Sneak Peek: Lil Sisters LP and HB

In case I don’t get a chance to blog again by midnight tonight….

“Happy New Years” or as we say “Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!!!”

Our baby girl struggled with chronic lung disease after her premature birth.  Also, Hawaii is putting a ban on most fireworks in 2011.  Thus, we are expecting the island to look like a smoke-filled war zone.  So, combine those two things together and you’ll understand why, for our first New Year’s celebration together, we’re headed to a hotel for the night.  It was our best solution to get Slugger (hubby nicknamed our baby girl) up and out of the smoke cloud.  But our house will be partying for us.  Our friends are having a bash at our house while we’re away.  So, I really have to clean today. I hate people knowing how messy our house really is.  My mantra this week was “I will have a clean house by 2011.”

We got the hotel room on a deal so I’m not sure what it has…microwave, fridge etc.  So, we’re going prepared.  We’re taking hurricane popcorn (that we got from Vinnie and Krystie), sparkling cider (a Christmas gift from Crissy and Todd), fancy hot cocoa and giant marshmallows (a gift from Malia and Chad), and picking up pizza (we figured it can be eaten hot or cold).  We’re prepared for anything.

I’m also starting my “healthy eating” attempt a day early (try to forget reading most of the previous paragraph).  At my visit to my doctor yesterday, she said “your blood pressure looks great (106/67) and…ummm, your weight has…stabilized.”  What she means is, after losing all my pregnancy weight right away…that darn scale is creeping steadily up again. Ugh!!!  That and I get winded just going for walks.  Pitiful!  Even yesterday, my thigh muscles were all sore like I had climbed the Stairway To Heaven (which incidentally I have never done), and I was totallly confused since I hadn’t gone running or exercised.  Took me a while to figure out it was from the day before when I had a photo shoot.  My legs were groaning after just an hour of having to squat down to get eye level with a 10-month old.  So, I had a salad for a lunch yesterday which was slightly offset by the in-laws taking us all out to Kobe Restaurant for steak dinner.

That’s my exciting plans for bringing in the New Year.  What’s yours?

Here’s  sneak peeks from my session with sisters LP and HB.  Remember what I was saying about always trying to find locations nearby and close to home.  This was just up the street from my home.  You can’t beat that.

Introducing LP...I hope we will be seeing tons more of her chubby cheek cuteness.

Sometimes you just see a place and you have to go for it.  The picture above is actually outside someone’s house.   I had a cute set-up on the sidewalk and I saw this wall about 50 yards away.  The house was raised which was a good thing because there were two big dogs in the yard.  I guess they didn’t see us because they were sleeping the whole time.  A good thing since I didn’t want my little models to get spooked.  How adorable is LP?   Her daddy says that she’s so mellow that sometimes they lose track of her at home because she just wanders from room to room playing without a sound.   They’ll find her just playing contentedly in the corner with her toys.  She’s also a non-stop smiler, it just melts your heart.  

Big sister HB is a familiar beauty

I love the light of late afternoon but working with kids has a timeline.  Even with puffed star treats, kids will eventually hit their limit.  As the photographer, I’m always trying to get just one more setting…one more pose…but you’ll know when the kids have had enough.   And you usually want to end the session about ten minutes before that happens.  So, my favorite shot of HB happens to be after we called it a day and we were packing up our stuff.  She saw this in my prop bucket and wanted to try it on.   I grabbed a shot before she even knew it and this last shot happened to be one of my absolute faves.  By the way, that crown was for me to wear at my baby shower.