• personal,  school

    happy eastover!

    Since we sorta celebrate both Easter and Passover here you get a little of both in the holiday name.

    We dyed eggs.

    We ate Matzah and tunafish sandwiches while watching The Ten Commandments on TV. (this is a real tradition here)

    We had a seder. (These are pictures from Timmy’s seder at his school. We had a very, very VERY abridged seder here last night too with Grandma’s delicious brisket but after 4 shoots yesterday, I was too lazy to take any pictures. We only ask the questions we like, and always talk about the plagues. That’s about the extent of it, besides the eating. I usually make a seder plate but I never have all the stuff you need to complete it. I end up printing pictures of the stuff off of the internet and slapping those on the plate. Again, laziness got the best of that too this year. Sorry, Suzanne.)

    And the Easter bunny dropped by sometime late last night with the biggest freakin chocolate easter bunnies. Ever. (Timmy’s just in the picture for scale).

    We’re headed over to our country club for Easter dinner later. Can’t wait to see the boys dressed up in their easter best! Pictures on that later.

    Happy Eastover, everyone!

  • occassions & parties

    the sullivan blood drive

    As my blog stalkers followers have read, there was a blood drive last week honoring Rob Sullivan, a great husband, father, friend and all around great guy from town. He was recently diagnosed with colorectal cancer and some of his friends put together the blood drive with buffet afterwards in his honor. They had something like 283 people show up to donate blood, 20 of which ended up being turned away because they just had too much! How awesome is that?! This is one of those times that I think our town is just a wonderful place to live- where friends and neighbors come together to help eachother when it’s needed. It’s a great thing to see and it really warms my heart.

    Since I can’t give blood, I did what I do…take pictures. Here are a few from the buffet after the drive, where all donors were invited to come have a beer and some dinner on the sponsors of the event.

    The man of the hour. Doesn’t he look great? And he and his wife are just SO cute together.

    Everyone had lots of fun.

    And an extra shout out to Nelson and my sister in law Inez who donated blood for Rob too!

    If you’d like to see all of the pictures from the evening, you can find them all here.

  • personal,  travel

    our nation’s capital

    Although in our house, ‘our nation’s capital’ usually refers to Disney World, this time we went to Washington DC. Not quite the same as our version of the capital, but still fun.

    It was a quick trip (just the weekend) so we only got in a little sightseeing this time. Tried to make it to new places that we didn’t see on our trip 3 years ago, but still have quite a long list for next time.

    We took the Metro into the city from where we were staying in Old Town Alexandria (love it there). And once again Grandpa Ken fought with the ticketing machines. Last time we visited he ended up with like $40 in Metro tickets by accident cause he couldn’t figure out how to get change. At least the tickets were still good and we were able to use up that $40 of tickets this time that had been sitting in his wallet since then. You can’t see from the picture so much, but that Metro lady’s eyes were rolling! And that other building is the Masonic Temple on King St.

    The White House. Tried to arrange a tour with one of Grandpa’s insider friends but with the whole health care thing going on, he didn’t have time to get us in.

    The Washington Monument (saw it last time too, but not with all those people and kites. That was kinda pretty.)

    Went to the Spy Museum with Nate (thanks Nate!!) which was great, interesting, hands on, and so fun. But they don’t allow photography (cmon, really??) so I got nothing to show you from there. Ford’s Theatre and the house where Lincoln died where the big boys surprised me with SO much information about the assination of Lincoln. So impressed.

    A few shots around the streets.

    Some beautiful cherry blossoms. So glad we were finally there in time for that. I really wanted to get down to the reflecting pool and take a shot of the trees lining either side but everyone was crabby and not feeling like walking, so I got what I could. Which was still pretty.

  • birthdays,  occassions & parties

    the long surprise party

    A client of mine celebrated her dad’s birthday recently with a big surprise party, and was nice enough to call me to capture it. The party was at Meribah which is the retreat house for Chaminade and was a lovely location.

    I think the surprise was really a surprise, which actually surprised everyone that they were able to pull it off.

    They are a really fun family and while I got some ‘nice, posed’ shots, this one with them laughing is still my favorite.

    And it looked like everyone had a great time, which is what parties are all about! Thanks so much for having me along to capture the evening- hope you like the pictures!