Carter's Ski Lessons: Year Three

For Christmas, Eric's mom signed Carter up for his third year of ski school. Though we had some good snow early in the winter, there hasn't been anything recently to make for great skiing conditions. Carter was sick for last week's lesson, though he still went and tried his best. Yesterday was the last day of lessons for this year. His teacher filled out such a great report card for Carter. He said Carter was an aggressive, talented skier. So proud of my little guy!

I didn't get to go up for his last day this year, as I have done the past two years, for two reasons:  we started a trial today and there was no way in hell I could have left work for half a day yesterday; Carter is advanced enough now that he doesn't go on the bunny hill at all, which is primarily where I got all of my prior pictures. I can't exactly follow the class up the lifts and onto the bigger runs in my snow boots. So, I had to live with the pictures Eric took from his phone.

For those wondering what it looks like above this stupid inversion, here are some shots from Bogus Basin Road.

More snow pictures will be coming soon. With the big changes going on in our lives, I decided to take the kids up to the cabin soon for a grand sledding adventure!

The Braces Adventure - An Update

I haven't done an update on the braces thing for quite a while, so here we go. The last time I updated was the beginning of December, when I had one of the bottom, front teeth pulled. This was done because the bottom teeth, as a whole, had floated out a bit, creating an open bite and a ridiculous lisp. The only way to make enough room to pull the teeth back in, to set behind the top, front teeth, was to pull a tooth. They have pulled the bottom teeth back in quite a bit and I feel like we are almost there. Once the teeth are back in correct position, they will pull the little gap closed. It has closed on its own a little bit, but it definitely will require more anchor chains, just like we did with the top teeth when we closed that (much bigger) gap.

At my last orthodontist appointment, they told me we were done moving the top teeth, front to back. Now it's time to just make the minor adjustments to get the teeth flush. These are small moves, but take a long time since every tooth is involved.

Overall, I finally feel like I'm pleased with the process. I am just about eight months post-surgery. My top teeth still feel somewhat unstable, but I know that's just going to take a while (up to a year, per the oral surgeon) to get back to normal. I am hopeful these braces will be off in a little over a year.

Until the next update, here is my smile!

Quiet Moments

Chaos has consumed my life.

The unknown scares me to death.

But when my kids crawl into bed with me in the quiet moments of dawn, I know it's going to be okay.

Baby P {newborn}

I had a newborn shoot with Miss Paisley the week of Christmas. She was a little bit older than I prefer for newborn shoots, which means she was awake the ENTIRE time, except for the last ten minutes. Go figure! We really struggled with her because she was awake, alert, and HUNGRY. I didn't get nearly as many shots as I wanted, but that's okay....I still got my baby fix!

Thoughts

A difficult journey has begun.

Att-with a side of-TUDE

Kendall has been nothing short of an impossible challenge lately. I need a break from that child, like yesterday. I was messing around with my 50mm lens today, thinking that I need to go back to primarily shooting with that for a while.....she agreed to be my muse. For about three shots. Game over.

Dana & Veronica {engagement}

As I previously mentioned, my brother popped the question while they were here for Christmas! I took them out for an engagement shoot and found myself a phenomenal place to use for future shoots. I plan to keep this one to myself, though I think people are aware of it because there were a ton of tracks in the snow. Here are some samples from our shoot!