First Halloween!

I think it's common knowledge that Halloween is my favorite holiday. It encourages dressing up, endorses guts and gore and involves eating lots of chocolate. Molly skipped the candy and she's so cute you'd almost think Halloween is just this side of Easter on the evil scale but I think she had fun. We did. Her hat/head-dress is something we got while we were in China. We call it a cat-dragon but we've had Chinese people look at it and immediately say it's a Tiger. We're sticking with cat-dragon.
above are pictures of her in our front yard/graveyard on Halloween night. Below are from a playgroup during the day time.

New pictures!

Not to be outdone by a professional photographer here is a selection of the latest family snapshots. Some great ones in here if I do say so. (Editor's note: the picture of Molly looking through the red hole was taken by Marie. And, of course, all the ones with Eric in them. But that little hole photo is a truly great picture. Good job Mom!)

Molly's first professional photo shoot

A few weeks ago Eric and I had Trish Reda, a documentary photographer come to the house to take some photos. We didn't get the hard copies yet but Trish knew how anxious we were to see the photos and provided us with this link to share with everyone.

All I can say is WOW! If you’re looking for a photographer for your family we highly recommend Trish. Her work will speak for itself but she was also really great to work with, Molly who is usually shy around new people warmed up to her so quickly and beautiful photos were the result.

Copy and paste the link below or click on the link in the upper left of the blog.

Enjoy!!!

http://www.trishreda.com/slideshows/molly/

More photos from another great weekend

Molly had lots of lost time to make up for this past weekend after two weeks of being sick. She visited with friends from FCC (families with children from China) at a Saturday playgroup, gave her first kiss to a boy on Saturday night, visited a pumpkin patch on Sunday morning and learned to play the harmonica on Sunday night and didn't go to bed until 10:30. We were all tired after this action packed weekend but so glad to see our girl having fun again.

Enjoy the photos . . .

Our girl is back!

As most of you know we had a few rough weeks around the Beetner home, with all of us taking our turn at being sick and Molly teething (she has 12 teeth now!). I felt as though Molly's nose would never stop running and that the teething would never end. I also wondered who came and switched my happy baby for a crabby one that all of a sudden was stingy with the smiles and the kisses. I felt so helpless and like such a bad mother because there were days I just couldn’t make my little girl laugh. There were moments that Molly was so uncomfortable and frustrated that she would just squeeze anything close by (my face or poor Maybel’s fur or jowls) and kick her legs. For those of you that know our dog, Maybel, you will probably guess she took it like a trooper, offering kisses for comfort to poor Molly.

Oh, and I can’t forget the screaming crying fit when she refused to let me hold her, she always wants her Momma when she’s sick or hurt, but this time she just kept pushing me away. After about 20 minutes of this she finally reached out for me and let me give her a bottle and snuggle her, holding her never felt so good.

Well I am so happy to say that our little girl is once again her sassy, silly and happy self. She is healthy and the teething has stopped . . . for now.

Camera

We've had a few inquiries about the new camera. It is a Nikon D40x Digital SLR. It wasn't that bad - just under $1000. (well, okay, it was sorta bad) The trick is that I got the upgraded lens which is an 18-135 zoom. I think things look so much better and more "cinematic" with such a long lens with the background thrown so out of focus. When your subject is a face like that, you want to only see that and not a bunch of junk behind her. I could do a whole rant about how to take good pictures (I've done it before) but there are a lot on guides to the simple rules. Most of all, get close to your subject (either through zoom or actually getting close) get down on their level whenever possible, and now with digital - shoot, shoot shoot. Sunday at the park I shot 235 shots that I whittled down to 130 after I got home. You can't have too many memeories.