I am too old to jump on trampolines

* HAPPY HALLOWEEN… I will be back as the week goes on with some shots from my Halloween weekend.*

Last weekend I spent some time with my bestie’s family taking their fall photos. Madalyn is 4 now, and a lot more willing to follow my directions and pose for pictures. (Last year she had a full come-apart after a short time and I was limited to what I could actually get!). Once we were done, Madalyn wanted to play.

The property we were on is owned by a client of Jason’s. He has this amazing, gigantic rocking pig…Seriously. It’s really neat. Mad played on it for a few minutes.

Then she headed to the trampoline. After she jumped for a little bit, I took my shoes off and got in with her. It was so much fun bouncing her and making her giggle. Though I did bounce her once and she landed on her face. After that, every time I jumped to hard, she would say “aunt misslissa, you are hurting my nose!” Of course my camera was involved! Steph got a couple of shots of me and mad, then I took a few mid bounce. I think these show the chaos and craziness of a trampoline so well. Plus, I can remember Mad’s laugh and that makes me smile!

I had such a blast laughing and playing with Madalyn on that trampoline. My knees did not.

-m

A Bishop family preview

I had the chance to do some family pictures for my oldest, bestest friend…

Unfortunately, is was hotter than hell outside on Sunday, so they suffered a little to keep with the “fall” theme! Also, it was quite difficult to get a good family photo when J kept acting like this:

I bet half of the 600 pictures I took are of J making crazy, lewd, inappropriate faces/gestures. I was giggling hysterically while editing the other night.

And here is my precious Madalyn with one of the few “real” smiles I got during the session:

Hopefully I will have some time tonight to edit the remainder, and see how my photos shot in full manual mode turned out.

-m

Pumpkin Carving Party extra edition

I am a planner. I love spending time with my friends. Fall and football season gives us the perfect excuse to spend Saturday together. I have been nick named the “Den-mother” of our group. If there hasn’t been a definite decision made about where we are watching the games on Saturday I start getting texts and phone calls by Thursday. About a month ago I decided that I wanted to have everyone over to watch football and incorporate something halloween-y into the day. So the plan was put into place for everyone to spend last Saturday at my temporary home.  

I am not exactly sure how smart it is to mix my friends, beer and knives. Fortunately every one survived and when ended up with some great pumpkins and great memories.

Somehow though I only got pics of the boys… (and this is making me realize now that I am missing pics of Rosalind holding Oliver. I am gonna have to do some scooby doo investigation on my memory card!)

Jeff…

Tim…

Lee and Oliver:

Oliver (my favorite boy) and his pumpkin:

(I am realizing I hang out with some pretty handsome men…)

This picture reminds me of the 27 times I stood and just stared at my friends. Watching them smile and laugh and scream at eachother and laugh and smile. Every person in that room means the absolute world to me.

-m

how about a little wednesday monster mash!

I turned on the Halloween Party channel on Pandora for the day and I am stitting here at my desk grinning like an idiot!
I love Halloween…

I have a feeling I will be sharing some of my favorites as this week draws to a close and I have to say goodbye to my favorite month and holiday!

Enjoy!

 

eek! Purple People Eater just came on! *hearts*

-m

 

 

 

Buy a monster, save a little boy

My cousin Amanda tweeted something today that warmed my heart!

There is a little boy, Aidan who is fighting leukemia. You can click his name to see the blog all about his journey. I haven’t had a chance to read too much, but I am going back to read his story.

What Amanda pointed out was Aidan’s Etsy site… Here you can purchase his drawings of monsters and the money goes to his treatment. What a great way to help a little boy and his family, plus have an awesome monster hanging on your wall.

I am going to grab Frankenstein now, before someone else takes off with him!

-m

Pumpkin Carving Party

I heart pumpkins. I have said it a million times…
here are a few shots of the pumpkins from our Saturday pumpkin carving party… I have so many that I love.
Today will strictly be pumpkins, tomorrow will be people I love with pumpkins!

