The Ceases - Family portrait Photographer, Maryville, Missouri

My oldest stepson and his 3 girls, live in Colorado. None of which we get to see nearly often enough. So needless to say, when they wanted to come visit over Easter, we were all excited. We decided to help them kill 2 birds with one stone and had Easter for all of my husband's family (well, all those available) at the same time.

........

Each girl got to pick where their photos were taken and each really represented each of the girls well.

Click here to see the rest of the photos.

1...2....3... "Say mac and CHEEEESE!"

I've talked about Daniel Dunlap and his family before a few weeks ago. He's a fellow photographer from Council Bluffs, Iowa. We met online in a photography group and we tend to complain about most of the same things. Correction... I complain, and he mostly agrees.

He presented me a challenge around a year ago when I commented on a photo of his daughter on facebook. "You get her to look into the camera, I challenge you."

Game on.

So a couple weeks ago, I had a issue I needed to sort out, and Dan's one of those guys that knows just enough to get you in trouble. He volunteered to come all the way to lowly Missouri and help me fix it! All I had to offer was a stack of fat T-bones.
*he took the bait!*

So Saturday, they came down early and went to Stoney Creek for a little get away. We went down to have dinner with them, and I started turning on the charm with little Alayna immediately because I knew I'd be taking her photo at some point.

Over dinner Dan and I had this conversation:

Dan: "I'm never going to photograph another photographer's wedding."
Lana: "Yeah, me neither. Talk about pressure."

around 18 hours later:
Dan: "So you'll take our picture right?"
Lana: *eek*

(well, not exactly like that, but you know....)

I want the record to show, I got several shots of Alayna looking at the camera several times.
BOOYAH.

I also made a new little BFF. I'm going to talk her into spending the summer with me. I'm confident it'll work.. I have a pool. I might have to rent a pony tho.

Izaak and Abby - Kid portraits Maryville, Missouri

Exibit A:

These two are full of life.
That's a polite way of saying they are ornery.

But ornery is not bad, especially in the case of this brother and sister. Even tho they will probably have a life time of "Mom he hit me!" and "Dad she won't give me back my ball glove!" you can tell that they have a beautiful little relationship, and truly love each other.

I give you the above photo as proof.



See the rest of this post and more photos here.

Izaak and Abby - Kid portraits Missouri

Tonight I had a shoot with these two cute kids. They were funny, lively and packed full of energy. I'm going to dedicate my life to bottling that energy.

When I'm not so tired.

As a matter of fact, I DO remember what it was like to be a child. So there.

I'm your typical girly-girl. (Most of the type). I like things that sparkle, clothes that make my butt look smaller (do they make those?), babies, pretty fingernails, eyeliner and tiny things.

Yes, it's not uncommon to hear me say "Oh how CUTE" when I see a miniature version of anything much larger. *anything*.

So when we went to Colorado for our honeymoon, there was "Cute!!" when I saw our little toiletries.

Yes, I know I'm sad.
*anywayyyy*

We stayed at the Marriott, which is nice because they give you branded toiletries, and the brand is not Marriott, it's Bath and Body works. In miniature.

CUTE.
(see, I told you I can't stop myself).

We decided to be "those people" and each day we took our cute little shampoos and soaps and hid them in my suitcase. Yep. *THOSE* people. lol. After 6 days, that's a lot of shampoo!

Now to be fair, normally what I do is donate these to the local food pantry. Why? Because when I was a kid, I remember this conversation with my mom about kids at school that were not the cleanest.

Me: "I don't understand why so and so is so dirty all the time. Soap cost, what, like 50 cents?"
Mom: "Well, sometimes people can't afford to have their water turned on, and some people don't have 50 cents to buy a bar of soap."

That stuck with me ever since.

So whenever I go to a Best Western, or a motel 6, and they have those tiny bars of soap or a little bottle of shampoo, I drop them in a Ziploc bag and a couple times a year, take them to the food pantry. I know it won't solve everyone's problems, but a bar of soap can make you feel a whole lot better about yourself.

Now, having said that, when I saw these, I thought of Gene's Granddaughters and how much they were probably like me. A typical girl that likes sparkly things, nice fingernails and minis.

So I saved them for them.

Last week when we were at Michael's, I found these adorable little gift bags and we picked up a few to make little posh gift bags for the girls.

I also included a couple of these:

I'm sorry, but those are just cute. Cute cute.

