Tonight, we will be gearing up to send our boys to school in the morning for the first time. After homeschooling for 3 years, we’ve decided that they need a new experience. My husband desperately needs a break. The boys desperately need a break from each other. It’s going to be a tough transition, but I’m certain it will also be a good one for our family at this point in time. I am sad to lose our amazing schedule and flexibility and all of this time with them, but I’m excited to have a more structured work day, which will hopefully lead to a more play time with the kiddos when they’re home from school.

To wrap up an AMAZING summer, we decided that the family should tag along to some family photo sessions I had scheduled in the Houston area this past weekend. When I travel to shoot, I like to stay focused on what I’m there to do, so I was a little nervous about balancing family + work, but this turned out to be an amazing working vacation!!! In between shoots, we got to visit some incredible places, including the Space Center Houston, the Downtown Aquarium, the Houston Zoo, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the Houston Children’s Museum. The Houston City Pass turned out to be a GREAT value for our visits to all of these places…so glad we did that! Be prepared you will have to pay some extras like parking or to see certain exhibits or ride certain rides, but overall, totally worth it.

The images above were all created and edited with my iPhone…funny how I rarely pull out my real camera any more when it comes to my personal work. Yeah. All of my personal images seem to be Instagram only these days ;-). This week, I also will be posting some sneak peeks of the sessions I did in Houston (with my big girl camera).

Meanwhile, I’ve got to get back to the laundry and then perhaps one more final family swim before our summer is…sniff…over. Good luck to everyone here in Austin who is sending their kiddos to school tomorrow. Good luck to those who may be continuing or even starting their own homeschool journey. It is definitely not something we regret and would go back to it in a heartbeat if we decided we needed to do so.

P.S. Thank you to those of you who encouraged me to submit some of my iPhone images to National Geographic. After much convincing from friends and family, I finally decided to send in this one. We shall see…

The Back-to-School mini sessions were nothing short of incredible! Even after shooting *all* day, I left Gro yesterday with a spring in my step, a huge smile on my face, and my heart full of joy–joy for the fact that everyone donated SOOO many school supplies to our school supply drive (this image doesn’t even come close to showing everything that was donated); joy because I was lucky enough to reconnect with an old college roommate whom I hadn’t seen for well over a decade; joy because I just spent the last several days working side-by-side w/ my mom; joy because I got to meet so many new clients; and joy because I got to see so many of my past clients. Thank you isn’t enough, really. I’m so looking forward to turning this into an annual tradition and making it bigger and better every year. Mark your calendars, everyone. August is going to be Back-to-School month for Pinkle Toes from now on!

But for now, I have a TON of e-mail and proofing and laundry and snuggles to catch up on, so thank you so much in advance for your patience as I start to return back to the real Pinkle Toes world ;-).

We went in early this morning to get all set up for the Back-to-School mini sessions at Gro tomorrow! If these are just the test shots, I’m pretty sure we are going to have a BLAST!!! For now, I’m off to the last round of the outdoor apple tree sessions tonight…

So I asked him if he wanted to take a look at this book. He said yes. And then, he very deliberately put on his reading glasses…all on his own…while his mommy and I tried to stifle our giggles. Seriously? Um yes.

We were *very* lucky to get a nice little break in the rain–just long enough to let us get through the past three days of Back-to-School Mini Sessions. And I have to admit, I pretty proud of our technology setup out here in the middle of the Texas wilderness while doing these shoots. I kinda feel like we’ve got our own Apple store going here (as in computers, but pun somewhat intended). However, all the technology in the world couldn’t save us from two big downfalls of the downpours:

1. Mud. And lots of it. So much so, my van got stuck and had to be towed yesterday. Lovely.
2. Bugs. And lots of them. So much so, my legs look like one great big giant welt. Lovely.

But when you have light like this? Well, there’s nothing a tow truck and some calamine can’t fix 😉

Oh. Yes. We. DID! Round one of the Back-to-School Mini sessions was OUT OF THIS WORLD! Here’s hoping the rain gives us a break for the rest of the outdoor sessions. Could these kids have been any cuter?!?! We don’t have any more openings left for this weekend/week of sessions, but, if you drop a line anyway, I’d be happy to put you on the list for possible future dates.

