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…