A Scrap of Life

In our house you stop getting Halloween costumes once you reach middle school, after which you need to use your own ingenuity to make a costume from what we have.  Tristan did just that, using his clothes and assorted props (with the help of an old t-shirt, which I cut and sewed into his little hat) and became Shadow Link.  Some sort of Legend of Zelda character... don't ask me for more information because I have no idea! You may remember seeing similar photos of him, only in green, last spring on the blog, when he dressed up as original Link for character day at school. Chase had some friends stop by so he decided to throw on a quick outfit and head out with them.  I have no photographic proof of it, but he went as Shadow... I think another Legend of Zelda character.  Yes, it's popular in our house right now. With Tristan's advent to middle school, we had only one costume to buy this year.  Carissa decided early on that she wanted to be Red Riding ...

... these two get along.  It doesn't last very long... in another breath it's all over and they are annoying each other once again.

Oh yes, it has arrived. Much to soon for my tastes, but what do you do? We took advantage of the unseasonable nice fall days last week and took a trip to the local pumpkin patch, Bernet Farms. We walked the fields for a while before choosing pumpkins, then looked at the animals and headed on our way.   On the way out of the patch I really fell in love with the light and just plopped the kids down and started shooting.  (Tristan's "I'm a gangsta" pose. LOL)   

Yes, I know summer is long gone.  I have been absolutely jammed with back-to-school, work and photography.  I am thankful that it's all working out and I truly love doing it all, but it's been hard to juggle the needs and wants of my family, my work and my photography.  I'm hanging in there though and feel good that I'm currently caught up on it all.  YEAH! Now comes the time for a bit of a close to summer by posting some photos left over from our summer fun.  In no particular order... Carissa and the boys were all cast in a movie called "Pageant Girl" that was filmed here in Scappoose this summer.  It's definitely not a Hollywood Blockbuster - it will be lucky to make it to a film festival somewhere.  They didn't allow us to film on set so I got nothing of the boys, who both spent about 6 hours on set as extras.  Carissa, however, was part of the pageant scenes, which called for paparazzi - thus I was allowed to take photos.  Here...

Here's an update of what we've been up to lately. Shortly after school got out we went to Newport for a weekend camping trip. Thank goodness we had a yurt, because it was soooooo wet! Jayde and Darla came one evening to visit us and I didn't even get any pictures, as we were stuck in the yurt all evening. Thankfully it cleared up a bit the next day and only rained a little. We were able to go walk the jetty, which was a lot of windy fun. We also went to the Hatfield Marine Science Center and played around for a while. We flew a kite at the beach for a while and the dogs wore themselves out running around the beach. And, with the rain, we spent plenty of time in the yurt playing games, reading and relaxing. The kids all tested for new belts in Taekwondo. Carissa and Chase are now green belts and Tristan is now a blue belt. (Just to give you perspective, green is #4 of 10 steps to black, blue is #6 of 10). Here they are with their master right after test...