happy halloween!

Halloween schedule:
9am Jack basketball
10am Kaylie soccer
10am-1pm 5 year old birthday party
1-4pm party at the rec center
5:30 trick-or-treating
6:30 neighborhood Halloween party we crashed
7:00 more trick-or-treating
9pm bed

Whew! And then almost as a joke, they (who is "they" anyway?) make day light savings the night of Halloween so the next day is the longest in history. lol. Well, we spent most of Nov 1st at the beach enjoying the low tide and company of friends also suffering from sugar-excess and lack of sleep. It actually was a fantastic time. BBQ'd some burgers with Dad and the day was done.

The kids got to keep 10 pieces of candy and put the rest out for "The Great Pumpkin" last night. The eagerly woke up and checked out what he left them this morning. Jack was super excited to find a Fly Wheel (some toy that shoots a wheel out) but Kaylie was not so excited. She remembered that The Great Pumpkin brought her some dress up butterfly wings last year and thought he would be giving her some sparkly new ones this year... The Fancy Nancy tag book was not what she had in mind. I tried videotaping the kids' reactions, but realized as soon as the drama was over, that I had pressed the bleeping pause button instead of the record button. Rats!

Anyway... her are some pics from our day...







power rangers! meet jungle fury









u-c-l-a - fight fight fight!










snarky face

kaylie hijinks || messy child photographer

kaylie... watercolor makeup - look for it at your local MAC counter.








So much has been going on, but mostly I'm trying to get caught up with summer sessions and orders so that I can jump into holiday card sessions! More info coming soon!

kaylie strikes again!

last time it was white,

this time, kaylie learned that if you mix all the water colors together, you get black.

kaylie's 3rd brithday blowout.

And by "birthday blowout" I don't mean birthday party. I mean, poor little kaylie got a stomach bug on her birthday. No voice screaming, "I'm going to Disneyland!" for this little supertoiletbowl champion.

Instead of going to Disneyland, we stayed home, rented some dancing Barbie princess movie, made cookies, and ate a birthday bagel for breakfast and a birthday pancake for dinner (modifying the BRAT diet a bit).

Sniffle... my little girl is getting so big (and sassy). Ah, but I love her so.

a playdate at the park - pacific palisades photographer

Last week Kaylie had a playdate with one of her boyfriends Bo. Kaylie is quite the social butterfly, so I imagine this is only the beginning of me taking her on chaperoned dates. When Bo and Kaylie saw each other at the park, they shouted each others' names and then ran with open arms for a mega hug. Well, Bo is a boy version of Kaylie - sturdy, fun, with a solid head - he tackled Kaylie with a warm embrace. Kaylie thought was fun until she hit the gravel road.

Anyway, all recovered the two chased each other around, I mean... we all hiked to this lovely meadow. On the way there, Kaylie picked something up off the ground and held it up to me, "Mommy, what's this?" Oh lord. I grabbed Kaylie by the wrist and shook it until she let go of the flattened road-kill mouse that she was holding by its stiff tail.

A shot from my iphone (note said mouse under Bo's shoe):




Here are a couple more shots from our morning outing.

februrary in los angeles... beach weather!

So the weather has been just amazing here in LA and I've finally realized the true joy of living near the beach (the kid-entertainment factor). We've been taking the kids down to the beach quite a bit as it's been in the 70's for I can't remember how long now (though forecast calls for rain tomorrow). Okay, I hate that sand gets everywhere (car, floors, ears, more on the floor when the kids take off their swim suits to use the potty), but I'm seeing the beach benefits may outweigh the sand! The other day we were down by the water for 3 hours. I mostly got to chat with some friends, took a few pictures and the kids enjoyed building and playing together. It's not Shangri-la, as we still have to pack snacks, yell at the kids for throwing sand, and take toddlers to public restrooms, but 3+ hours of entertainment... that's awesome. Oh, and I recently found out the pizza guy will deliver.


lo and kaylie were pouring sea water on their heads.




new friends who are visiting from england (jack had a crush on the older girl)




I've also started to embrace Kaylie's desire to always be playing with lotion or making some kind of mess on her body. The other day I filled up a bowl with warm soapy water (at least it's clean right?). I set the bowl on the patio and let her go to town. First thing she did was take off all her clothes (of course, it's Kaylie). And then shortly after we have bath fun in a bowl...







