Lauren | Colorado Springs Senior Photographer

Lauren is the daughter of one of the girls in our neighborhood bunco group. Her mom, Sherry, is a riot so I’ve loved getting to know her daughter better. Lauren is the sweetest girl ever! Such a good kid. I hope my girls are as nice as Lauren when they’re teenagers. She just started her senior year, so we had a great time playing under cover from the rain at the Flying Horse Club. It started pouring as soon as we got started! We had big plans to go to the Santa Fe trail after, but that’s going to have to wait until this weekend since everything was a soggy mess. Thankfully, there are some beautiful arches and stonework at the club so we still had a great shoot there. She is GORGEOUS, so I wasn’t about to let the weather ruin it for us! I can’t wait to shoot Lauren in a more nature-y setting this weekend since that is more *her*.

 

1108Lauren585

1108Lauren682

My babies are fwee!

So, um, I started this post weeks ago, saved it as a draft, and forgot about it. Oops!!

 

My twins turned 3 on the 5th. Sniff!  Because of Pinterest, I did more work on this party than I ever have on a party. I learned so much about the design end of Photoshop. I will be back with a more detailed post about their birthday party with pictures taken by my fabulously talented photographer friend, Kim. First, though, I attempted two different shoots with my kids to try and get ONE decent picture. Yeah, that didn’t happen. This was the best I got. We went outside the next day and played around on our front steps, and I got some beauties of each of them then. No good ones of all three, though, so those will be separate posts because this one would be way too long otherwise!

                               1108ThirdParty495

My favorite. Open-mouthed smile

                               514

Twins’ First Day of Preschool

I decided to do the same thing I did with Abby’s first day of school photo for my twins. I shot Cora’s in the morning before we left since I knew she’d play with me, but I waited until after school to do Emma’s. I’m so glad I did because she actually cooperated! I got one good shot of her looking at me AND smiling. Sort of. She even went and sat on the rock that will now forever be our first day of school spot. Open-mouthed smile 

 

Preschool has been a pretty difficult transition for Emma. Cora too, but not as bad as Emma. As I’ve mentioned before, Emma’s autistic, so she doesn’t handle transitions well at all. She loves the playtime portion when she can do her own thing, but sitting down and listening? She just doesn’t get it. All she knows is she wants to keep playing, but these strange women she doesn’t know won’t let her, so there have been lots of screams. I know it’ll get better, but it’s so hard to leave her screaming. And to come back and she’s screaming again. Yesterday, they’re third day in, the teacher said she did fabulous up until the very end, so hopefully it will get a little easier sooner than I think it will.

 

Cora tells me every morning that she doesn’t want to go to school. She’s very shy with strangers, and slow to warm up, so it’s going to take some time for her to settle in to preschool too. When I pick them up and ask her what they did that day, she always tells me she read a book, so story time is definitely the favorite for her. They have a folder that comes home in their backpack with paperwork. When they get to class, they take it out and put it on a table for the teachers to deal with. Cora calls it her library book. She cracks me up! Every day, she makes sure her *library book* is in her backpack before we leave the house. She also doesn’t like music time, but I think that’s because she feels a little on display. I did catch her at home quietly singing and doing the moves to the three songs to which they sing & dance, though, so it can’t be *that* bad. Winking smile

 

CoraFB

EmmaFB

First Day of First Grade

Today was Abby, my oldest's first day of first grade. This one has hit me especially hard because this is the first year she has a desk and structure. It's not primarily play-based learning any more, but real Big Kid time. Sniff!

I saw a few variations on Pinterest and knew I had to do something similar. Most had their kid holding a sign of some sort with first day info, but my favorite was this one where they wrote some of the kids' favorites on the picture as well. I didn't get that far with it tonight, but I did at least get the pertinent stuff on there. It'll be so fun to look back on this in future years! It'll be fun to do the same thing with my twins next week when they start preschool. But I can't think of that right now or I'll start sobbing. My babies!

Abby's First Day