Personal Photos and Ramblings

Posted on May 14, 2010

I don’t usually post that many personal pictures just because my life feels a bit mundane at times and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to see random snapshots of my life, but since I haven’t really posted many of my girls recently I thought I’d include a few so you can see how they are growing and changing. Boy they are getting SOOOO BIG! How can it be that two years ago I found out I was expecting Claire, TWO YEAR AGO??? It feels like just the other day and now she’s an active, hilarious little 16 month old who enjoys nothing more than petrifying me with her climbing abilities (she loves the kitchen table the most). And how can Kate already be 4??? We enrolled her in preschool last week and the realization that starting in August she’ll be attending school each day…whew…that is just a bit too much for this Mama to wrap her mind around. My baby gone?? All morning?? EVERY DAY??? :sniff sniff:

My girls love each other so much. Sure they have little fights here and there but they are quick to make up and hug it out. Claire gets so sad when she sees her big sissy cry. No matter what she’ll come running up to her and give her a massive hug and sloppy kiss and Kate so appreciates it (well most of the time). Kate is very sweet about showing Claire affection as well, she’s become a champion boo-boo kisser, which is great considering there have been some moments when Claires climbing has caused a fall or two…or ten.

So here are some random pictures of my precious babies.

And finally, we’ve added a new member to our family. Her name is Sweetie and she’s a Schnauzer. She was dropped off at the pound for reasons we really don’t know, since she’s COMPLETELY PERFECT!!!! She’s the absolute perfect addition to our family!! She doesn’t chew, doesn’t have potty accidents, is patient with the kids, obeys us, hasn’t even attempted to jump on the furniture (I am big on not having dogs on our furniture!!). I’m so hoping her perfect behavior rubs off on the kids…maybe if I’m lucky she can potty train Claire.

In other news…Annie Pennington Photography has a facebook page now. So check it out and become a fan!

Annie Pennington Photography

My Girls

Posted on August 10, 2009

I love my sweet little girls so much. As Claire is now getting older and mobile and able to get into big sisters stuff it really is so heartwarming to see her so patient and gentle with Claire. Sure I’m not ignorant enough to think there won’t be some little disagreements here and there, but I’m just so thankful for the great start they have. They are already wonderful playmates for each other. So thankful for them!

Best Friends

Posted on June 9, 2009

I have three siblings. I love them all so much. Some of my greatest memories of childhood were with my siblings. I love having that special bond with them. Knowing what makes them tick. Knowing what makes them laugh. Knowing endless inside jokes that only we understand. I love them so much! Which is why seeing my girls enjoying each other it brings me such great joy. Even though Claire is only 4 months old, their relationship is blossoming. Claire finds Kate completely fascinating and will turn her head to wherever she hears her big sissy. Love seeing them share a smile or a giggle. Love watching Kate eagerly share things with Claire and explain to her what characters are in a book, what colors her toys are. The first time our girls met I introduced Kate to Claire by saying, “Kate, meet your sissy, your new best friend” because friends may come and go, but sisters they are forever.   

First Post {My Family}

Posted on May 24, 2009

Hello and welcome to my new blogsite! I wanted the benefits of a blog and the benefits of a website so now I have all of that lumped into one. YAY!!! I wanted to highlight something especially special to me as the first official post here at my new blog and decided I wanted to show off my little family. My good friend Susanne of Dream Street Photography captured these for us. I LOVE THEM!!! Susanne did an amazing job capturing the REAL us – Kate running around, David sneaking smooches, us laughing and just being us – beautifully unrehearsed and natural. Thank you Susanne!! I’m forever thankful for these priceless family images of us

It’s hard to pick an ultimate favorite, but I think this just might be it. LOVE how Kate has her eyes shut as she accepts a kiss from Daddy, so sweet! And props to Susanne for this rock star pose. Love how we are separated, but still together…just cool stuff.

Sweet Kate! Love the hands on her hips…adds an extra bit of attitude to the shot don’t you think?

Now I ADORE this one cause it shows the real us…David and I just sitting back watching Kate run, run, run. Also love how it captures Claire in her most loved pass time – hand chewing.

