Photo Archive 2008:  January - June

Last day of school - Jackie's fourth grade class cleaned off their desks by covering them with shaving cream and then  rinsing them off.  This made for some great pictures.  Here are a few pictures of Liz on her last day with her teachers.

Summer trip to Florida - Both girls' birthdays fell in the week after school was out, so we headed to Jupiter for a week  of relaxation and birthday fun. During the week, we took a tour of Lion Country Safari. Here are some pictures of the family interacting with the animals. For more pictures of the animals, click here.

Brothers at the Pool - Liz and Jackie's brothers came over in late May to celebrate the girls' birthdays. Here are some pictures taken at our subdivision pool, with the boys and a few of the girls' friends from the neighborhood.

Camp Infusion - The girls spent a week at Camp Winfield in the North Georgia mountains in June as part of Mt. Bethel's summer youth program.  Here are some shots from the day we dropped them off.

Annie Remix - Jackie and her friends put on a really good play at neighbor Renee's house on June 27, a musical based loosely on the Annie story.  Liz and I were in the audience, along with parents and siblings of all the other players.  It was quite a production.

Jackie's neighborhood swim team, the Seahorses, had their final meet of the short summer season on June 26. Jackie did great, winning blue ribbons in two of her races! These are pictures of Jackie and some of her friends at the meet. For pictures from Jackie's first meet on June 5, click here.  New - Jackie was given a medal for being "Most Improved" swimmer on her team!  Here she is with her medal

 Lizbeth and Jackie were baptized at Mt. Bethel on Father's Day, June 15. We we re joined by many members of their (and our) Church family. Jackie was not given a middle name at birth, so she selected one for herself - choosing the name of her teacher, Mrs. Mac.  Mrs. Mac honored Jackie by joining us at the ceremony. It was a special day.

Father-Daughter Dance.  I took portraits  of fathers with their young daughters at a special "Enchanted Evening" dance held at church on June 14.   The church's outstanding production staff gave me professional lighting, and some of the pictures turned out to be amazing.  Check them out here.

Cornerstone Golf Outing - I took pictures at the first annual golf fundraiser for Cornerstone Family Services.  We gave  each player a print of their foursome, and took some action shots as well.

Cornerstone Family Appreciation Lunch - The Cornerstone board hosted a lovely lunch for the foster parents to  celebrate our our first anniversary of serving Cobb County foster children.  We took a "family" picture with all the foster parents who were there, and also a couple pictures of the board.

Family portraits - We sat for portraits as part of our church's directory project. I am posting these proofs so you can  see what is a nice job they did. Please let me know if you want me to order any of these for you from the studio that took them

 Snakes in a pool - Look what greeted me when I lifted the cover of the hot tub to add chemicals one warm summer day! It was a harmless baby King snake, and it wasn't particularly interested in anything except getting out of the sun, but it was a surprise to see it there! Of course I immediately ran for the camera.

CHARGE!   Liz and Jackie went to beautiful Camp Winfield in North Georgia for the Mt. Bethel 4th and 5th grade  retreat. I went along as a counselor and as the camp photographer. Here are some pictures of the girls and their friends enjoying the weekend. Here are highlights of the weekend I posted on the church website.

Spring Garden - Our beautiful gardens came alive in early April, with jasmine, cherry blossoms, azaleas, and a few other blooms. The first page of pictures has shots taken the last week of March, and the next page has shots taken the first week of April, when everything was in full blossom.  After the Spring flowers bloomed, along came the roses!

Butterflies - Lizbeth was excited to receive her long-awaited shipment of butterflies in late April. A few weeks later, the cocoons opened and she had a family of four butterflies. She enjoyed playing with them and feeding them sugar water for a week or so until it was time to let them go.  You can see the girls releasing one of the butterflies in these pictures taken when Liz' friend Amaya came over for a visit.

Spring Concert - The girls participated in the end-of-year performance of the iPraise program at Mt. Bethel.  Liz even had a speaking part.

 The girls' friend Ellie came over for a sleepover in May, and she and Jackie had fun with some tattoo decals.

