Talen's 3 year photo shoot

I have been wanting to go and get Talen's 3 year photos done for a while now, and we were finally able to go last Saturday. All of these photos were taken in downtown Richmond (except for the Railroad tracks photos - those were taken here in the west end) and it was a total joint effort with picking backgrounds, poses, and snapping the shots with Jared - and I loved working with him on this project. We are so pleased with how they turned out and so pleased with the scenery of downtown. Talen did a great job of modeling all of his sides and emotions. He was the perfect subject. Hopefully we'll be here to do Kendal's 2 year photos. Oh and if any of you grandparents out there want me to send you a disc or make them available for downloading just let me know.

Pictures from Missouri Trip

I know it's taken me forever to post these photos from Missouri - but here they are in slideshow format. We had a great trip with my family. We played at Silver Dollar City, where Talen got to ride a roller coaster, and Kendal got to ride a kitty ride for the first time ever (she did not like it one bit - they totally freaked her out) and Jared and I got to ride some pretty awesome roller coasters (which we haven't done in years and years). We also went to a water park, saw two shows that my brother's and sister-in- law perform in, went on the lake, and went to the Titanic Museum along with tons of other things.

It was a great idea to get together and I'm glad we were all able to make some good memories. I asked Talen what his favorite thing about going to Missouri was and he said "seeing grandpa and grandma", which I thought was pretty sweet. It was a great little vacation - so thanks mom and dad for getting us out there, and thanks to Cam and Beth for letting us stay with you guys - you were excellent hosts.

A glimmer of hope

Today the Martin Agency in Richmond called Jared and informed him that they are in desperate need of some freelance work today through the weekend because they are up against a very important deadline. They asked a recent classmate that is already working at Martin who he would prefer for them to bring in for this freelance work and he told them "Jared Davis". Jared received a call today at 12:00 asking him if he'd be interested, he said yes, and they called him back at 12:20 asking him if he could be there by 1:00 for the briefing. He said yes. So I may not have a husband for the next 4-5 days, which is completely okay with me (we've seen a little too much of each other lately : ). It's definitely not a job offer, but it's a foot in the door at his number one choice agency, so needless to say he's a little excited, and it'll give us a little cash in our pocket.

The Martin Agency - Downtown Richmond

Well... Since we don't have a job yet, we might as well have some fun

My Little Fairy Princess

Oh Shenandoah I long to hear you

2 weeks ago we went on a little canoe trip down the Shenandoah River with our good friends Ashlee and Christian Hansen (who just moved yesterday to Utah for graduate school : ( We dropped our kids off at babysitters all day (hip hip hooray) and drove the long 3 hour drive to the river, paddled down stream the 8 mile stretch for about 3 hours, packed a lunch (ate lunch), and drove the 3 hours back home. It was so refreshing to ditch the kiddos for a day and to do something in the beautiful Shenandoah valley. Thanks to Ashlee and Christian for having an anniversary and inviting us, if it weren't for them we probably wouldn't have ever had this experience.

The Richmond Zoo

We went to the zoo a couple of weeks ago with our little friend Carter Hansen and it was soooooooooooooooooooo hot. But the kids had a superydupery time. Kendal hasn't been since she was a wee little girl (about 6 months) so we wanted to go kind of for Talen's birthday and so that Kendal could experience the zoo now that she knows what most of the animals are and can appreciate the experience a little more. She got to feed the giraffes with their long tongues, which Talen has already done ( he didn't like it much this time around - he's not really into the slimy thing) and they had this really cool exhibit with a bunch of vibrantly colored parakeets. They had these popsicle sticks with bird seed glued on the ends they were selling for a dollar each that you could hold and then all these birds just swarm around these sticks - it was so fun for the kids. It was by far my favorite thing at the zoo.

We just went out of town to Missouri for a week which is why I haven't updated the old blog - so be watching for more posts in the near future.

Happy Birthday Talen!

My baby turned 3 last week. I can't even believe it - he's growing up right before my eyes. When you think about how fast 3 years just flies by it really makes you understand how valuable time together is.

So let's see Talen in a nutshell at age 3: He can sing a lot of songs now - some of his favorites are "I am a child of God", the "ABC's", "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam", The "Little Einsteins" theme song plus many many more. He is very loving and compassionate, and tries really hard to be well behaved. When he get's in trouble he always feel so sorry and apologizes very easily. Sometimes his curiosity takes over and he doens't obey and his hearing can be selective, but overall he's a sweet kid. He completely hates timeout. He still hates going to bed, and will stay in his bed reading books and playing with toys until he eventually conks out usually around 10:00 pm or so. He gets jealous easily when we are paying more attention to Kendal over him , he's very physically affectionate. He's always running up to us and wanting us to pick him up and hold him. He's very active - every morning he wakes up and asks "mommy what are we doing today?". He would much rather interact with people over toys. He is fully potty-trained (has been since about 27 months), he can speak in full sentences, he loves to dance and listen to different types of music, him and Kendal are best friends (just ask him), and he loves to help cook always always. He wants to do whatever you are doing. We are doing kind of a little pre-school thing (just him and me) a few times a week and he loves loves loves to learn. He's always asking me "are we going to do school today". He loves reading stories and he is now really good and sitting through longer stories and he could probably read books all day if you read them to him. When we have Family Home Evening once a week on Monday nights he loves to sing the primary songs, and he knows his first article of faith and almost his second. He's very quick and he's very special and dear to my heart. Anyway there's a lot more to say but I've rambled on long enough.

He got totally spoiled on his birthday, all of our friends and family spoiled him rotten. Thank you so much to everyone who came - I know he felt very special and loved.

Here are some pictures of him when he was just a baby:






Here's a slideshow from the party

Bayles

My good friend Jami Black gave me the opportunity to practice my photography interest - by letting me take pictures of her adorable little boy - Bayles. He was so fun to photograph - I love the pictures because his cute little personality really shines through. He has so much expression.

She has given me permission to post them here on my blog because she was having trouble posting them on her site. I think that someday it would be really fun to eventually become more serious about doing photography on a professional level. I don't have near the amount of the kind of equipment I would need, and my camera is the lowest and most basic SLR you can buy - but we are working with what we have.

Anyway here are the photos we took. If anyone is interested in giving me more practice - give me a call - my schedule is wide open - (Jared is still looking for employment). All "sessions" will include basic photoshop editing as well.















That's it...I thought they turned out really nice.

Now just for fun I added a logo to one of the pictures below - Jared is in the advertising world and thinks that it needs serious work - but I like it, so just for fun here is a picture with the logo that I might have someday. Yes, I'm a nerd and even came up with a name already. Ya know if this economy doesn't pick up, we may be pursuing this more seriously than I expected : )