If you haven’t heard yet, we will be moving at the first of the year–out to the country on some beautiful land for the kiddos to run around on. If I had to say the one thing I will miss the most when we move from our current neighborhood, it would definitely be Halloween. I love all the neighbors sitting on their front porches to hand out candy and the droves of kids in their costumes running from house to house. We had a wonderful time yesterday walking the streets with friends and family and then ending the evening together over warm gooey lasagna – yum! It was a great night.

As you might remember from last year, Sean and I like to make Halloween costumes a group effort. My being pregnant this year made our options for purchased costumes quite limited and let’s face it, this is not the time in our life for more homemade projects. We decided to go with a theme that would allow Baby Serai to dress up too…

Our skeleton family ended up providing quite a few new experiences as it turns out. Sean wore eyeliner/eyeshadow for the first time in his life (to which I said I thought his college experience must have been lacking if he made it until now for this). We found that for Seven to tolerate his costume required bribing him with Nerds, and that fighting with a 1.5 year old to get even the slightest bit of makeup on him is quite the undertaking and requires asking for much forgiveness with even more Nerds. In the end, I think if we had pinned ears on him, Seven would looked a lot more like a skeleton puppy with his black nose and no white face paint, but oh well. :0)

Seven’s best bud Violet came trick-or-treating with us. She made the cutest little bumble bee. I love how well these two get along. They always have the best time together.

And of course, nothing makes our little skeleton more happy than to get his hands on his grandfather’s ukelele.

Yes, it was a great last Halloween in here in Westhaven. I’m excited to start new traditions in our new home next year. :0)

Thanks for looking and have a wonderful rest of the week!

- Mel

We’re both completely surprised, yet totally excited, to tell you that we’re having a GIRL!

I can’t believe it. I guess we’ve just gotten into the mindset that we have boys. We’ve even been referring to this little lady as “he” when we weren’t paying attention. It’s surreal I tell you!

And yet, on or somewhat around February 23rd, we are now looking forward to welcoming our daughter into the world. Wow. We can’t wait to see Seven in the protective older brother role – you know, after he gets passed trying to club the new little creature that is taking too much of his mommy’s time at first. ;0) It’s going to be crazy, fun and completely wonderful around here!

I know several people will want to know her name. It is Serai Claire (pronounced Ser-ray). Sean and I have loved it forever and have been waiting for a sweet little girl to enter our lives to give it to.

Now I’m going to go back to wasting the afternoon away on Etsy. The ridiculously oversized flower headbands and crocheted hats are way too tantalizing…

Bye for now,

Mel (and Sean and Seven too)

=o)

These all make my heart smile, but especially this one…oh how I love them!

We hope your day was filled with more warmth and love than you knew what to do with!  :0)

Happy early Easter everyone! :0)

- Mel

We often hear how lucky we are to travel the world as wedding photographers, and to be sure – it is an awesome opportunity.  We’ve been able to see amazing places that we never would have gone to on our own and have experiences that we never would have had otherwise.  Still, visiting a place to see it for yourself and traveling there to work are two very different beasts and the latter, while still full of exciting new places and adventures, doesn’t allow for nearly the same amount of sight-seeing and leisurely activities.

Sean and I have walked the streets of Europe, while pulling bags of gear for miles over the cobblestone streets.  We’ve made a mad dash through the Sistine Chapel in the precious little time we had, just so that we could say we’d seen it.  We saw Iceland through car windows and camera lenses, and we’ve discovered the Mexican landscape and ruins, but with looking for photographically pleasing places for couples in mind.  China was no different as we viewed the entire city of Beijing in an afternoon, running through the Emperor’s Palaces and Gardens to see where the most image-worthy locations would be.  It was a whirlwind 5 days!  I say all of this to excuse us, I suppose, for being such poor documenters of our own journey when abroad. ;0)  I like to think that our images are just true to our experiences though — the majority being a test frame that one of us happens to be in, a sample image for a possible location for a future shoot, or a quick grip and grin as we move from place to place.  That’s what travel looks like for us in this season of our life: fast-paced, always moving, never dull. :0)

Seven went with us everywhere for his first year of life.   Here he is scouting the Forbidden City.

We were so fortunate that my best friend was able to come along with us to help with our boy.  She and he spent their days wandering around Beijing together, or chasing after us while scoped out locations.  Below you see Rachel with Seven in his typical sight-seeing stance: asleep!  We’ve taken him to all of these amazing places and he slept through most of them. :0)

We needed a few props for the shoot the next day so we ventured into this crazy little to find them.  This place is tucked away right in the middle of the huge modern metropolis of Beijing’s downtown.  You just turn a corner down a tiny alley and suddenly you’re in a different world.  It’s like discovering Diagon Alley in the middle of London. (Harry Potter geek-revealing reference inserted here.)  Seven is, of course,what?  Asleep.

The history you see around you in so much of the rest of the world is just amazing to me.  You’re surrounded by these structures that have outlasted generations upon generations and I love the way it enriches everyday life in these places.  Age is such a beautiful thing.

Shooting on the Great Wall/ Sean testing lighting for his shot.

Speaking of the Great Wall, Holy Smokes!  The particular portion of the wall that we went to required you to climb The Infinite Staircase to get to it.  Was it actually called The Infinite Staircase?  No.  That’s just what I’ve named it because seriously, those stairs seemed like they would never end.  The view you see below repeated itself about 10 times before we reached the top.  As you can see, Sean was feeling pretty proud of himself for how well he was taking it.  I, on the other hand, was not taking it so well.

Another test shot I was caught in.  I find these regularly as I’m culling our shoots.  They always get tagged and then passed off as personal photos. :0)

You may recognize this as being pretty similar to the image of Gladys and Henry from a previous post.  Again, test shot = personal photo.

Bottom left: our makeshift dressing room on the Great Wall.

The Emperor’s Gardens…

Whenever we get back from a trip to a non-English speaking country, I always find several of these in the photo mix.  Sean can’t help himself.  He just loves a bad English translation or ridiculous admonition…

One of the beautiful scenes on a dreary day at Summer Palace.

Rickshaw ride in the Hutong…

Rachel had been to China before, but never to the Great Wall so on our final day, we made time to get back out with her and Seven.  He may not remember it, but at least we do have actual touristy photos to prove that he’s been there!

We went to a different portion of the Wall this time around.  Easier and more immediate access, but I’m not sure which steps were worse.  I pulled the “better stay with the baby” card for this one and let Sean and Rachel have all the fun.

One from our shoot to show off the amazing views…

And there you have it.  Our trip into the amazing, exotic, ancient world of China-land. :0)  Hope you’ve enjoyed it!  Thanks for looking.