Congratulations John!  John graduated from Forsyth Central High School on May 24, with Nana, Frank, the girls  and I in attendance.  Here are some pictures.

Pioneer Days - Jackie's class had fun square dancing during the Pioneer Days event held near the end of the school year.  I also photographed other 4th-grade classes enjoying all the pioneer activities:  spinning, weaving, making  corn-husk dolls, quilting, and my favorite, butter-making!

Roses are Red...and pink, and salmon, and blush, and white, and growing in beds, in shrubs, and on an arbor by the patio.  We have NINE different kinds of roses in bloom right now!  We also have blue irises, yellow beared iris, a few random clematis and one brave hosta.  If you hadn't noticed that there are no annuals this year, you'd never know we were in a drought-induced watering ban. 

Gold Rush -  I accompanied Jackie's 4th grade class on a field trip to Dahlonega, where the class learned about America's first Gold Rush, toured on old gold mine, and panned for gold.

The girls got stylish new haircuts.  Check out the amazing transformation in these pictures taken the first day. 

The garden is in full Spring bloom, and is starting to attract birds, bees and butterflies.  In early April, we saw this really unusual critter feeding on the verbena - it looked like a cross between a butterfly, a bee, and a hummingbird.  Turns out it was a Nessus Sphinx or Hummingbird Moth. 

Longtime friends Sara and Teresa came over for a visit on a nice day at the end of Spring Break.  Here are some  pictures of them playing in the yard.

Spring Break trip to Florida - We took a road trip to Orlando for Spring Break.  We spent our first day at Aquatica, a terrific new water park at Sea World.  Then we hit Universal Studios Florida, spending our first day at Universal, our second day at Islands of Adventure, and revisiting our favorites at both parks on our third day.  On the way home, we stopped at the World's Largest Playplace McDonald's for lunch.

Sleepover - Jackie's schoolmates Renee and Kristen came over at the start of Spring Break.  See them playing  together. 

John is 18!  See pictures of John and Dad on his birthday (April 2), and also stroll through pictures from each year of John's life so far.

On a warm Spring Day, the girls rode their bikes to school for the first time.  Twister!  Jackie (and Liz, briefly) has a lot of fun playing with the disco version of Twister.  See her rock out.

Soccer Game - Liz and Jackie's team played their second soccer game on March 30.  Pictures here.

Great Day of Service - Over 1000 members of Mt. Bethel participated in the annual Great Day of Service on March  29, completing service projects for individuals and organizations all over Atlanta.  My assignment was to photograph the teams working around Mt. Bethel, which included lots of kids, a scout troop, and a few adults.

Visit with Brothers - See all the kids playing in the visitation house and on the playground at Mt. Bethel on March 29.

Easter Sunday - The girls got their first-ever visit from the Easter Bunny 

Easter Saturday - We were busy on Saturday, March 22!  First, the girls and Frank came with me as I shot Mt. Bethel's Easter Egg Hunt and Jerusalem Walk Festival.  Then Their team, the Penguins, played the Cherry Bombs in soccer.  Finally, we had an Easter visit with all 6 brothers, including a really fun Easter Egg Hunt at Kathy and Jan's house.

Easter Eggs!  The girls colored Easter eggs last night (March 20).  It was the first time they had ever done this, so they were very excited.   The enthusiasm was high and the end-result colorful if not especially artistic.

Palm Sunday at Mt. Bethel - Pictures of  the Sunday School children processing into church with their palm fronds.  Pictures of Jackie and Liz are here.  See my pix of lots more kids from church here on the Mt. Bethel website.

Kangazoom birthday party - Jackie and Liz were guests at Shane's fun birthday party at inflatables playplace  Kangazoom on March 15.  The brothers were supposed to be there, but scattered tornadoes got in the way.

Sope Creek Fun Run - Jackie ran in the 1 mile race at her school on the morning of March 15.  Liz helped organize things (she forgot her sneakers).  See lots of pictures of the girls, their friends, and other fourth and fifth-graders at the race.  Earlier that morning, the longer 5K race ran by our house.  Here are pictures I took of that race passing the end of our street.

