This is sweet Alice – you may have seen her here or even here.  It’s hard to believe she is already 18 months!

I spent a warm Sunday afternoon with the LeMonnier Family, just exploring and wandering at a local park for our mini-session:

Along for the journey – Alice’s trusty blankie.

Also making an appearance, Alice’s thumb – good for when we got a little tired from all our exploring.

Not a bad way to spend a sunny afternoon, if you ask me.

Thank you Alice for a wonderful time at the park – I hope to see you again soon, camera in hand…

Sounds like a band album cover shoot right?  My evening with the Yanks was just as fun as a band cover shoot (well, at least I would imagine a band cover shoot would be fun – haven’t done one…).

So who are the Yanks?  They are a blog collective that watch and blog about the “other football.”  Also know to us Americans as soccer.  They just launched their new blog (click here to check it out) and my brother/football fanatic asked if I would take some shots of the blog writers.

Some photos of our adventures:

For me this shoot was both easy and hard: easy because the Yanks wanted no predetermined, posed shots; hard because I’ve never done a shoot like this before.  I loved the challenge though – and I think we all had some good laughs (and a good time).

Check out Yanks Call It Soccer by clicking here.

One outtake from my “manly man” photo shoot yesterday – more fun coming next week…

Hi, my name is Melissa, and I am addicted to shoes.  There, I admitted it.  But after finishing up my most recent round of wedding album designs, I realized something I can no longer deny.  I love shoes.  I love photographing shoes.  I love that seeing the shoes and nothing else leads you to wonder what’s above the shoes, which is fun and interesting.  It also doesn’t hurt that brides are choosing some bright and colorful shoes lately.  If I could go back and change anything about my wedding day look it would be my shoes – mine were plain old white and hurt my feet.

Without further ado, evidence of my obsession:

I rest my case.  Guilty as charged.

We all love the county fair but for different reasons.  My almost 5 year old loves the rides and the carnival games.  My 2 year old loves the petting zoo.  My husband and I like to stuff our faces with all of the fried food options (this time we tried the fried avocado and funnel cake for dessert).

So while daddy went on the rides with big sis, I hit the petting zoo with the little one:

Hello there, llama…

She is afraid of most of the rides, and yet she is fearless when it comes to the animals.

We managed to get them both on this ride – and they both liked it.

No ferris wheel for me – I’m finding the older I get the less tolerance I have for spinning in circles.  That, and my stomach could only take so much after the fried avocados…

I also enjoyed the fair without schlepping around my DSLR – just my trusty point and shoot for this family event.  I need to step away from the “fancy” camera once in a while so I can just enjoy the moment.