Rollercoasters, weddings and comb-overs

Busy, busy week and weekend. 

I shot a wedding on Friday.  It was beautiful, even if the weather almost gave me photography whiplash.  It went from raining, to hailing, to bright sun, to raining, back to bright sun so quickly, I couldn't meter fast enough.  I would literally meter the subject, and by the time I hit the shutter button, the light had changed.   Chalk that up to new experiences this Californian has never photographed before.  I kept thinking of Pacific Northwest photographers and all their rain.   How in the world do they ever take any pictures?  There's got to be a technique I'm missing. 

There were two little girls at the wedding who kept running away every time I looked at them.  They'd sneak and follow me around, and then scatter whenever I pointed my camera towards them.  Finally, the older of the two, dragged the little one over to me and insisted I tell the littler one that she wasn't famous.   I was momentarily confused, until the younger one said "Aren't you the paparazzi?"   Ah...I nodded my head sagely, and turned to the older girl.  "Didn't you know your sister is a movie star? "  Confusion, and vigorous head shaking from the bigger girl.  Because of course wise, grownup little girls want adults to be the voice of reason and pragmatism. No fun! and No pretending!  
"Oh, but it's true." I said "I'm definitely the paparazzi, and you two better run before I catch you and take your picture."   The smile on the littler girl's face was precious as she scampered away.  Plus, I provided them hours of entertainment while I shot the reception, and randomly pointed my camera in their direction.   Win win.

Jamie had opening day and pictures for baseball on Saturday.   I could barely stand all the adorableness!   All those little boys with their grass stained pants, and baseball caps were just too cute.   I totally underestimated baseball.  I grew up in a home that was pretty anti-sports (Hi dad), and I guess some of my father's pessimism rubbed off on me, because really...what is baseball except for a bunch of people running around in pajamas, waving wooden clubs and wearing clown sized gloves?  But Jim wanted his son to play baseball like he did as a kid, so I finally got Jamie signed up (apparently about 3 years too late, but who's counting?).    I had no idea it was going to be so good...and hard!  In a world that's completely dominated by woman teachers (for us preschool, speech therapy, music lessons, CC, and gymnastics are all women instructors) it's interesting to watch the coaches and all the dads out there on the ball field guiding the boys through pushups, sit ups, how to throw a ball...play the game...etc.   Those boys work hard.  Practice is at least an hour and a half long (and often longer) and there's not any standing around.  Jamie is pooped after it's done (hard to do), and that's just the physical side.  I can't even begin to count all the positive life skills Jamie is learning in baseball.  I feel like he's matured leaps and bounds in just a few weeks.   He still marches to the beat of his own drummer, but he's got a patient coach and great teammates.

 

 Jamie and Charlie got epic haircuts from Uncle Jeffy.  Now Robbie looks like a middle aged man with a comb-over in comparison.  

Robbie hates adrenalin rushes.  Hates them.  So different from Charlie, who would intentionally crawl off the side of the bed over and over again, just for the fun of it.  We went to Legoland on Thursday for a fieldtrip (I swear at least part of the day was educational), and Charlie laughed that sort of maniacally gleeful laugh every time the rollercoaster would drop or spin particularly fast.   Robbie on the other hand, gets totally terrified the moment he feels the least bit unsteady, which makes this picture hilarious, because apparently there's a pretty large range of things he feels perfectly comfortable doing. 

Last night I was brushing Charlie's teeth, and he sleepily asked me "Mom, promise me you won't ever become pure evil?"    Wha...?!?  I kissed his little button nose and promised him that I have an ever loving heavenly Father who will never let me stray into pure evil territory.  But thanks for making sure son.   I'll try not to wander even into partial evilness.  Ahem.

Dogpile

The things Jamie can build on mine-craft are insane.   I know it's technically a computer game, but it's so educational that when I let him build stuff while listening to his suzuki violin CD, I almost almost feel like we're masquerading as geniuses around here. 

The weather forecast betrayed me this week.  I have a wedding to shoot, Legoland to fieldtrip at, and a baseball game to cheer through with my might mom lungs.   Wouldn't you know it, all three of those days it's supposed to rain!  Gah.   Hopefully it will be the infamous Southern California storms of terror...i.e random sprinkles.

I'm used to boys.  I know first hand how hard it is for them to sit still.  How short their attention spans are.  How loud and sound effect-y they can be.   What I had never experienced before (until now), was a few hundred little boys hopped up on Pepsi, pizza and cupcakes, crammed into a school gymnasium for two hours with nothing to do.  Holy cow.  And the smell.  whoosh.   It was supposed to be caps night for our district's Little League (a fundraiser where we bid for our uniforms), but what it ended up being was somebody yelling incomprehensibly into a microphone while tons of tiny little man children bounced around like popcorn.  Jamie was suffering from sensory overload, but Charlie was in heaven.  I lost count of how many dogpiles I pulled his sweaty, smiling little body from.  They would just charge at each other, fists swinging, arms tackling.   A couple of (vastly outnumbered) girls wandered by to try and lecture some sense into the mosh pit of hooligans, but they would have had more luck arguing with the wind.   I'm not even sure the boys heard them.  In the end however, operation "get a uniform" was successful.   We won the navy blue and white ones.   I foresee lots of bleach in my future. 

We went to the awesomest birthday on Friday.   One of Robbie's friends turned one, and had a little man party!  It was so cute.   Jim was especially impressed with the chocolate cigars.

 

Violin lessons are on the polar opposite end from baseball.  Where baseball practice is loud, rough and dirty.  Violin is focused, careful and calm (except for the sound of dying cows).   Poor Jamie gets whiplash going straight from violin to baseball on Friday's.  He's doing really well though.  He no longer throws the ball backwards, and he even occasionally hits stuff and throws stuff where it's supposed to go.   With violin, he'd be perfectly happy making up tons of crappy music all day, instead of actually practicing his exercises like he's supposed to.   At this rate, Robbie will be counting "one-e-and-uh" before Jamie is.

Speaking of Robbie, he finally broke in his first teeth!  He's only been teething for the last six months (if the drooling and chewing were any indication), so it was about time.