Ready to be carved:

eeekkkk… knife….

ready to be cleaned out and cut up:

my beautiful pumpkin:

Tori’s 6 legged spider:

Oliver’s super precious baby pumpkin: (many more cute baby and baby pumpkin pictures to come!)

All done!:

-m

a campbell and an adolf

Dogs don’t make it easy to photograph them…

But I like what I get from ‘em anyway!

Cats can be a little easier, though they really just can’t be bothered by you or your lens in their face!

ok. that’s my random animal picture post.

-m

ps. These animals are not related. they belong to different friends. I just wanted to share them with you.

Clue at the Birmingham Railroad Park

Birmingham has recently had an amazing addition to its downtown area. The Railroad Park Is 19 acres of park, playgrounds, skate parks, ponds, water falls and walking trails.

It officially opened a couple of months ago and I have wanted to go check it out for a while. I just haven’t made the time…

For the past several Thursday nights, The Railroad Park (@railroadpark on twitter) has shown movies. This past thursday they showed CLUE. I have never seen this movie before, so I made plans to park my rear on a blanket in the park and watch it!

I really enjoyed seeing everyone hanging out on blankets, walking the trails or biking in the skate park. We even saw 3 people doing the “Thriller Dance” on one of the bridges!

This gigantic blow up screen was a pretty neat way to watch a movie under the sky…

I can’t wait to go back one afternoon and take more pictures…. this is what I got on thursday.

Fun times!

Right now I am waiting on my friends to show up… we have pumpkins to carve, football to watch and chili to eat. I love love love this time of year and the people who make my world a happy place.

-m

the pumpkin patch, cotton candy and cows

I spent Sunday afternoon at The Old Baker Farm (for the second time this month). I went a few weeks ago with my cousin and picked my 1st pumpkin of the season.

This time I headed back with Steph, Jason and Madalyn. We had a great time traipsing all over the pumpkin patch. Madalyn really wanted a white pumpkin like I had gotten last time, but that section of the patch was picked clean! (SO glad I got mine last time!). We found orange pumpkins, and green pumpkins and gigantic pumpkins. Ms. Mad decided on a cute little yellow one. Then swapped it out for a cuter yellow one that I don’t have a picture of!

The Old Baker Farm has 2 of the cutest baby cows I have ever seen. I could have spent all afternoon petting their soft little noses and taking pictures of them.

To keep Madalyn awake and non-cranky she got a sugar-rush treat of cotton candy. By the time we, um, I mean, Madalyn finished it, our hands all looked like this:

and our mouths all looked like we had eaten a few smurfs…

I ended up staying and making another round through the patch and the farm with some other friends that showed up later. I had such a good time making memories with my sweet friends and their beautiful children!

-m

Gadsden Zombie Parade 2010

The 6th annual Zombie Parade in Gadsden, AL took place this past Saturday. I have been wanting to attend this event for the past 5 years, and have just never made it.

About 3 weeks ago I was hanging out with a friend and we started talking about it. I looked it up on my oh-so-awesome iphone and immediately put it on my google calendar. It was tentative since I wasn’t sure game time for bama football yet. As a matter of fact, when Rich said “do you want to go?”, I said “I don’t know, let me check the football schedule!”

Last week we found out that bama was playing a super late game, so the Zombie Parade was on! After driving around Birmingham “lost” (I was hung over and my driving skills were not up to par.) for a while and running by Party City for more blood, we headed to Gadsden.

My favorite zombies were the little ones. I think it’s awesome that parents include their children in things like this!

The little girl this doll belonged to wasn’t happy untill she could pour blood on it! (in the background, she was 2 or so!)
(this is also my favorite picture of the day)

I am not sure if I look this way from the make up or the hangover! The blood wasn’t enough, so I ended up getting more after I took this picture.

Even this guy loves brains.

Rich and I on the hunt for BRAAAAAIIIIINNNNNSSSS!!!!!!

I am now on a mission to have a Birmingham Zombie Parade next year. The parade permit is cheap, and I know a bunch of people who would zombie out for the event! Keep that in your heads, folks, next year we are doing this!

-m