Sean and Monica's Prom Pictures - Liz and I went to the "picture party" for the son of our friends Ruth and Marc.  Sean and his friends gathered at a friend's house before heading off for the prom in a longggggg Hummer  Limo.  Liz came along and had fun on the host's trampoline!  Click here for all the prom pictures on SmugMug.

Jackie's Revolutionary Heroes presentation - The fourth-graders  do a mini-version of the Famous Americans reception in their classroom.  Jackie's class held theirs on March 13, and everyone was a hero of the Revolutionary War.  Jackie was terrific as Abigail Adams.

Sleepover at our house!  Julio, Miguel and Berto came over to spend the night on March 8.  The five siblings had so  much fun together.  The next day, we had lunch with the girls' family friend Rodolfo.

Soccer season begins - Liz and Jackie had their first practice on Coach Kent's team at Mt. Bethel on March 1.  The girls also did some practicing in our backyard.

Spring is springing, and our gardens are coming back to life.  See some early Spring blooms, taken in late  February and early March.

Liz' Famous Americans Reception - Liz pa rticipated in a very special annual event at Sope Creek Elementary School.  Each student studies a famous American, past or present, and on February 29 they paraded through the school dressed up as the subject of their study.  Later, each student had a table in the cafeteria, where visitors could see artifacts about their character, and hear them tell their character's story.  Liz was abolitionist and feminist speaker Sojourner Truth.

Singing at Church - Liz and Jackie's iPraise group sang at the main service on February 24.  They also took part in  an instrumental music concert on February 27.

DNow at Mt. Bethel - Once again, I took pictures at the church's Youth retreat weekend February 22-24.  We weren't able to host any kids this year, as our home is full!  Pictures from Friday night, Saturday recreation, and Saturday night with the kids dressed as heroes.  The girls even helped make sandwiches for homeless people.

Pretty little Niemah -  We babysat for one of the other foster children in our Community on February 18-19.   Here are some pictures of this pretty 3-month-old.  Usual password.

Younger brothers come to visit -  The  three younger brothers (Jonathan, Alex and Jesus) came over for the day on Februay 16.  Alex had turned 5 the day before, so we celebrated his birthday.

Back to Brown Elementary -  The girls went back to their old school on February 15 to see their .  They returned later that night for a dance at the school.  

Valentine's Day and more - Here are a few pictures of everyone with Valentine's Day gifts, as well as a few other shots taken around the house in February.

Franny's 100th birthday celebration - Family and friends gathered in Virginia Beach to celebrate this wonderful  milestone.  I was unable to attend due to this flu, but here are a couple memories that were shared. 

Cornerstone Dessert Party -  Frank and the girls went to a party for our foster care Community of Care on February 8.  I was laid up with the flu, but Jackie took some pictures with my camera.  Password protected, username is first initial of the hostess, password is her last initial.  If you know who hosted the party, you can get into the pictures.

Donna's birthday -  We had all the kids and Debbie together for dinner at our once-favorite Chinese buffet.  The  restaurant had seen better days, but the company was excellent.  There are pix from Debbie's cellphone taken at the restaurant, and a few more taken at home.

 Visit with the older set of brothers -  Liz and Jackie played with Julio and the twins Alberto and Miguel at the new visitation center at our church, Mt. Bethel.  As luck would have it, it snowed again, so they got to play in the snow.

Finally, SNOW!  It starting snowing Wednesday evening during choir practice, and the girls came home to a yard full of snow.  Two of my  pictures were published by the local newspaper the night of the snow (click here and surf to pictures 24 and 25), and one was chosen from the hundreds they received to be in the "best snow pictures" - see picture 16.  That picture was even the main picture on the website for several hours on Thursday.  Here are the girls on the night of the first snow, and here they are when it snowed again the following Saturday.  They tried to build a snowman, but couldn't get the snow to hold together.  Still, they had a lot of fun trying.

Lots more pictures of Liz and Jackie.  Pictures taken at midnight New Year's Eve, pictures from the girls' visit with their brothers on January 3, pictures from a visit with friends Sarah and Theresa, the girls at Mt. Bethel's iPraise music practice, and a few other random shots from around the house in January.  Usual password.  Email me if you need it.