Our New/Old House!!!

Wow! Things have been so excitingly crazy the past few days. Long story short, we will be moving our little family into Brad's old house! So this is our "new/old" house! His mom sold it four years ago when his dad passed away, and we are thrilled to be able to have it back in the family! For any of you who grew up with Brad, you know exactly where we will be! Come visit! Tavin is already in love with the house and the neighborhood, and keeps asking "when can we live there?" He tells us "It's nicer inside." Here are a few images of the new homestead. Here is the "before"....look for the "after" post in a few months.



I LOVE red doors!





Formal living room



Formal dinning room



another angle



Kitchen



Family room

Traveling

We have recently finalized our plans for our Jacobsen family reunion this summer. We are going to be in Utah from 8/15 until 8/24. I am open for photo shoots on 8/15-8/16 and 8/22-8/23. It seems like so many of friends have moved down that way, so if you want to catch up and do some family, baby, kid, maternity, trash the dress, or anything else kind of session, just let me know!

New Lens

Brad's Uncle, Richard, sent me a 85mm lens for my Canon. I have been using a zoom lens which is great for, you guessed it, zooming...BUT the 85mm is a lot faster than the zoom. I was testing it out on the boys. Movement didn't seem to be as much of a problem with the 85mm. I think it is going to work great for family/children/baby portraits. Here are more of the results:





Below, Oliver has got quite the scowl, but this is the only shot I could get of BOTH of them looking at the camera. Tavin despises this!

Family Football Fun

Last weekend, when cousins were visiting, I was so entertained by this football game, I just had to blog about it. All the boys decided to play a football game, three year olds included. The entire game probably lasted no more than three minutes. Here is the play by play...



Sam throws a pass...



Sam catches a pass. Nothing too out of the ordinary, right? If you look at Tavin and Chase, you will notice that they decided football would be a lot more fun if played with a whiffle ball bat and a garden stake. The latter could have been pretty dangerous! Not pictured, there was also a whiffle ball, croquet mallets, and a basketball involved!



Of course someone always gets hurt...within the first 45 seconds or so.



Luckily Chase and Tavin were there to cheer Taden up!



Tavin had an absolute blast playing with his cousins for the entire weekend, especially with Chase. The dynamic duo looked for frogs, gave numerous caterpillars "baths" (more like mass drownings), found a "singing caterpillar" and a caterpillar with a "brand new outfit," and they told everyone "you smell like pickles or somethin."



I would say, all in all, it was a fantastic weekend!

Family

Brad's sister Cami and her adorable family came up for a Mother's Day visit. Her kids did this fun little photo shoot as a gift for her. Oldest to youngest: Skyler, Brinnley, Taden, and Chase. Here is what the they came up with.












Here are a few of some of our sister-in-law Jana's kids. This is Mariah and Ethan. Sam is missing in action (baseball game!) Hopefully we will be able to do their belated Mother's Day shoot in a couple of weeks.





Jill, if you are reading this, I want to do a belated, belated Mother's Day shoot for you at the reunion this summer. We can't wait to see you guys!

Smile! (PLEASE!)

Why is it that I can never get my kids to smile nicely for a picture? Oliver lives in this serious face 24/7. I can't tell if he is deep in thought or just annoyed that I won't leave him alone. I am lucky if I get one shot of Tavin before he runs off, and don't even think about telling him to smile for a picture, it can be pretty frightening...he lowers his chin to his chest, squints his eyes, and bares all of his teeth in what seems to be pain. Sometimes I can get "nice" pictures of them when they least expect it. (ex. looking off into the distance, clapping, playing with something, laughing at a friend, etc.) I just don't know why smiles have to be so hard to come by! Hopefully, it will make me laugh when I look back on it.

Swingin' Time!

Yesterday was a BIG day at our house! My brother's girlfriend's parents had a swing set they no longer needed, and they were nice enough to give us an awesome deal on it! We had a long day of taking it apart, loading it up, unloading it, and putting it back together, but we had a lot of help from my brother and one of his friends. Tavin loved watching the men work, but spent most of his time helping by sitting in the "oh so cool" trailer. Our friends the Walkers came over to help us put it together and let the kids test it out. This beautiful girl is Tavin's friend Savana. The adorable baby is Oliver's friend Harrison. Of course, the photographer in me had to make the kids pose for some shots!