Parker's First Christmas

We arrived at my aunt's house about 5:30 pm on Christmas Eve. We wanted to get there a little sooner, but with Parker, everything takes a little bit longer. When we finally made it, everyone was ready for dinner. We had a Mexican dinner with homemade goodies like guacamole, queso, enchiladas, and empanadas. It was delish! Parker had apples and carrots as you can see.

Grandma had a great time visiting with Parker, as did he with her.

Parker got A TON of gifts from the family. I think we may have to add a wing onto the house just to accommodate his new stuff.

Drums... now that is what I am talking about!

Parker was amazed by all the commotion of the day's activities. Although he won't remember any of it, I think he had a good time.

A Trip to see Santa!

Parker made his first trip to see Santa in the flesh this afternoon. Not surprisingly, he was very well behaved and in very good spirits. Here is the best shot from the 1 hour wait and 2 minute photo session at Memorial City Mall. Happy Holidays!

Visiting the Cousin's House

So, as I mentioned in a previous post, we visited family over the Thanksgiving holiday. During the trip, I attempted to take some Christmas photos of the kids (Maddie, Maria, and Parker). The original idea was to take some of the girls by themselves, then take some with Parker. Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes of trying to get a good shot of the girls, they weren't interested in taking any with Parker. The following is a pictorial chronology of my attempt:


This was my test shot using Parker as a model to verify the lighting. You can see he is really interested in doing this for me. :)


This is the best image of Maddie and Maria. As you can probably imagine, I was having a tough time getting both of them to smile and look at the camera.


This was a cute candid I took of Maddie laughing while we were trying to corral the other kids for the group photo.


Before we gave up on getting all the kids together, I snapped this cute image of Maddie and Maria decorating the tree.

And finally, we realized it just wasn't going to be a good day for pictures of Parker. I snapped a few frames, and this was the best one. Luckily, I tried again the very next day and got some great ones that I will feature in my next blog post. One of them will be the one we use for our Christmas cards this year.