Yay, football!

I took my first football photos of the season on Saturday. The boys had their first real scrimmage, and they won 13-6! For a varsity team that went 0-9 and scored virtually no points last year, it was huge!!

Shylah

More of Shylah the birthday girl at Sunday's party. Is this better cropped:?
or not cropped:?

Bonus post

It's been such a pain to get around Minot for the last couple of weeks. Flash flooding took out some roads.
And my friend sent me this early photo of Michael Phelps:

Cameron's first day of school

Cameron waiting for the bus at 6:20 a.m. Thursday on his first day of grade 10. Sullen teenager much, Cam?

Delaney's first day of school

Photos from Delaney's first day of 7th grade on Wednesday. Cam starts Thursday. I like it better when they start the same day. It makes back-to-school more "festive." :-D
To compare, here she is a year ago on the first day of 6th grade:

Hannah

We had Shylah at her 3rd birthday party, then little sister Molly. Today we have big sister Hannah.

Messy Molly

Girlfriend got messy at her big sister's birthday party. That just means she had a lot of fun.

Check this out

Delaney has been busy

Fancy Shylah

Just a quick one of Shylah from her 3rd birthday party on Sunday.

A shed

The day Chris and I went to the botanical gardens we passed a glass blowing studio on our way home and stopped in. This was the shed on the property.

Patriot Games

Delaney before she and Chris left for the Patriots preseason game Friday. This is their first father/daughter overnight trip. Meanwhile, Friday is the last day for two-a-day football practices for Cam, and I think I'm as happy about that as he is--the boy is CRANKY when he's tired!

Another Britt photo

I haven't really given my own kids away and adopted Brittney into the family, it's just that with my kids it's always, "Don't take my picture!" so here's another one of Brittney. And, okay, if I'm really being honest, I have to tell you that another reason Cam isn't in this photo is because he took it. Yeah, I cropped it and edited it to make it look better, but I'm pretty impressed. A little annoyed that I handed him the camera while I ran in to use the bathroom and he managed to get probably the best one of the day, but mostly impressed and proud.

Turn, turn, turn

Another summer is drawing to a close. School starts next Wednesday, and leaves have started to turn. It always makes me sad.

Balloons and more balloons

Yes, Georgie, the Chris/Colin Powell photo is real. :-) At one of Chris's national meetings he spoke and did photo ops and book signings. The photo just arrived in the mail the other day.

A bunch more from the balloon festival. I told Dad there were about 60 balloons. I obviously just pulled that number out of my butt, because I read in the paper that there were 22.

Also: http://www.sunjournal.com/story/279266-3/LocalSports/Fieldtests_begin_for_athletes/
if you go this link and click on the photo gallery, you can see Cam on the left in the last picture. It was on the front page of the paper Tuesday morning.






Same shot as above but I messed with the sky in Photoshop:

Just your standard meeting-a-famous-person/handshake photo

Up up and away

Another shot from the balloon festival. I love them from this angle.And a Happy Belated Birthday to Shylah--we'll see you for your soiree next Sunday!

Britt and Cam

Cam's girlfriend Brittney is going to be a senior this year, and although I don't think I'm good enough to do her senior photos for real, she's been sweet enough to let me practice on her. If nothing else, maybe she'll get a cool Facebook photo out of the deal.

I call these first few "children of the corn." I really like this first one.

Chris said this one made him think of Duran Duran.
After I made her stand in a cornfield, I made her walk on railroad tracks. The train didn't show up until we'd made a clean getaway.
Another version of the above shot:
We saw a nice picture online using this pose. Mine's not as nice, although my model is prettier:
Same one in black and white:

And we got a few "couple" shots too. Awww!

Balloon Festival

Dad's home from the hospital already--yay! His cardiac enzymes showed no sign of a heart attack.

Here's a sneak peek at the balloon festival photos I took Friday evening:

Dad's back in the hospital. Chest pains. They're monitoring and testing; we're waiting and seeing. I hate being so far away.

The Great Falls Balloon Festival starts Friday. We were out Thursday evening and saw that one of them decided to start early.

Pearly Everlasting

To answer your question from yesterday, Dad, all the photos from the last week (except for Cam's birthday photos) were taken at the botanical gardens in Boothbay that we visited last week. Purdy, huh? I have lots more to go through and post...and lots more from vacation to go through and post.

A photo for mom: I did pick and dry some Everlasting. Some of them are a little droopy; I need to do some rearranging.And I scored a bunch of books at Marden's today. They have some soot on them because they were salvaged from a fire at a book store, but they were 75% off. Some of these were already on my "to read" list. I'm thinking of going back for more tomorrow. Maybe I'll actually get around to reading Pride and Prejudice someday if I have my very own copy.

Flowers

Ooga booga

This is what Chris looked like when I told him Delaney and I were going shopping today:
I take it back; this guy is smiling more than Chris did.

Where faeries dwell