Professional Photo Shoot 2009

Our first session with Shannon was in 2007 http://shootingstarsphotg.typepad.com/capturing_the_spirit_of_c/2007/10/referrals.html

I can't believe how much they have changed: http://shannonwalton.net/wordpress/2009/08/catching-up/

Here are the family pics and the ones of all 3 kids together.  I'll do a separate post for each of the kids.  The pictures are just amazing.

Lake House 2009 - Lake Beulah - Day 3

The babies.  Well, not exactly babies but the babies of the family.  When they start fighting we yell, "Baby fight!"

Just cuz she's so cute I can't stop taking her picture!

Can you tell Wyatt gotover his fear?  He was wanting Tim to drive faster than the boat could go.  Yeah, Wyatt!
 

And a final ride on the jet ski.

Lake House 2009 - Lake Beulah - Day 2

This place is just a kid heaven.  There's a paddle boat and two floating diving decks so the kids can just ride their boat around and play all these imaginary games and have a ball.  They never get bored or tired of that.

Of course we grown ups like to be out on the boat the best.  So relaxing! 

The kids do like tubing swimming out at new spots so that's good. 

Wyatt's nervousness over rides extended to water sports as well.  He was fearless last year and this year started out just panicked.  I actuall put him in the tube and pushed the tube away from the boat because I knew he just needed to get used to it.  He slowly got comfortable and you can see his head come up a little bit.

We had a jet ski to use.  Usually Wyatt would hop on there with Justin first and ride off.  But, this time it was Jake who hopped right on.

Although I really shouldn't talkl.  Look how unafraid I look.

Here's the kids just sitting on the jet ski pretending to be driving for a picture.  Haha.

And Jake being Jake...letting the little kids attack him. :)

Lake House 2009 - Lake Beulah - Day 1

We had thought the timing wouldn't work out for us to return to Lake Beulah with the Morris'  http://sallyfoo.blogspot.com/2008/09/lake-beahula.html?zx=255807e2c41dc224  But happily it did!  However, since we had already told the kids we weren't going, we decided to surprise them.  You have to understand how much they loved this place and waht amazing memories they have of it.  They wrote about it during the school year last year and just count it as their favorite place to go on a vacation.  So, it just seemed like such fun to surprise them.  We couldn't get into the house until late in the day, so we went to a beach in Wauconda for the day.

After the day at the beach, we told the kids we were driving to a restaurant.  We pulled into the driveway of the house and as soon as I said "We're here!"  Wyatt looked around and said, "It's the lake house!"  He was the first one to recognize it.  They were all soooo excited.  Wyatt and Maddy were hugging us and hugging each other and screaming, "Thank you, thank you!"  After a quick boat ride, we grilled out and chilled out.  Here are the boys doing their "beat-boxing." 

The all time favorite HOT TUB!

Then a little fun for us.

Birthdays

My mom, Grandma and aunt all have birthdays in August as well as George's sister who was visiting.  So, we had a really nice get together at my mom and George's new house.  Justin and I love their house!

Traditions

One of our best - Mexican and Margarits with the Styers.

Kiddie Land

Kiddie Land closed this summer, so we decided to finally take the kids there.  Megan and I took all six kids! 

Wyatt was still afraid of rides, but had fun anyway as did all the kids!

These two pictures are a great exampole of how much alike Maddy and Wyatt are.  Completely two pees in a pod!

  Before they got on this ride, Chloe said to Katy, "Get ready, Katy.  This is gonna be whippy" 

The two little ones rode lots and lots of rides.  There were pretty much no lines!