had kiddos spent the night (we put the kids down in the guest rooms, and then proceeded to part-ay!), so Sunday morning it was still time for more fun. We all ended up hanging out in their daughter's bedroom for a bit, and Kathy snapped this great photo of me helping Natalie practice reading. Love it!!

While I was getting ready in the guest room, the kids all piled in. I was originally just trying to occupy Henry and little Katie, but then Natalie got in on the fun, and eventually Ellie did too.

Thanks to Kathy for taking the photos and video! Love doing stuff like that with all of the kids.

Moves like Jagger

This may be the funniest video I've ever taken. This kid could not crack me up more if he tried.

She's got a ticket to ride!

At the start of the summer, Evan and I decided that it was time to take the training wheels off of Natalie's bike: she was almost outgrowing the bike, her friends could all do it, and she wanted to go faster, faster, faster!...which is hard to do with the training wheels. We were able to work with her for a weekend, but then the weather got insanely hot, and July got very busy, and we didn't take her out for a while. With the gorgeous weather we're having this week, Evan decided yesterday to take her out for more training, and what happened? She got it!

Here she is riding in front of our house.

I was at an office party, and met Evan with the kids in a cul-de-sac near us. It has a great circle around which they can easily ride for practice. Even Henry is getting better on his little tricycle; he's able to peddle it much better without our help!

Fun times during the photo shoot

This week, I've been spending some time on my photography site advertising a Back-to-School promotion: $30 for 30 minutes. A great deal, right? In addition to posting about it on Facebook, I also wrote a blog post on AbbeLynn Photography showcasing my photography with two up-and-coming kindergartners (one of whom you will certainly recognize!)...go on over and take a look to see some of the more artistic and fun photos I took of the girls!

I have a few photos from the shoot that I really like, yet they don't really fit for advertising, so I'm going to share them here!

There was another kid at the shoot - Henry! He's a bit young to use in advertising for "back to school", since he's just starting preschool, so Evan kept him occupied while I spent time with the girls. I couldn't not take a few photos of my handsome little guy, though, right? Especially capturing a moment like this, when neither of them knew about it.

And then we're back to being super silly Henry :)

The girls then wanted to go play on the playground next to where we were shooting, and I loved the fun shots that I was able to capture on the playground as well!

I know Natalie is blurry in the photo below, but I still love this photo! She just looks like she's having so much fun.

The girls were having a great time on the swings!

Preschool Playdate

We've been fortunate that between Natalie's friend Emerson living just down the street, and the dance class she's doing with 3 of her preschool friends, Natalie has been able to see her friends she made at preschool quite a bit, even though it's summer. However, I thought it might be nice to get as much of the class together as we could before the new school year starts, so I set up a large playdate with the class for the very end of July. We went to the Douglass community center in Leesburg, as recommended by another mom; it's a great enclosed space that is also shady and has tons of picnic tables for snack. It's a really great location that I wish we'd discovered before now! Unfortunately everyone from class was not able to make it, but we had about 75% attend. It was great to watch the kids all play together, and to catch up with the parents I hadn't seen in a couple of months.

I have to start off this post with Henry, as this kid is just too adorable! It's nice that he's reached the point where he will "cheese" for me...I just wish I could get him to smile that cutely with his eyes open! In contrast, Natalie's friends are more than accommodating for photos :)

 

Love this action shot!

The plane in one corner of the playground was a big hit with the kids!

I love this shot of another mom rocking the kids back and forth on the plane!

Later, after snack, I put Henry and Emerson's little brother, Ryder, on the plane. Henry tends to be a little shy around other kids, and not really interact with them, but because Natalie and Emerson are such good friends, he's finally learned who Ryder is and is willing to hang out with him!

Natalie discovered this "fire pole" - first, you have to climb up a rock wall, and then slide down the pole. She got up there, and then realized that she had to slide down. Emerson's mom helped her out the first time by grabbing her legs and helping her to slide down; when she climbed back up the second time I told her she had to try it by herself. She was a little freaked out, but managed to get her legs wrapped around and slid down! She was incredibly proud of herself, as I was of her as well!

Oh, and in case you noticed - yes, these photos look a bit different than the ones I normally post. I purchased some new actions for Lightroom from Pure Presets, due to an online sale they were having. The look is a little bit different for me, but I think I like it! As I start to use them more (this set was the first ones I edited using the actions almost exclusively), I think I will better figure out my own style and really incorporate them into my workflow.