An almost full moon . . .

Brothers . . .

Spent some time yesterday with boys from the A famly. A few shots in front of the Christmas Tree and then we ventured outside unsupervised for some wintery photographs. These two each get an A+ for effort - not many of my subjects are willing to wander around outside in sub-freezing tempertures and sharing their bortherly love with the camera. Enjoy!

I love this next photo and could see it in a J-Crew catalouge for Wolfpack gear!

We paused for some fun with the basketball hoop . . .

And then finished upstairs on the kitchen floor. Thanks for a fun afternoon!

Family Photos with the R & W family

As the sun was sinking behind the hills I was able to capture some quick family photos with the R & W family. You might remember the R family from this summer when we took photos in the canola field. Sunday we added and aunt, grandma and grandpa to the mix. Enjoy your sneak peek!

This cutie greeted me when I arrived and helped me test my camera settings.

Then we were joined in the pasture by everyone else . . .

7 days old . . .

I was so excited that I would be home in time to take brand new baby photographs for the H family. I have been photographing them since before the arrival of their first Baby O. That Baby O is now a Big Brother O to a new Baby Sister O. We were able to spend some time taking pictures Sunday to capture the sweet tiny-ness of Baby Sister O. She is an angel! So sweet and so beautiful! Congratulations H family and welcome to the world Baby Sister O! It was so hard to pick pictures for this post because there are just so many sweet moments! Enjoy your sneak peek!

Back in the Flathead with the L family

I'm back in the beautiful Flathead Valley and have already had the opportunity to take some photos. It is amazing how fast kids grow - I was able to photograph little Miss M when she was brand new to this world and now she walks like a pro! Here is a quick look at a few shots from yesterday:

Miss E

Miss M



A little sisterly love

The whole L family - Hooray for Christmas trees and matching sweaters - could they get any cuter?



This time next week . . .

I will be snugglin' with my favorite puppy dog!

As I was driving home from rehearsal tonight I had my radio station tuned to K-JAZZ 88.1 and was "Jammin' with Bubba." It is a station I have started to like quite a lot especially when there is traffic. For some reason the jazz music keeps my head from exploding when all I can see are red tail lights. Tonight Bubba turned on his microphone and said "It's 59 degrees here in Long Beach. BRRRRRRRRRR! Where is my heater!" ........ seriously. 59 degrees and he's shakin' in his boots - which people have started to wear along with stocking caps, snow parkas, gloves, and of course fuzzy scarves. I wore shorts and a t-shirt today and had my window rolled down on the way home. We also have yet to turn the heat on in our apartment.

33 Years

I started working today on A Christmas Carol at SCR, unofficially that is - my contract doesn't actually start until next Tuesday but I've got extra time on my hands so I let them know I was available if need be.
I met our director, John-David Keller, who is quite a nice man and happens to have been the director of the recurring production for the last 33 years. He and a few others, including the man who plays Scrooge, the costume designer and lighting designers have worked with the show since its debut at SCR in 1978. Can you imagine doing the same show for 33 years? It sounds like the schedule is pretty much the same each year. The director and assistant director and choreographer starts working with the child actors the first week of November. We learned one dance today and watched part of the Muppets Christmas Carol. We have two casts of young ones, 8 kids a piece, that switch between performances. They range in age from 8-17 and I know all of their names after 2 hours. The adult actors start the second week of November and rehearse up until right before Thanksgving where they get maybe 2 days off and then come back a go into previews. They preform the show every day except Mondays and twice on Saturdays and Sundays with a few extra school matinees thrown in for good measure for a total somewhere around 35(?) performances each year. If you do the math Hal Landon Jr. has stepped on stage as Ebenezer Scrooge some 1,155 times. That is quite impressive if I do say so myself.

In other news I will be home in 21 days!

Another walk on the beach . . .

Aside from the middle aged man tanning nude on the beach it was a pretty pleasant day on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Mid 70's with a slight breeze - can't beat that on October 31st. Happy Halloween!

Looking North into down town Long Beach

A cute little crane type dude that was enjoying the waves

Nothing like frolicking in the sunshine and sparkling waves

The seagulls - there is one particular stretch of beach that these guys consistently occupy - the sit and stare. I've never met a more judgmental group of gulls. They don't even move when you get close to them.

I think you'll notice I am a little tanner than normal but its the same smile :)

For Halloween I decided to be a beach bum . . . I think it worked pretty well, not a bad way to spend the 31st of October - shorts and sand.

22 days until frost and closed toed shoes!

26 Hours

I spent 26 hours this past week working as an over-hire at SCR. An over-hire is the term assigned to people who are hired to work in the shop or electrics world in addition to the people that are on staff. In my case I was working with lighting in the electrics world. At SCR there are three people that are considered staff in this department. One master electrician for both theatre spaces and then an additional person that would be termed the master electrician's assistant/board operator for each theatre space; in the case of SCR this equals three full time staff members. Over hires are added to the crew when building a show and sometimes to operate spot lights and other special things that may be needed for a production. Basically I spent Tuesday and Wednesday hanging and cabling lights, Thursday was spent making snowflakes painted on backdrops sparkle with Christmas Lights and Friday was spent focusing all the lights we hung. I got lucky and was asked by the designer to be an extra body on stage so he could essentially focus two lights at a time which meant I got paid to stand around Friday night. It made our 6pm-Midnight time frame much more bearable. I think I only actually touched 4 lights yesterday which was a nice break considering the bruises I gave my self the previous 3 days. I was told I did very well - hopefully that means I will be hired in the future if opportunities work with my intern schedule.
On Wednesday we finished early and I got stuck in traffic driving home. It always amazes me how many cars can be on the freeways at one time. At one point I was stopped for the duration of 4 songs on the radio. Somewhere during song 2 I realized I was right next to this:

Thats right - Long Beach:

 population 492,652

elevation: 29