It snowed around 5″ in Wilmington NC last week! After Ellie built her very first snowman, she asked me to take some video of her. I can’t help it, I think this is the cutest thing in the entire world.
Click to continue reading “all about snowmans!”… Continue Reading
So not only is she writing little love notes to me, she’s also losing her teeth. Already. And do you see that spray of freckles across her nose? And the beauty mark above her lip?
SIGH.
Although I’ll admit that watching her grow up so quickly is a little gut-wrenching, and for purely selfish reasons. Ellie handed this note to me a few minutes ago.
Click to continue reading “it doesn’t get much better than this”
It snowed a whole INCH in Wilmington on Tuesday! Absolutely treacherous conditions, causing schools to close and leaving us stranded in our homes to watch the snowfall and hope for the best. 
Ellie was THRILLED – she’s never seen snow, and I had been planning on a trip to the mountains for skiing this winter (a surprise broken big toe might screw up those plans…). Sometime Tuesday afternoon, Ellie asked me to grab the camera and take pictures of her in the snow. We didn’t have enough snow to make snowballs, snowmen, or snow angels… but she caught a few flakes on her tongue and danced in it like Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands. Cool kid.
Here are a few shots from Ellie in the blizzard…
In 14 years she’ll be old enough to vote.
Today, she’s just enjoying a day off of school. 
Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, right behind Cinco de Mayo. So I was pretty pumped about carving a deliciously spooky jack o’ lantern with the bean this year. She had never carved a pumpkin before… so she had no idea that it was so MESSY. She opted out of the cleaning part, but we decided she was the best person to design the spooky face. I carefully carved it exactly as she drew it, pig nose and all.
Happy Halloween!
after a VERY long day of updating all my image galleries on my website, it was time for a break.
ICE CREAM!!!!!
Ellie flirted her way into a pineapple-coconut-something-something sherbet, and she picked out a scoop of pistachio for me. After all these weeks of nonstop travel, shooting, and editing… it was pretty cool to hang out at Baskin Robbins with the bean, talking about how tall grandpa is and how he’s probably at least twenty-one years old. Good times.
My BFF Kim brought her boys to Myrtle Beach this summer to play in the surf, eat lowcountry food, and see the (now bankrupt!) Hard Rock Amusement Park! I brought Ellie down to Myrtle on one of the days they were down, and Kim got these fabulous *disposable camera shots* of the Bean playing in the ocean (see? a good photographer can take a great shot no matter how crappy the equipment!!!):
I hope we can do this again sometime soon… the beaches in Wisconsin just aren’t the same!
One of my closest, dearest friends, Kiki, loves to make funky little dolls and cool clothes out of socks, old shirts, towels, whathaveyou. She’s really talented and quirky and a little bizarre, which is why I love her dearly.
Last Christmas, she made an “Ugly Sock Monster” for Ellie. She called him Syd, and sent him home with me when I went up to visit her last December. Here he is in all his ugly glory, at a diner in donwtown Richmond, with terribly unflattering on-camera flash on a point & shoot.
Ellie opened the package that Syd was in, and she tossed him aside. She just didn’t really dig him. I saved him from being tossed out with all the wrapping paper and bows, and put him on the top of her shelf as decoration, thinking maybe someday she’d notice him and want to know where he came from.
Almost a year went by. Every so often I’d catch a glimpse of Syd on her shelf, but he never moved, never got played with. He was lonely. Ellie can be merciless.
Then one night, we were heading off to bed, and she says “WAIT! I gotta have Chookie!” She runs up to her room and comes back – with SYD. I was floored! That night, she fell asleep with Duckie in one hand, and Chookie (Syd) in the other.
The next day, she carried him around with her all day long. She told me that his full name was Deer Coppola Beer Chocolatito, “but you can call him Chookie.”
That night, I managed to get a picture of her sleeping with Chookie. Awwwwww.
Ducky has been Ellie’s closest companion since she was an infant! More photos coming of Miss Bean and Ducky, and the *book*!
I love little surveys and games, I’m all about the quizzes and crap on Facebook…. but for some reason I’ve resisted posting this “tag”. BUT, my sweet and wonderful friends Susan Stripling and Lacey Gadwill both called me out on their blogs, so I guess I’d better do it.
So what I’m supposed to do is post eight things that you probably don’t know about me, and then tag another eight photographers to do the same thing on their blogs. It’s totally silly, and I never post stuff like this on my photo blog, but now’s as good a time as any to break my own rules. Why? Because I’m festive, because I’m going to Hawaii next week!
OK, here goes. Eight things you maybe didn’t know about me:
1. I was born at 9:27 on 9/27. I always thought that was pretty cool, but it’s probably not.
2. It sounds like I’m stealing this from Susan, but it’s just that we’re somewhat eerily alike. I *LOVE* driving. I would rather drive than fly, anywhere. My car is my little private getaway, where I can listen to my music as loudly as possible, I can think, plan, and just *be*. I’m always the first one to suggest a roadtrip, and I’m the last one to admit that it’s time to go back home.
3. I can’t remember all of the schools I’ve attended (elementary, middle, and high school), but I know the count is over 40. And no, I wasn’t a military kid.
4. I know you know I’m from Hawaii, but what isn’t obvious is that I’m actually part Hawaiian! It’s very little, not enough to get me into the Kamehameha Schools when I was a kid, but it’s still a piece of me and my heritage. I’m also Portuguese, Chinese, German, and Tahitian.
5. My middle name is C. Just the letter C, it doesn’t stand for anything. Mom’s nickname when I was born was “Cie” (pronounced See), and so she sort of named me after her.
6. I’m not named after Charo Cugat, the Spanish guitarist (who has lived in Hawaii for as long as I can remember, coincidentally). I’m not entirely sure where he came up with it, but my father wanted to name me Charo, and he died before I had a chance to ask him where the name came from. In Spain (and, likely, Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries), Charo is a nickname for the name Rosario – which is the famous Charo’s real first name.
PS: I know those of you over the age of 30 want to say “Coochie Coochie” to me when you meet me. I’ve heard it before! Swear!
7. I hate celery. When I was in grade school we had a little science experiment that involved sticking stalks of celery into different cups of water with food coloring, to watch the celery change color as it absorbed the water. Neat experiment, HORRIFIC smell. I’ll never forget the smell of 5-day-old celery in the windowsill of our classroom. Ew.
8. I tore my achilles tendon in a freak tripod injury before I started shooting weddings. Every so often I’ll re-injure my heel and end up limping for a day or two, but mostly I’m all better now.
Now for the tagging part!
1. Elise Beall
2. Marc Climie
3. Heather King
4. Marcus Revilla
5. Craig Molway
6. Melissa Laggis
7. Dennis Lee
8. Linda Wallace