Cute.

I remember when I was a little girl, getting one of those tiny jelly jars at the Old Threshers Reunion in Mount Pleasant. I kept it FOREVER (it might still be in with some of my old doll clothes!) So I knew when we got a couple of these with our room service, that we would NOT be using them, and save them for the girls. Unfortunately, they only had 2, so I saved the tiny Tabasco sauce for Cheyenne, who claims she loves really hot food.

I'm sure of course, that I'll get called out for not being equal and fair. Blah blah. Life sucks, you are WELCOME. LOL. :p

Yesterday, their package was shipped off complete with girly-girl backpacks for school and girly-girl dresses bought on sale.

My contribution to the new school year is officially DONE!
:)

Meet Frannie

Meet Miss Frannie.

She's a lil' nugget.

FYI, we call a nugget a tiny little mouse poo around these parts. So I guess it's just how you look at it :)

Frannie is also my best friend's littlest one. aka SURPRISE! :) Frannie is VERY GOOD at saying "No" in her cute little mouse voice. At least it's cute the first 327 times.

These pics were Frannie's 2 year photos, and a b-day gift to Stacy (she's a 4th of July baby). It's also a thank you for not letting my cats die while we were on vacation.

As you see, I'm a "come as you are" type of photographer. If they'll sit and smile, then YAY. If they don't, then that's ok too. I want to capture what your kids look like right now, the way they are, not the way we wish they were. ;)

Frannie has the cutest curly hair. I wish I had curly hair. Or straight hair. Nope, I have fuzzy hair.

Fuzzy hair sucks.

We had to resort to some game playing to get Frannie to play along. She's not a fan of the camera.


Where's your ear?

Where's your nose?

Where's your tongue?

Where's your belly button?
Wait. They call it a donut hole.. or something like that. I can't remember!

The verdict is still out on kids. Somedays I love the idea, and some days I run screaming around the room, then I see pics like these and I get over it.

Epic: Official "Lana has been AWOL" Update

or....
"wth is she doing??"

Which ever title works for you is cool with me :p

Saturday:
Gene and I went on a little "explore" (that's what I've called them ever since I fell in love with Pooh. He goes on Explores with Christopher Robin).

We tried to go antiquing in Clarinda, which was a complete bust. Instead we ended up in a gun store which had a junk room. Gene, was in heaven and let's just say he got his Father's Day gift 3 months early. We rounded out the day by going to Bedford to antique, bought some glasses for the bar.

Finally, we went to Parnell to each lunch at the K & T bar where everyone says they have the best tenderloins ever. Maybe not ever, but they were good. However, you do get enough french fries to feed a small Somalian village. You know, I've lived in Maryville for 21 years, and have never once been to Parnell! Stacy's even lived there for like 2 years. I'm a bad person.

{That's what's left after you're full}

You'll be happy you missed out on Gene dressed as a giant Easter bunny. No really, this was seriously considered. There is next year tho. :p


Sunday:
Happy Easter, we spent the day with Gene's family. We brought the ham. Did you know that Gene's freaky brother Steve doesn't like pork products. NO.. not even BACON. What a freak. Who doesn't like bacon?
srsly.

Hi Steve
Ya freak.

P.S. The KFC was good.





{Easter Dresses}

To make life easier for everyone, we spent the night Sunday night, because we had to be in KC on Monday anyway.

Monday:

Monday was kinda sucky to start off. Gene had to get his back testing done - and they threw in some last minute crap, that totally threw off my schd so I had to miss a shoot. ARGH.

We also hit some antique stores. As usual. I'm about antiqued out.

Tuesday:

We had to get up early and head back to KC for Day 2 of testing. I wondered why he wanted to leave so early, but since he was driving.. I was along for the ride. We ended up early because he had his days mixed up... then he was annoyed we had to wait so long.

MEN

After the testing, we did the storage unit auction circuit (buying "repossessed" storage units). We didn't find anything worth buying. Well, not for what we were willing to pay anyway.

I have pics, but I'm getting bored with this epic post.

Tuesday, spent the night in KC again. I'm ready to buy Gene's mom and dad a big old pillow top mattress.

Wednesday:

Tax day. Hoofreakinrah. Glad that's done and passed.

