That’s it. The children are officially on summer break and tomorrow we’re off to New Zealand. Olivier and I were making last minute decisions for the kitchen and bathrooms today. There are still more decisions to be made but at least the important ones have been done. In a couple months we’ll have a spanking new home! Or at least that’s the plan. But more wonderful is that I won’t have to see Olivier scouring the house with his measuring tape any more.

The kids had a good school year. When we were in France Christian’s favourite thing to share at the end of each school day was the lunch menu. Obviously American lunch menus are not such a hot topic. More along the lines of how he has to suffer listening to Hannah Montana on the way home from school on the bus and the time the raccoons left droppings on the seats that stunk the bus out and how the bus driver (who is French) swears and how the boys think he’s funny. Which is fortunate for the boys that he swears in French.

But I can’t believe another school year has gone by. Soon it will be my birthday and then it will be Christmas.

Some images from my shoot yesterday with Christine for her portfolio. I woke up very early for the shoot because it was raining and I was nervous about the light. But then the drizzle stopped and the light peaked out from behind the clouds which made everything on earth smile.

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The client shoot went well this morning. I’ll share some pics from that shoot in another post. For now here are a couple pics from Françoise’s award ceremony. We received an invitation to attend a special ceremony in honor of outstanding Sophomore and Junior students. She received top French student and was also recognised for her National Award. She was hoping to get top student for her other classes too but that didn’t happen. :)

As a semi professional photographer aspiring to become professional (as in acting professional too) there are lots of things I need to learn if I want to make a good impression. It’s not only important to make an impression with the final image but with the way I work as well. In this post I thought I would share my shoot prep! From having already done a number of shoots I have learned that preparing the set-up beforehand is important, even if you are shooting without lighting equipment.

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Olivier and I went to Lake House Austin Spa Resort today to celebrate his birthday (as well as to celebrate a belated Mother’s Day for me). We lunched, had massages, and relaxed by the pool. Without kids.

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