Jax::

We’ve had a busy few days here. My aunt and a dear family friend visited for three days from Colorado. We went on adventures in the mornings and I worked in the afternoons. It will take a few posts to tell everything we did.

I had to wonderful surprise of my aunt bringing boxes from my grandparents old house. Many things were my mother’s. I loved seeing them, as she died when I was very little. I plan to make a shadow box with some of her trinkets. I have a huge stack of drawings and letters I sent my grandparents over the years to go through. Looks like they kept everything!

The biggest surprise was the old kiddie car I remembered as always being at my grandparents house. I knew it was old, but my grandpa said on the phone that it had belonged to my grandma’s mom. Grandma was born in 1916, so that car is old! A metal piece was added to the steering rob by my grandpa at one point, and one of my mom’s cousins added a target sticker to the handle. But otherwise, it’s remained the same. I have a photo of myself riding it as a little girl.

It will have a place of honor in our home, and one day Jax can pass it on to his children.

Another fun hand-me-down was the puzzle my grandpa made. I remember it from the toy cabinet at their house. Jax was amazing me with how good he is at it! I have to take a video of it soon.

Danny took a video of Jax on the kiddie car that will be in the next post.

…It didn’t go well. But at least he is cute!

Part of the problem was that Jax’s mouth decided right at that moment to teethe like mad. Poor baby was drooling and distraught. And then there were the crazy prices…

We liked our photographer. He was a trooper with Mr Crankypants. Jax looked adorable, but miserable. He brought out a super cool train that went with Jaxs overalls, but baby just wanted mama. The best photos were when the photographer had me lay on my back and Jax sat on my stomach so he could be touching me but I wasn’t in the way. There was one of Jax taking a step, but he was mid-cry. This is the picture that was the least sad… No tears in his eyes or drool pouring out of his mouth. I took some of the red out of his eyes int his online version.

There are no sitting fees, but they make up for it in their packages and add-on fees. Luckily we were able to stick to just using our $18 coupon. It was a good deal: a 10×13, 8×10, some 5x7s, 4x6s and 2 sheets of wallets. Of course they had to be all of the same photo, so we’ll be giving out a lot of pictures!

We weren’t huge fans of the lady who helped up choose our prints. She seemed annoyed to be there. I wanted one of the pictures to be black and white, but she said I’d have to make the whole package b&w, plus pay $5 per sheet to do so ($30). Uh, no. So the photo will not be going in our all black & white living room.

When I asked about retouching, she offered us a high-res cd for the oh-so-low price of $150. *choke*.

So I will be trying to stage my own 12 month photoshoot at home. :/