Another Weekend Up North

Two weekends ago we all headed back up to Mom & Dad's for Charlotte's baptism. My brother-in-law's mother and brother made the trip from Maryland, so with all of us "kids" - and 3 dogs - it was a full house.

Mom of course fed us lots of good food, and we got in some quality time with Sophia and Charlotte.

Amy and I also took care of our Christmas card photos. We'd been waiting for a typical snowy Minnesota scene, and we got it.

They had this idea of them all laying on their backs, looking up at me. This posed somewhat of a problem, as it's hard to get up high enough to do that without having ladder legs or something else in the photo. Fortunately, since Mom and Dad leave the dock sections in the back yard, all I had to do was climb up on one of the benches and lean over a bit.

Since I'm egotistical about my photography, I wouldn't let anyone else even press the button for our Xmas photos. Not even if I'd already set everything up. So, even though Mom was there to make Zada look at the camera, I had the SLR on timer mode :)

I also got some cute "on the side" shots of Amy and Charlotte - who was the epitome of a little Eskimo baby. Pretty darn cute, if I may say so myself (and I do).

Of course, no photo shoot is complete without me taking random pictures of my dog...my dad asked me at one point, "how many pictures of your dog do you NEED?" I dunno...and nobody complains about a mother taking a bajillion pictures of her kid :) That's all it is!

Thing is, this dog loves being outside so much that the picture wasn't posed. I happened to look out and saw her lying contentedly in the snow and snapped this through the window.

In addition to all this, I decided to get the engagement shot out of the way. I originally wasn't going to do this, but Mom wants to run an announcement in the Brainerd paper (sigh) so I obliged. Didn't spend too much time on it, but we're pleased with the results :)

Once again, I didn't want anyone else "taking" the image so I got a little creative with my tripod (thank goodness for pistol grips!) and the timer. Keep in mind he was very open to doing this, even though there was a football game going on downstairs! What a guy...

So, it was definitely a weekend full of posing and image capturing, but fun nonetheless.

The next time we head up - New Year's - I can say won't be nearly as photography-focused, which I'm sure will bring a sigh of relief from everyone :)