His appt wasn't until late, so we killed time searching for scrapbook stores.. erm.. antique stores. :) We happened across a scrapbook store and I gave him the pouty face so we got to stop. So much for my scrapbook purchasing moratorium. HA. That last about 2 weeks.

We were scheduled to go to the tax day tea party in KC, but we were so tired from all the stuff going on, that we just slowly headed north hitting, Parkville, Platte City, Weston and St. Joseph.

I have a lot of pics. I'm going to share those in seperate posts with their own unique stores as I go. Plus my supper is ready and darn it, I'm hungry :p

I'll post more this eve if I get a moment!

Boys are weird

I'm going to give up on trying to understand the inner workings of boys.

This morning, I'm in Tanner's room, which for the record, is always an adventure. I went in to get the trash and got completely distracted by the fact that there were pepsi cans everywhere.

This kid has a pepsi issue apparently.

I discovered this in the trash:

Nick his buddy spent the night a couple weeks ago. Nick is a cute Opie kinda kid complete with freckles and almost red hair. He's also nothing like Tanner. He's loud and boisterous and I kept being surprised by the noises coming out of Tanner's room that I never heard before.

My kids have always been a bit on the quiet side, and now I'm fairly confident that they live vicariously through their friends.

So these destructed pop cans come out of the trash can, and I can only assume they were trying to build something. Maybe they were reinacting the scene from Twister where they used pop cans to make propellers for their gadget?

Maybe they were trying to create a miniature futuristic city - to scale.

Or maybe they just wanted to cut up stuff.

Either way, I just shake my head, empty pop cans, gather trash (bring on the teen years!) and admit my defeat as trying to understand the inner workings of boys, is about as difficult as understanding cat facial expressions.

Or the inner workings of GIRLS.

Seth's infinite wisdom

St. Pat's day around these parts was crazy beautiful. Literally 80 degrees out during the day, the sun was shining, light breeze. Beautiful.

Tanner had his paper route to do, Gene had called to say he was on his way home and would pick up Tanner. About 5:15 the phone rings and it's Seth. He wanted to know if we were BBQing. I said no, why did he want to know?

His response: "Well have you looked outside today?"

I couldn't argue with his logic.

15 min later I had the grill ready to fire up. We ended up with chicken and brats, and burgers that were supposed to be for Gene's lunch but didn't end up that way. The one person that wanted a burger (seth) didn't end up with one! Sorry seth.




Look at this look. I'm getting used to it. He has a wife that's a photographer, Sheesh - get over it dude you have like 50 more years of it.

With the weather getting warmer, Tanner has been getting more "booooooored". So he brought one of his bikes out to keep him entertained. Yes, he's already driven through the ash. That's where his bike chain fell off, and yes he walked through the house. ergh.





To keep us entertained while the chicken was cooking, we sent Tanner on an expedition. We literally can see a mile in 3 directions. a looooooong way off (about a mile or so as the crow flies) there's a bridge. I told Tanner to drive to the bridge, call me and I'd take his picture.

And that's with my 70-200mm lense, so you can see how far away he really was.

Peddling back too longer than peddling out. He says he was driving upwind. Sure Tanner. :p

Update - my Dad

Mother's Day, we were set to get up, go pick up the boys and head to Gene's mom's house to spend the day with her and his brothers/Sisters in laws/kids. Gene and I sleep with the door shut and the phones in the other room.

I went to bed about 10:30, and when I got up, the answering machine was blinking, I'd missed 2 calls on my cell phone, (Chris and Torrie). I pretty much then knew it wasn't good news!

See, my dad has been ill for several years now. I can't even remember how long ago it was (amber was in high school), Dad had a heart attack. He was forced to retire early and he just hasn't done "great" since then. He has had a couple "episodes" that have landed him in the hospital several times. Once was about a 5 month stretch.

2.5 years ago, the drs said he had one year to live, and frankly I never believed them because they never gave me a definitive answer of why. So far, he's proved me pretty much right.

About a week ago, Dad had gotten up late (I guess he was watching tv and mom fell asleep on the couch) and he lost his balance and fell down the stairs. He did not get better and Saturday night, he said he didn't feel very good, very weak, etc. Mom ended up calling the ambulance and on the way to the hospital, he went "out". They did CPR on him for 45 min.

He was to be life flighted to Lincoln Neb, and they got to the hospital and could not land because of the wind, because of the fog, so he was taken via ambulance by the same guys that took him into Clarinda.