We're supposed to go for a little hike tomorrow... but we might get rained out...

a random meet up and some holiday mini session info

Finally! (scroll down if you want info on the mini session without a bunch of late night ramblings)

Funny thing... I was at a local park with the kids earlier this week, and a mom (very stylishly dressed I might add) and her toddler walked by me. The mom looked my way kind of like she knew me, so I was racking my brain to figure out if I knew her. I saw her look over again and then this time she came over and asked if my name was Heather.

"Uh oh." I thought. I know my memory is bad, but I hate when it totally fails me...and it was failing me because I for sure didn't recognize her.

her: Are you a photographer?

me: Yep. (so weird to think of myself as a photographer... )

Okay, so without giving y'all the exact play by play (since like I said, my memory sucks and I would be quoting it all wrong), I'll just give the general gist of our seven degrees of separation.

So this woman's name is Kim. Funny as I write that, I think about the word "woman." Do you like it better when people in the grocery store call you "ma'am" or "miss"? If I'm by myself especially, I hate being called "ma'am." But I love it when they they call me "miss"; it's almost as flattering as getting carded. I digress... So this woman about my age (funny, I still think of myself more as "this girl" than "this woman" even though I'm getting crowsfeet... but again sorry, back to the story)...

So it turns out Kim is good friends with one of my best friend's sisters (also named Heather just to make it confusing). Last time I was up in San Jose, I took Heather's family photos . Well, then Heather emailed the link to my blog to some of her SoCal friends...Kim being one of them. How random is that? Oh and the kicker? She recognized me from my monkey face picture on this blog. Oh man... I'm thinking that's not so good if I really do look like that monkey face picture... maybe I made that face one too many times and it really did get stuck that way! That was kind of a weird, yet cool experience. Luckily I got references on Kim that she's a great great friend to people I know. If you're out there Kim, "Hi! Let's meet up there again!"

Oh, so Kim had been reading my blog and reminded me that I was supposed to post about the upcoming holiday mini card sessons. Ah yes.

Here's my thought on holiday cards. I'd love to be your one stop shop for awesome holiday cards, but I'm not quite organized enough for that yet (maybe next year when both kids are in school every day). For now I'll leave the card making to the professional designers. Here is a great place for beautiful holiday cards (and baby announcements and even Halloweeen cards) - inababycarriage.com. Tell Amber I say hi if you email her. However, I would be honored to take the photos for your cards...

I plan to offer 2 days of mini sessions. I'm only booking 4 families each day so spaces are very limited.

Day 1: Saturday, October 25th
Location: Santa Monica Pier, think urban more than beachy
Start Times: 9am, 9:45am, 10:30am, 11:15am

Day 2: TBD. I'm thinking November 1st or 8th
Location: A more rustic, green and natural location
Times: The 4 sessions will either be in the morning again or possibly all in the late afternoon/evening.
I'd love to hear suggestions!

And if you think you'd like to have a longer session or one at a different location, I am also booking full sessions.

Okay, I've got a HUGE day tomorrow, so I should have gone to bed hours ago. But let me share with you another Kaylie hijinks picture to end the night. Just my face lotion this time...

hyjinks around the house

So while I've been a little preoccupied lately trying to get this small business up and running, the kids have been enjoying a little extra freedom around the house.

Jack found one of my old swim caps the other day. I'm really surprised that it was still in good shape and not covered in cracks and cobwebs (please excuse the toilet paper roll coming out of his ear).





And Kaylie. Kaylie, Kaylie, Kaylie. She's got some big girl undies that say "Little Miss Giggles" on them (thanks Target), only Kaylie thinks it's funny to call them her "Little Miss Gobbles" undies. That's just the kind of crazy girl Kaylie is. Here's a picture of her today... caught her red-handed!!!







But not to worry, before the sharpies and scissors come out, I grab the kids and spend some good one on one time with them. Earlier in the week Jack and I wrote a little play date invitation to his buddy Max.

back from vacation! and some big news (and no, I'm not pregnant)

...but I do have a website that's almost ready! I'm hoping to get rid of that old "under construction" page that's been hanging out at www.umamiphotography.com. In the next week or so I should have my fancy dancy new site up and running. Stay tuned!!!

Jack and Kaylie will also both be starting school this week. So between now and Wed, I have to get them off the summer schedule and onto an early bedtime - early rise school schedule. Ugh! But for the first time in 4 years, I will have 6 hours a week all to myself while the kids are both in school (yahoooooo)... that's my time to shoot a photo session, go grocery shopping all by myself (this is a luxury) or even go for a mountain bike ride...

