We were hacked! It wasn’t the first time–it happened back in 2003 when I was running a tie dye business (yes, interesting tidbit there, no?) and it was as much a huge hassle then as it is now. The good news? We were able to restore an earlier copy of the blog and I didn’t have to completely start over. I’m smart–I make back-ups. The bad news? I had spent nearly all night a couple days ago fixing the broken images and posting several sessions from the last few weeks. I nearly fell asleep in the chair waiting for an upload to finish and went to bed without making a back-up. Murphy was alive and well that night because the next morning…everything had gone *poof.* And I cried.
Pardon Our Dust | Phoenix Photography
December 18, 2009
In importing my posts from the blog on our old server, the images were lost. So I have to manually re-add them to some 50+ posts. It will take a while but I’m working on it. Good thing I saved this project for my “vacation” which is really more of a “staycation.” ;)
Extended Family | Gilbert Family Photographer
December 11, 2009
I’ve been too busy to keep up with the blog like I normally do, but I had to stop and post a sneal peek for this adorable family! They were such good sports–it was about 58 degrees and windy on this morning–we were rained out the week before and 9am was my only opening last weekend (and it was a real bummer because my 4pm session stood me up and I could have done this family then after all, had I known in advance!). In spite of the cold, wind and early hour, the images turned out great! Here are a couple from the session–had to include on of cute little Miss.
December News | Phoenix Family Photographer
December 1, 2009
I can’t believe it is December 1st already! It feels like it was just late-July and then I blinked…POW!!
In our house, we have a tradition that Santa’s Elves bring a candy cane and leave it on the Christmas tree every morning in December. And the Elves usually don’t bring just any old candy cane…they bring the nice thick Bob’s large candy canes. For years we would have to scour all the local stores to find them and then buy them individually, usually at 35-50 cents each. And that was if we could find them in time. This year we decided to downgrade to regular candy canes just to make it easier on ourselves and wouldn’t you know it? Last week I noticed that Walmart has a box of 2-dozen big canes for 4 bucks! I bought that (and we’re already bought several dozen regular ones) so now I think our kids are going to have to come up with a way to give out a whole lot of regular candy canes!
(Disclaimer: I much prefer Super Target or Fry’s to Walmart but sometimes I have no choice but to head into Walmart under duress…like when it’s midnight the night before Thanksgiving and I still need a bunch of things!)
December promises to be a full month which is good as far as I’m concerned, because that means it will go by quickly and before we know it, Christmas will be here! I’m so looking forward to Christmas morning. I think I’m more excited as an adult than I was as a kid! Having two small children at the same time (K and D are 3 and 4.5…only 18 months apart) makes it extra magical! We also will be lighting candles December 11th through 19th for Chanukah in honor of my paternal grandparents who passed away when I was young.
We adopted a family through the Angel Tree for an online community I’ve been a member of since 2002. I had planned on taking the kids shopping for the gifts for the 3 children (outfit, book, game and treat for each) but I decided to order online so I could be sure we’d get everything we need. We’ll still make a trip to the store for the treats that were requested (things like candy and chips). I feel so blessed to be able to help another family this way. We usually do Angel Tree through a local retailer but adopting a whole family has been nice!
Tom and I are renewing our vows later this week–we’re having an intimate chapel ceremony with just the kids, my parents and Tom’s parents. Then we’re returning to the house for a mini-reception consisting of party platters from one of our favorite restaurants….Olive Garden! A fabulous local cake baker is making us the world’s most adorable cake–I can’t wait to get my hands on it so I can photograph it and share the pictures here. I’ve only seen a sketch, but wow!! I had to get her to promise to make Katie’s birthday cake in January; she’s so talented. I’ve also taken on the task of creating bouquets for myself and the girls and boutonnieres for Tom and the boys. I had never given much thought to how bouquets are made (we eloped when we were married in 1994) but once I started photographing weddings I started planning my own bouquet for our vow renewal, even though we weren’t sure when we’d actually do it!
Lastly, it may appear that I’ve been a little remiss on posting sneak peeks on the blog. I’ll give away a secret–we’re going to be changing to a new blog design YET AGAIN and any images I post now will need to be reposted once we make the switch, so I’m holding off for a couple weeks (WordPress will allow me to preserve all my posts and information but not the images). Hopefully that will be the last change we’ll make for a long while–it’s been a journey discovering what will work for us and while I think this blog design is cute, it doesn’t really scream “ME” or “US.” We’re also changing our portfolio website to match the new “feel.” We’ve actually had that portion down for a month or so because we had feedback that it was difficult to navigate and it frequently would freeze up–but a change will solve that problem!
So for now, Happy December to you and your’s! Be on the lookout for our make-over! :)