I probably get more nervous when I photograph a repeat family…repeatedly (I can’t find the links to all of the sessions right now, but I think this makes 5). I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself to come up with something new and innovative and exciting and different. What I tend to forget is that families are constantly changing and therefore, any session with them is going to be new and exciting and different by the very nature of it. This is one of those sessions that will go down in my memory as perfect.

The children were perfect, mom and dad were perfectly happy, the weather was amazing, and everyone seemed to fall into the good light without even trying. My favorite part of this session, though, was not captured “on film.” It was the 30 min. or so I stayed after we had finished taking pictures to listen to the oh-so-amusing story of how these two met and fell in love. I think I could have stayed all morning just listening to the two of them reminisce and watching their eyes sparkle as they told their stories. Thank you for that moment, guys. It was a wonderful memory for me.

P.S. Those little toes you see peeking out from behind mom/dad’s arms w/ the peach stripe shirt on my home page slideshow? Those are his. 😉

P.P.S. My personal fav HERE.

When it comes to a cake smash to celebrate a baby’s very first birthday, it’s always fifty/fifty. Some babies dig into the cake, some babies won’t have anything to do with it. This baby, however, loved.every.second.of.it.

And it just so happened to work out perfectly that we were able to do a little “pool” session outside to help clean her up after all of the cake hoopla! {Be sure to check out my FAV image…loved the look on her face when she tasted the cake for the first time.}

So when his mommy told me that he was on the move and full of energy, I thought, “That’s cool. I can handle that.” But see that little sweaty-boy-head? Trust me, Nina and I probably had it 10x worse trying to keep up with him, LOL! I like a challenge, though, and I like having to think on my feet and move quickly to capture what I’m seeing and anticipate what I’m about to see, so thanks, little man, for making sure we were on our toes!

This was session #2 of my one-on-one photography coaching session w/ Nina from Singapore. So funny how Austin was in this long, horrible dry spell until all of a sudden, I need to be shooting outdoors and then it decides to POUR! Lucky us, we had a small break in the storms this evening. Lucky us, the rain cooled things off a bit and provided a bit of a reward for us all at the end of our session.

Behind-the-scenes:

And one more here.

After our busy day of shooting and talking and all things photography, Nina and I treated ourselves to a fab dinner at Chuy’s (she had never had Tex-Mex before!). As we were pulling into the restaurant, the sun came out and we had the most wonderful light. Couldn’t resist:

Isn’t she purdy?

Well this one will definitely go down in Pinkle Toes session history as the coolest spot EVER. I will admit when I first heard the idea, I was a bit skeptical. I just couldn’t envision two small kiddos in a giant stadium. But then I thought, “Two small kiddos in a giant stadium? That’s AWESOME!” When we first got there, we had to kill a bit of time to wait for the players to finish up with their practice. We had a nice time hanging out on the grounds, but the kids–wait, who am I kidding?–we ALL were dying to get out on the field. It was everything we could have possibly imagined and then some. Wow! What an experience for these little ones! (Did you see my personal fav?) And before anyone asks if we can do their session here, let’s just say we had some special hook ups 😉 for this one, okie dokie?

Unbeknownst to me, their auntie was doing a little behind-the-scenes work while I was rolling around on the field:

 Oh, yes. BEHIND the scenes, indeed ;-).

The way the water was sparkling in the creek that day was incredible and while it was a wee bit humid that day, we were lucky enough to get a little breeze. This mommy said she used to do yoga classes at sunrise out here by this creek. Wow…what a great place to do yoga. If I lived closer to it, this would become one of my favorite hangouts for my own children. About the ducky…we had given it to little man to play with while we were taking pictures, but just like any normal toddler, the second he got hold of it, he chucked it right into the creek! Fortunately, a family friend was with us and spotted in the creek…this pic was her idea. Glad we got it! And oh yes…my personal fav from this session can be found HERE.

Note: Just 4 more openings left for the Back-t0-School mini sessions (Friday Aug 17th in the p.m. at my studio)!