Speaking of mountain bike rides... we just got back from UCSB family camp. It was seriously one of the longest weeks ever (but in a good way). Each day was just so jam packed with activities and trips to the cafeteria, that by Tue I could not believe we still had over half a week left. Let's see... I went kayaking, surfing (sort of), mountain biking, road biking, rock climbing, swimming, played inner tube water polo (that nearly killed me) and hiking. Matt played some tennis and golf and surfed a bit. And we got to do all this while the kids were in their camps for part of the day. It was AWESOME! Matt and I also caught Jack Johnson and friends on Wednesday since they were putting on a show at UCSB's Harder Stadium. Not quite as cool as the time some friends and I drove up to see Jack Johnson play in the UCSB cafeteria (about 7 years ago), but it was fun to get out with the college kids and pretend I was still half hip.

So for the past week I've had no tv, very limited computer use and have fallen asleep by 10pm almost every night. First day back home and it's after 1am again. Okay, some quick pix and I'm off to bed!





Have I mentioned what a nut Kaylie is? Seriously, she's crazy.







Kaylie: You think I'm crazy?! My mom is even more nuts! Quick! Run before she takes your picture!!!







Thanks to our friend Peter for taking some fun family pix of us!

beachy keen

A couple weeks ago one of the playgroups I roll with decided to meet down at Topanga Beach. I'd never taken the kids to this strip of shoreline before, so they were loving it...totally occupied with exploring and collecting/throwing/eating rocks. Jack was also over the moon about this snorkeling mask one of the kids brought...it just took him a bit to figure out glasses and snorkeling masks don't always go together.



For anyone concerned about the cleanliness of the ocean water, check out heal the bay to see what grade your local beaches earned. Hey, looks like the LA beaches aren't doing too bad. But what I don't understand is how you get an F score just meters away from an A score... fishy fishy.

Here are a couple of the cuties from our playgroup... more to come, but of course, here it is (yawn...) getting late and we've got guests coming over in the morning.

happy 5th of july!

I'm pretty sure I heard fireworks going off again tonight, so I figured I'd post some pics of our July 4th before it turns into August 4th. First off though, I'd like to give a big thank you to all the service men and women (and their families) sacrificing for our country. We want you to come home soon!

For the first time we went to our neighborhood parade. Woo hoo! Nothing like a parade to get you in the 4th of July spirit. Not in the spirit yet? Well, how about some cotton candy, US flags, an ice mocha, frozen lemonade and 2 chocolate milks from starbucks, lawn chairs on the sidewalk (hey, how'd all those starbucks drinks got in there...ahem), clowns, bands... you get the idea!

4 skydivers kicked off the parade. The first guy was coming down so fast and furious we thought for sure he was going to wrap himself around the tree or street signal. Whew...they all had safe landings right in front of where I was waiting for my ice mocha. :)

That would be Mrs.Cunningham (Happy Days) sporting the matching hair/car combo.







After the parade we somehow managed to drag back to our car (parked 1/2 a mile away) 2 kids, 1 stroller, 4 heavy folding chairs, 2 flags, a backpack, camera bag and beach umbrella. And did I mention I was wearing jeans? So hot! Anyway, after some naps we headed back out to catch the fireworks show. Of course we had to arrive 2 hours early to get a parking spot (or so we thought), so we took the kids out for a little evening hike.

Playing around with long exposures and my flash.













This is currently Kaylie's favorite dress. It's a hand-me-down from her cousin. They need to make all clothes like this...she gets it filthy and then I just throw it in the wash and voila, it's clean again! Okay, no comments on the hair...at least it's growing!



ISO 1600, Aperture 2.8, Shutter speed 20 seconds (hmmm...wonder if that's why it's a little blurry?) Actually it was completely dark out since we were watching the fireworks.




What happens when you can't figure out how to focus on fireworks...




Ah, now I got it...




and if you move the camera while shooting fireworks with a 2 second exposure...




Okay, so it's after midnight and here I am looking on youtube to see if there's any video from the coolest fireworks show I've ever seen - Kaboom sponsored by KFOG in San Francisco. Well, what do you know... love this song, so here you go!

And if you can't get enough of fireworks... here's a video of Kaboom from 2005.

**As I update this, Matt and Jack are out in the backyard in a tent camping!