These just make my heart swell with happiness. Love my family. Love the greenery. Sigh…I just love, love, love these images.

Cool outfit with totally rad shoes – Check. Ability to ignore the Germans staring at you making out in public – Check.  Totally in love with each other – double check!

And finally this one. Gosh I will cherish this image forever. For starters my sweet hubby is the one who talked us into stopping the car and capturing this, it was towards the end of the shoot and the kiddos really needed to get home, but at the last minute we stopped to take in this amazing backdrop. SOOO glad we listened to him. I loved this picture the second I saw it, but now that he’s left for his deployment I love it even more. I’ve got an amazing man, glad I have some images of not only us with our beautiful family, but also with just the two of us.

Thank you again Susanne!!!

Here Granny, are ya happy? :)

Posted on April 14, 2009

My wonderful, amazing, creative, beautiful (and every other positive and lovely adjective you can think of) mother, who Kate and Claire know as Granny has been more than just lightly suggesting I create a post with her grandgirls.  

So without further adieu,  here ya go Granny!!

Top Personal 8 in 2008

Posted on December 29, 2008

Last year around this time I went through and chose my Top 7 Favorite Photos from 2007. It was hard to pick JUST seven, but I had a great time browsing through all my images from the year and narrowing down. I decided to do the same thing this year, only getting the added bonus of choosing EIGHT for 2008 and not just seven. It’s really fun to go through a years worth of pictures and really think about WHY certain photos hold special meaning. Sometimes I pick them because they make me laugh, other times it’s because I nailed the exposure, composition (and a bunch of other technical stuff I won’t bore you with) and the “professional” side of me is so darn proud, other times it’s because it reminds me of a special moment in time, either way I dug through and think I found a good variety of all the above. Now I realize there are a few more than 8 actual images listed here, but sometimes one photo isn’t quite enough, so I would pair them together with a photo taken during the same time frame to better express the true meaning of why I love the moment. You might call it cheating…but hey, this is my blog I can do whatever the heck I want! Hee-hee. I tried to pick only images that hadn’t been highlighted on my blog already, but I know a few have. I didn’t want to choose photos that simply “looked nice” I wanted them to be special to me for one reason or another. So without further adieu…here are my Top 8 Favorite Personal Photographs of 2008.

This was also taken in Alabama. In our little hotel,  which by the way was without air conditioning for over half our trip! But that didn’t keep our girl from randomly passing out! We’d spend all day long out in the play park, and then she’d come in for lunch and crash on the spot! I loved it cause it’s really the only opportunity I’ve had to watch her sleep for long periods of time, usually she’s in her room with the door closed, so I don’t get to see her in perfect sleepy peace. In the tiny little hotel room there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go! So I’d sit quietly and catch up on emails, read, snooze a little bit myself. Great memories from that hot little dingy hotel room!

David was deployed when I found out the gender of our new baby, but just cause I had no one around to click the shutter button didn’t keep me away from at least TRYING to capture the special time! I won’t lie…the photo on the left took FOR-EV-ER. It’s hard to fully explain to a 2 year old what you want them to do while your camera is propped up on a billion books to get “just the right height” from the photo. But gosh I’m glad I did this. Seriously one of my favorite photos ever. The one on the right was taken on a whim, I wanted to show how much my belly was sticking out from my angle.

I really wanted to give Kate lots of fun Christmas memories this year because she’s old enough to really participate in activities and enjoy them. I saw this recipe and thought it sounded perfect for Kate! So much easier and less flimsy than a gingerbread house (it took quite a beating from Kate, she’s got a heavy hand and it never crumbled or gave way!). She had a great time decorating it! I had a great time eating all the left over rice crispy treats.

Christmas Photos

Posted on December 27, 2008

Christmas this year was really low-key and relaxing, which is exactly what David and I were wanting! We started our holiday celebrations Christmas Eve, having some Christmas movies on in the background, reading Christmas books, making Christmas cookies, enjoying Christmas Eve dinner. Before bed we read some Christmas books to Kate and I tortured David and Kate with taking endless photos. Thank goodness for the self timer so I can occasionally prove I really am around here sometimes and not ALWAYS just the one behind the camera.

