Day 202 Play Doh

Am I too old to play with this? :)

Day 201 Spider

Now this is my kind of spider, FAKE! LOL!

Day 200 Halloween!

I absolutely LOVE Halloween! The treats, the decorations and the awesome costumes! This year I decided to make a little camera pumpkin...what a cute way to promote my new business to the neighborhood. I got lots of great comments on it :)

Day 199 Carving Pumpkins

Brian and James starting our pumpkin carving. James always has to get the biggest pumpkin which usually is the most work.


I love a curly stemmed pumpkin!


Gotta save the seeds :)


The whole group: James', Brian's, mine, our dog's and the extra for the table!

Day 198 Halloween Dance

James is a web leader for his school. Web sponsored a costume dance for Halloween this year for all the middle school students. What a great opportunity for the kids to get dressed up and have some fun. All James wanted to wear was a toga this year so I whipped up this costume for him, including the head piece. He had a great time and everyone loved his costume :)

Day 197 Section Cross Country Meet

The Section 1A Cross Country Meet was held on a cold Thursday afternoon at Northern Hills Golf Course in Rochester, MN.

James leading a group of runners.


Looked like he was having fun even though it was FREEZING!


James at the finish! Happy with his performance. He ended up 86th out of 134 runners in a time of 20:06! He knocked over 2 minutes and around 20 places off his finish from last year!


Now he gets to eat at Old Country Buffet!!!


My happy, frozen family at the end of an awesome creoss country season!

Day 196 Random

Just a random shot today :)

Day 195 Nike +

I don't know what James would do without this! We bought this Nike+ to go with James' ipod Nano. He can set his workout distance and it will count the miles for him, but he can still listen to music. Then he can download and track his workouts. It's awesome!

Day 194 Work Appreciation

My employer celebrates a week long appreciation for us. Every year they give us the plant of our choice. I figured I better pick something that I can't kill so easily :)

Day 193 Corn Maze

James and I love corn mazes so our family headed to a new one in Winona County on the Tews farm. They had a lot of stuff to do in addition to the maze which made it fun. The were helicopter rides, hay rides, a petting zoo, duck races, pig races and our favorite, the corn cannon!

Day 192 Cute Couple

The day started out rainy, but it cleared up just in time for my session with the Studiers. We had a great time at Quarry Hill Nature center. This was one of my favorite pics from their session!

Day 191 Guilt

I guess I should feel a little guilty for watching the boys doing all the raking. I conveniently had a lot of photography business to take care of :) The nice thing is that our city will come by and suck up all the leaves and take them to the copost site. All we have to do is get them to the gutter!

Day 190 8th Grade School Photo

Thanks to Photographer Herff Jones, we now have a new school photo gracing our wall. I love taking all of the photos out of the frame every year,laying them all out and just marveling in how much he's changed!

I always have a hard time getting my frames to line up so I found a piece of wide ribbon and ran it though the back of four frames of the same size. It took a little measuring at first to get them lined up just right, but once I got the ribbon in the proper place and had the backs firmly attached, I only had to hang the top photo and the rest fell perfectly in line! You can see them on the other side of the school photo.

Day 189 HVL Conference Meet

James had another awesome race. This time it was during the HVL conference meet. He was the 4th runner for Stewie, which was his best team placing all year, and he finished in a new personal time of 19:45!!! Woo hoo!

Our good friends, The Hovels, came to cheer James on. This is their little guy Brody! He had a lot of fun running back and forth and cheering on the runners. Hope we were able to wear him out!

Day 188 Chopped

I am not one to criticize other photgraphers, but really? Thanks "primary photographer in my home town" for the sports photo with the chopped off foot. For all of you aspiring photographers out there: Limb chops are not good. Try to never chop off a photo at a joint (ankles, elbows, fingers, wrists, knees, etc.)

Day 187 Afghanistan

James' dad was deployed to Afghanistan today. The worst part is that we just found out Friday, by mistake. For some reason, he made the choice to not tell James he was being deployed overseas for a year. I had to break the news to him and he was absolutely devastated. He hasn't seen his dad since May and his dad made no attempts to see him before his deployment. Today's photo is of a heartbroken child and a memory that will be difficult to erase. I will keep that one private.

Day 186 Sekapp Orchard

We went to Sekapp's to get our pumpkins again this year. They had a GREAT selection this year. Of course James always has to get the biggest pumpkin he can carry :)

Day 185 Logo

Speaking of Clickin Moms...for the ladies on there: Doesn't this wine logo look like a few of the photography logos on CM?! That was the first thing I thought of when Brian brought it home. Oh, and this wine is C H E A P...like $2 a bottle...lol!

Day 184 Shred

I started doing Jillian's 30 Day Shred (Jillian from the Biggest Loser) with some of the ladies from Clickin Moms. Holy crap, it's a kick butt 20 minute work out. If you haven't tried it, I would highly recommend it :)

Day 183 Quarry Hill

I went for a walk at the Quarry Hill Nature Center which is a cool park in Rochester on the former grounds of the state hospital. At the end of one of the trails is this cave carved out of sandstone more than 100 years ago. They keep it gated and locked now, but ocassionally they will open it up to park visitors when they have special programs.

Day 182 Fall Decor

Time to decorate for fall...I may be a procrastinator :)

Day 181 No Frills

We made the long drive to Wells, MN for the USC No Frills Meet. It's very basic. No high tech scoring or numbers or special computer programs. Everything is done by hand. It's a pretty fast course and was a beautiful day for running. James got a new personal best time of 19:56 and broke the 20 minute mark which was his goal for the season! The worst part is waiting in line for her to right down your name and placing :)

Day 180 My Storefront

Are you looking to order Christmas cards or any type of announcements? If so, check out my new online stationary storefront. There's an awesome selection of high quality cards, invitations, stationary and announcements to choose from. Just click on the MY STOREFRONT link above!

Day 179 Freese Family

I had so much fun shooting an urban session with the Freese family. This was one of my faves. How cute is she?!?!

Day 178 Dance Do

This is James relaxing before the jr high school dance. Love the new do :)

Day 177 Fall Color

Gorgeous!

Day 176 I Can Do It With My Eyes Closed

I've noticed that James runs a lot with his eyes closed. Not sure why, but it must work well for him. Here he is at the Lewiston race. It was added to the schedule to take the place of a rain out. Nice hilly course. James got his new personal best time of 20:06 which was 24 seconds faster than his previous best time!!!

Day 175 Go TWINS!

James all geared up to cheer on our favorite baseball team, the Minnesota Twins, in the ALDS championship series vs the Yankees (boo!)

Day 174 I'm Back!

Ok, so I am a month behind, ugh! Finally got my PSE8 working again. It's been so frustrating, especially since I have some sessions that desperately need to be finished. Well, this is James after the Chatfield Invitational. He placed 19th overall which was his highest meet placing ever :) He was 5th in for the Stewartville boys and he was over a minute and a half faster at that course this year compared to last year! Way to go James. His team also walked away with the trophey for winning the meet. They took the combined scores of the girls and the boys. It was a GREAT day for Stewie CC!