Mii and Pii like to Wii !!!

More from the aspiring photographers...

Here are some recent pics we are quite proud of.  

We ran around Leesburg (quite literally, at times, as it was cold and rainy) and took some engagement pictures of our friends, Claudia and Jeff, who are getting married on October 11.  

They wanted some mushy, kissy-faced, pictures to celebrate their recent engagement.  Who doesn't?  Jeff really got into it, which somewhat surprised Claudia, I think.  But then again, who wouldn't get into public displays of affection in the rain while someone is pointing a camera at you?  Ummm... me?  and most of the people I know... 

This one's my favorite.  Pern took it after we got back to our house and had warmed our toes and fingers.  He took most of the others, too, by the way... I took a couple, but primarily stuck to color correction and touch ups for this shoot.

We like 'em.  The pictures, that is.  Oh, and Claudia and Jeff... we like them too :)

Oh, happy day!

It's the little things in life that make my day.  Like, saving the planet.  

You see, we do most of our grocery shopping at Target.  They have a decent grocery department and if we need say, a pillow or luggage, they have those things, too.  This has, until Thursday, filled us with guilt and despair, as every single shopping trip results in a minimum of 5 earth-unfriendly plastic bags.  The Target cashiers, mostly high school kids, don't know how to pack and as a result, we have oodles and oodles of extra bags floating around our house.  I'd always felt weird about taking our re-useable Giant bags into the store (didn't want to be tracked through the store via security cams as a potential shoplifter) so dealt with the plastic onslaught until... lo and behold!!!:  Target "green" bags (they're actually red)!!!  Woo Hoo!  Now we can bring official Target re-useable bags into the store, load them up, and bring them home without the extra plastic!  We both just stood there in the aisle, looking at them, and saying, "Oh, my God!  Are these what we think they are??"  It was a happy day!

Oh, yeah... Happy New Year! 

My niece, Ava...

...has arrived! I'm an aunt! Ava Louise Rinehart is already almost a week old, but you can't blame me for the lack of photos... that's the rest of my family's fault! My sister, Dale, and her husband, Joe, live in North Carolina, so when Dale went into labor (11:45 on Saturday night) my parents and grandparents (visiting from South Africa) drove down to be there for the birth. They missed it by a couple of hours, but promised to keep me updated with events as they unfolded. If updated means, "here's a postage stamp-sized picture of your sister's baby that we're sending to you from our camera phone" then they did a great job! It took several days and threats to call the police to have their grandparent licenses revoked, but I finally got some pictures. Here are some of my favorites:

Born on Sunday, December 9, 2007

at 9:48 a.m.

weighing in at 8.0 lbs (my dad won the bet!)

and measuring 20.75 inches!

Pern and I will be heading down to see the new family after the Holiday Program on Wednesday the 19th. We'll have a little pre-Christmas, Christmas and then head back up here for real Christmas with my 'rents and grand'rents. I am looking forward to seeing them and taking some pictures of my own!

Wasted time or time well-spent?

It snowed today. Not a lot, but enough to screw up traffic. It took me exactly two and a half hours to get to work this morning. Yes. Two. And. A. Half. Hours. !. I've been listening to "Citizen Girl," by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, so I was suitably entertained, but after the first hour, the whole stop and go traffic thing got a little old.

So the day flew by (helps when you get to work two hours late), and then Fairfax County schools cancelled after-school activities, which means we close at 3:00. So Keturah (my friend and boss) tells me to go home (it was 2:20), so I did. No arm-twisting needed. I got home in almost record time (the good, fast record, not the bad, painfully slow kind) and proceeded to do next to nothing for the rest of the afternoon. It's December. Everyone's most stressful month, right? Not for me. Not this year. I have decided to just chill out. My shopping is almost done and everything that has been bought has been wrapped. The school Holiday Program is under control. I'm good. No stress here.

So after watching Oprah, playing around with photoshop, cooking dinner, and basically doing nothing, I started thinking about all the things I could have done with my "extra" time this afternoon. Then I stopped. December is full enough.... no need to add more clutter to the chaos.

Check back in at the end of the month to see if my "life is good - no stress here!" mantra has held up. I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It's Christmas Dog!!

Hey Dale! I've got one, too!! It's not Chrismas without Christmas Dog! Rattiest ornament on the tree, but I can't start the holidays without him!

Hello, Oreo!

We got a new hamster today. Shhh... it's a secret. Don't tell.



Our movie-star hamster, Cookie, died a month ago (so sad... she was a really cool hamster) and we had decided to be a pet-free house for a while. But the film maker in me came out the other day while thinking about the upcoming Holiday Program at school. Every year, Pern and I record the HP and then sell copies of the DVD to the parents at school. We include a highlights montage, interview questions with the children ("How does Santa get back up the chimney?" Is one of my favorites), and a hamster movie. Little Bob was the first hamster-movie star ("Little Bob's Big Night Out"), and then came Cookie, who starred in "Cookie's Christmas Caper," "Cookie's Big Vacation," "Cookie's 12 Days of Christmas," and "Cookie's Mountain Adventure." So we were hamsterless and wondering what we were going to do about the Holiday Program DVD. We thought about putting a "best of" compilation together, but then inspiration struck.

So this year, we're taking a new approach. The kids don't know I'm getting a new hamster. We're going to film the movie in the next couple of weeks (might wait until after Christmas) and she will be "unveiled" on the Holiday Program DVD in her very own hamster-flick. It promises to be very cute. Can't give away any details, however... that's strictly under wraps. You know how it is in the movie industry... hush, hush.

Other things a happenin'... we've been working on the photography. Here is the link to a wedding we did a couple of weeks ago. We were hired as videographers, but took the still cameras along to practice. I think they came out pretty good. We still have a lot to learn, but we're getting there.

Dan and Mary's Slideshow

Here are some Christmas tree shots. We put the tree up way early this year. Went to Indiana to see Pern's parents for Thanksgiving and didn't want to put it up a week later than normal, so it went up a week early. And since Thanksgiving was already a week early, we basically put the tree up sometime around Labor Day. At least, that's what it feels like.


We call this our "Vegas Angel." She's a very traditional angel tree topper with a crazy colored star behind her. Vegas, baby!!


Love our Mickey and Pluto ornament. So cozy.


I decided to put my Dickens village under the tree this year.


Our tree.