Christmas morning we enjoyed opening gifts and just being with each other. I took endless photos of Kate opening gifts, but just too many for me to weed through today! I did also pull out the self timer and we took this family picture. Not perfect by any means and the photographer in me CRINGES at all the issues with it, but hey, it’s our family and that makes it special.

Jammies, Andies Candies & Animation.

Posted on December 15, 2008

Well if you know us and our little family even just a little bit you’ll know that our Kate is quite an animated little thing. Her facial expressions speak volumes! I really love this set of photos because it combines so many of the things that makes up our Kate.

She has this one expression that looks insanely mean, but it’s *usually* only used in a very joking context. Now yes, if she gets VERY angry it has been known to spills out then as well, but overall she uses it almost like her “fake mean” expression. She originally created it this Summer at my parents house to call the goats over to her, she’d yell out, “Mere goat, mere goat” (come here goat) and then somehow the expression was born at that time. We kept hoping it might go away, cause frankly she looks almost demonic when she does it, but no matter all the angles we’ve tried it seems that it’s here to stay…so since it’s become such a big part of her I decided to snap some photos of it. So enjoy ladies and gents…this is Kate’s “mere goat” face:

Christmas is in the air…

Posted on November 24, 2008

This weekend was perfect for putting up the tree! It was snowing outside, I happened to have a bunch of ingredients on hand for some great cold weather meals and treats and a hubby who was in a great mood and didn’t seem to mind making multiple trips up and down from the freezing cold attic to bring me Christmas box after Christmas box of decorations. We usually never put up the tree before Thanksgiving, but it was just too perfect of a weekend to pass up the opportunity to ring in the Christmas season a wee bit early for this year. David and I have been talking for awhile about how much we want to start our own family traditions for the holidays, we weren’t really sure what traditions we wanted to start EXACTLY, but we decided to go ahead and roll with a tradition we started last year. So while putting up the tree we had on National Lampoon’s Family Christmas, had the awesome smell of home made Chex Mix wafing out of the kitchen and put up our tree. Good times. Nothing terribly unique, but perfect for us. When you add up funny movie + good salty snack with pretty much ANYTHING we’re up for it. Kate so loved helping with the ornaments and sure all the ornaments are placed perfectly from only her height down…but that just makes it all the more special. Here are a few photos I captured of her busy in the “decorating zone!”

This is Happiness

Posted on October 22, 2008

Kate is a perfect combination of David and me. She looks exactly like him, but she acts exactly like me, which is sometimes totally fun – she’s animated, full of personality, has hilarious facial expressions, is creative and goofy, but along with all that fun stuff comes the not so fun elements of being full of so much personality – lots of emotional stuff! So it’s not rare for out of nowhere she just melts down. Part of it is being two…but I’m big enough to admit part of it is my genes. Hee-hee. Today she had a crying spell cause of something quite minor (well minor to my adult mind…not minor to her toddler mind) and we struggled and I tried so hard to make it all better, but just like me she needed her own time to get over it and appreciated being left alone to yell at the heavens at her misfortune. So once she calmed down a bit I scooped her up in my arms, dried her tears up and told her how much I love her. She grabbed my neck and pulled me tightly to her and said, “Mommy, you are so cute” well gosh talk about being precious! That priceless comment totally made up for the 15 minutes of shrieking and screaming in itself! Then she teared up a bit more and with a poked out bottom lip said, “Sometimes Kate just has to cry” and wow, isn’t that the truth? I mean how many times do even adult need to grasp that concept?? That sometimes a good cry just needs to happen! So we read some books, enjoyed some quality snugs and then she held my face in her hands and said with the most overjoyed expression, “I’m all happy now!!!” So here is my girls completely happy with the world face. I was swinging her at the park and clicking away…so it’s crooked, but I love it none the less!! Love when my girl is “all happy” Love it!!

Next Page »