Drs say that when you get cpr over 15 min, you have a 10% chance of making it. They did a CT scan to see if he had any brain function.

Can you believe that crotchity old coot? He can hear, recognize ppl, open his eyes, move his feet/hands/head, he can also sort of speak. (he can't talk when his ventilator is in, or his trac tube is out but he can mouth words).

The drs now are saying his heart is working at 15% and he's just "wearing out".

Anyway, we headed off to Lincoln to see him, and he's not doing good, but he quite frankly is doing better than I expected.

I will keep you updated, but I just wanted you to think about my dad, give him mental good wishes and say a little prayer for him.

I also wanted to show you my dad.. so I made a few pics from my "albums" on my computer. I was worried I had no pictures, and I was surprised, I actually had several. Not a lot, but some.

My dad's family growing up. Only one missing is norma, but she was probably in Colorado with my great-grandma, she spent a great deal of her time there.

Dad Graduated in... '57 or '58 I believe. This is his senior picture.

Here is a pic from my parent's wedding. I never knew my dad had dimples.

A family photo, before my uncle's wedding. That's me my mom is holding. I don't know how to break this to you Torrie, but you look just like mom. Oh and Curtis, like it or not, you look like dad.

This is how I remember my dad from my childhood. He was a big guy until my 7th grade and he had to lose a lot of weight do to health reasons, but when I think back, this is the image I see.

This is dad at christmas in '02. I think he'd had his first heart attack then. Still looking pretty good, but getting some major grey-age action going. That is seth next to him.

This is dad and Seth, Christmas '07. I can't believe how much he's changed. He's literally 1/2 the man he was (weight) as he was at his highest. He actually had been doing pretty good, not at his worst ever, he could walk on his own, get up and get around.

I never realized how much he had changed over such a short time. I guess it's just a reminder that we need to take better care of ourselves, that things can change in a blink. Too much weight and smoking for years - eating not that great. I've done it all, except for the smoking!

Let's take better care of ourselves ppl!

Discovering New Families - new friends

Being in a relationship has other benefits outside of just having a companion.

When I divorced a few years ago, part of my sadness was not just the loss at the chance of a working relationship, but also of a family that I had aquired by marriage. Sure, we are polite to each other because my children are their nephews, grandsons, and cousins, but it's not like it was.

So now that I meeting Gene's friends and family, I'm gaining lots of new people in my life. Gene has 2 brothers that are so sweet, both with wonderful wives. One niece and a another niece or nephew on the way!! There's children and beautiful grandchildren (trust me, you'll see pictures eventually) not to mention an awesome mom and dad. Dozens of people I didn't even know a year ago now slowly are becoming my family too.
In that fold, you have to include friends.

Bobby is one of Gene's closest friends since the FOURTH grade. How many people have one of those? Bobby beat up Gene. Gene beat up Bobby and they've been good friend ever since. (I will never understand men). Well, I've met Bobby a few times, never spent a huge amount of time with him until this past weekend. This guy, came all the way up here, just to help put a roof on the new house! No charge. wow. It was so hot, and it sucked SO BAD and I wasn't even on the hot, shingled roof. That's a true friend. No charge (well, except for some beer and a t-bone steak).

In the process I also found out what a funny, talented and nice guy he is. He's a keeper. Bobby is in a band (kinda by accident). Lead vocals. Not bad for an old guy.... LOL. JK JK!!

Roof is pretty much done (small bits and bats), Gene knows how to roof and it looks great. I hope we haven't used up the "good friend token" for life! LOL

Some pics of the guys roofing. Kind of darks but I've not mastered how to force the flash on my new camera yet!


I grew up in rural Iowa, but it's been a while since wildlife was within eyeshot of my front door (if you don't include stray cats and bunny rabbits). The FIRST day we went to look at the house we saw wild turkeys. Big selling point. This weekend, in the same spot, I saw NINE wild turkeys and just beyond them, in the same spot... two deer. Me? um, no camera. I was pissed.

Next day, I'm driving along, mid-day and thinking how it was too hot and no deer are out at midday grazing. Turn my head to the right and there's one 10 feet from the road! I did a U-turn and by the time I got back, she was taking off for the woods but not til I got a nice butt shot.

On a side note, I had never seen a wild turkey until last summer. For real... *never*. Weird for around here. Either they weren't around or I didn't know what I was looking for. Probably a bit of both!