Better late than never

 

In what is now a holiday tradition, every year I take the prior year's blog content, turn it into a book using an online service, and give it as a Christmas gift to the grandparents. This year Kari's mom asked, "now is Alder's birthday party in here?"

Oh right, Adler's birthday party... um, somehow that one just slipped though the cracks. Poor kid. 

So, many months late, here are some photos of Alder's two year old birthday party. We did it at the little place the boys sometimes take gymnastics classes.  I thought it was a great party and, as far as I can tell from these photos, it looks like everyone had a pretty good time. 

Behind-the-Scenes

I linked to our holiday card post on some social media sites with what I thought was kind of funny, "whether you celebrate Retail Christmas or something less mainstream like Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, etc., we wish you the very best this season http://landon-t-c.blogspot.com/2011/12/happy-holidays.html"

I amuse myself sometimes. 

All the photos in the card were taken in my friend's, and reluctant co-worker's, garage studio.  Those and a few others are here. He took the ones of our whole family and let me shoot lots of the boys - the boys weren't entirely cooperative as seen below running around the set. Above is LT relaxing on a single chair with his three kids watching TV after the photo session. The rest of the photos are just outtake shots of the boys together that I thought were cute.

Happy New Year!

[reposting with the link fixed - sorry!]

Normally I write about the boys here but this is a little something about what I do when I'm away from the family. I don't travel a huge amount for work but I do find myself on the road occasionally. I like to travel with my camera and I find taking pictures a nice after hours diversion from work. Yesterday I put together a set of photos from my trips this year that included San Fran, NYC, Vancouver and Chicago - please take a look!

      

Monday morning

Papa is easily one of Adler's favorite people in the world. I had today off from work so I tried to make up a little ground on Papa by taking Adler to do what they often do together on Mondays.  We went to Tenn Street where I got some coffee and Adler picked out a cinnamon roll. We read some Marley books over our late breakfast and then went and played at the park up the street. It was one of the nicest mornings I've had in a long time. It's hard not to be just a little bit jealous of Papa.

King of Xmas

Adler showing off his new Elvis glasses while celebrating Christmas at Grandma and Papa's house.

Happy Holidays!

We decided to go green this year with our Christmas / Holiday card this year by sending it electronically.  Or maybe we just never got around to the printing, the stuffing envelops, the stamp licking, the addressing, etc. Believe whichever story you want. I know which one I believe. Anyway, here is our family's 2011 virtual holiday card. Bowen didn't make the card this year. He was probably sleeping when we took the pictures.



We wish you the very best this holiday season (and always)!

work it for the camera

Today LT asked me to take his picture and have it printed. I think he has some kind of xmas gift art project in mind that he wants to use it for but I'm not sure and I didn't ask too many questions. Anyway, I set up some gear and took some shots of him in front of the Christmas tree. In all of them he had either a serious face or a forced face smile and I couldn't get him to lighten up and be natural. When I had him review the pictures with me so he could chose the one he wanted, he was really disappointed and told me, "but I wanted one where I look happy." I told him we could take some more and that he should just act natural and have fun. Apparently he took that advice to heart as you can see from the results of our second photo shot of the day.   

Peace Night 2011

LT's "big school" celebrated its winter festival, called Peace Night, this week and his preschool class sang a couple of songs.

LT, much like me, isn't exactly a natural performer.  And he only goes part time to his big school so didn't get as much rehearsal as the other kids.  

So he's a little out of his element when on stage.  

 

But, to his credit, this year he got into the singing, dancing an bell ringing a little more that he did last year (and more than I was expecting).