Kristi Eckrich »

There’s quite an active round of “blog tag” happening right now on my online photography forum, and today I’ve been double-tagged by Courtney Crumrine of Beatrice, Nebraska and Shannon Velloza of Twenty-nine Palms, California. Thanks ladies, this is a lot of fun!

RULES:
1) Link the person who tagged you.
2) Mention the rules on your blog.
3) Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
4) Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them & leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they have been tagged.

Okay, here you go…my 6 “unspectacular quirks!”

1) I hate apples. But I like apple sauce, apple pie, apple strudel, apple butter, apple tarts, apple muffins and apple crisp. Just don’t expect me to eat ‘em raw!

2) I graduated from Millersville University in 1997 with a meteorology degree and aspirations to enter the Air Force to join the Hurricane Hunters. Health issues got in the way, so here I am working as a full-time highway distress analyst and part-time professional photographer. Things don’t always go as planned, do they?!?

3) I actually enjoyed my calculus and physics classes in high school and college. Hello my name is Kristi and I’m a nerd.

4) I can’t stand having an air freshener or anything else swinging from the rear-view mirror while I am driving. I even hate it when somebody in front of me has something swinging from their rear-view.

5) I absolutely cannot go longer than 30 minutes without cracking ALL joints and knuckles on both of my hands. And I have to take my shoes off a few times a day to crack my toes too. All of them.

6) I have been to Iceland and Alaska, but never Florida or the Carribean.

Now I’m going to tag 6 more fellow photogs:

Have fun y’all!

Jane Eaton Hamilton (Vancouver, BC)
Jenny Thrasher (Sherwood, OR)
Cat Dillberg (San Antonio, TX)
Tara Leigh Vivet (San Marcos, CA)
Cara Carlson (Medford, NJ)
Revenda Bierley (Right here in Carlisle, PA)

And since I hate to post without a photo, here is a shot I took inside Ron Jon Surf Shop while at the beach.

Have a great evening!

Finally, after a month has gone by, I’ve gotten through most of my photos from our beach vacation! Our house has been mayhem since school started…getting settled into new routines and schedules, a few bouts of illness, and Corey and I dealing with some changes at our workplaces. Now that things are starting to calm down a bit, I hope to be back to regular blogging. I have sooo many photos to share and have had so little time to edit and blog them.

This friendly dragonfly took a liking to my chair!

He didn’t seem to mind us picking him up for a closer look. In fact, I later had to coax him to fly away! Aaron especially enjoyed carrying him around on his finger.

The end!

I will post a few more once I finish the edits. Thanks for taking a look!

I can’t say it enough…these kids did a fantastic job at their shoot! I ended up with WAY more than my usual proportion of “keepers” for their proof gallery and I couldn’t be happier! Aren’t they a great-looking bunch of kiddos?!?

Little Miss M insisted on sticking her tongue out in nearly all of her shots, but that’s okay because it’s totally her!

Isn’t Mr. J a little cutie?!?

Ahhh…if only ALL of my kid sessions could turn out this well!

Random blog and website design changes will be taking place over the next few days! I’ve been busy working on some changes to my business that will be implimented very soon, and to go along with those changes I’m freshening-up my online presence. In the meantime, please excuse the “dust!”

Today has been a bit crazy. But only just a bit I assure you.

First is Trevor and a handful of issues we’ve been having with him, with bad attitude being hands-down THE mother of all issues. I imagine this to be somewhat typical with 8-year-old boys to a certain extent, but it’s something Trevor has managed to turn into a perpetual nightmare. E-V-E-R-Y last bloody thing that is said to him or asked of him results in a major argument. He is the 8-year-old that knows it all and should be treated like royalty. For instance, if you tell him the earth is round he will spend the next half hour arguing with you that it’s not. Or if you ask him to do something really “horrible” like take his dinner dishes to the sink, it will result in a 15-minute rant about how everyone is so totally unfair to him and hates him and he has to do EVERYTHING.

Last night he didn’t want to come when I called him in for dinner, so I had to go outside after him. I was getting ready to physically drag him inside when he protested by taking off a flip-flop and throwing it up on the garage roof. (And just so you know…a flip-flop will nicely roll and bounce off of a 45-degree sloped roof, preventing the aggravation of getting out a ladder and climbing after it.)

Sooo anyway, today was the first day of school. Third grade for Trevor. Kindergarten for Aaron. Both boys were excited to get to school and everything was rolling along smoothly. Until, that is, Trevor had to use the bathroom as we were getting ready to head out the door. This shouldn’t usually be a problem, now should it?!?!? Well, at least not if Trevor isn’t involved.

The toilet clogged. Instead of simply saying “Hey Mom, the toilet’s clogged” like he normally does so someone can come in and plunge, he decides to keep flushing. Because you never know, it may actually work. Ahem…well…it was actually VERY effective at flooding the entire bathroom floor in a matter of seconds right when we should have been climbing into the car for school drop-off. Needless to say, as a result, NOBODY in our house got out the door on time or in a good mood this morning.

On a positive note, though, the first day of school went really well for both of the boys. I was worried about Aaron all day (as the parent of any new kindergartener would) but he had a great first day and can’t wait to go back tomorrow. And of course, I’ve got to share a couple of first-day photos, right?!?

Naturally, they were completely stoked.

Have a good rest of the evening…and may your bathroom stay dry.

I recently had the opportunity to photograph ten (yes, ten!) cousins at Caledonia State Park. These kiddos did a great job and had a lot of fun in front of the camera.

This little guy has such big, beautiful brown eyes!

You can tell they’re related…more big brown eyes!

Now here’s a smile that makes you want to smile right back!

A kid photo session just isn’t complete without a few silly faces, now is it?!?

Little Miss “A” reminds me of Cameron Diaz a bit…what do you think?!?

And here’s the entire crew…I won’t tell you how many shots I had to take just to get this one with all ten of them facing me!

Have a great rest-of-the-week!

I found this brilliant green katydid on the side of the house a couple of days ago. He (yes, it was a “he” katydid) seemed to enjoy his impromptu little photo session.

I’m going to be an aunt!!! After 35 years of, well…not being an aunt…I’ll finally get to be called “Aunt Kristi!” The little bib in the photo is what my brother and sister-in-law wrapped in a box and gave to my mom at a recent picnic to let her know she was going to be “Grammy” for the third time.

I’m pullin’ for a girl. This side of the family is seriously overdue for a girl. Like, 35 years overdue!

Literally. At 2:30 AM. Lightning. Thunder. A lot of rain. A lot of WIND. One of the strongest lines of thunderstorms in perhaps several years passed through overnight and left us a lovely present in the back yard. It also put our new generator to the test (and it works quite well, thank you very much). But wow, what a textbook bow echo on the radar loop:

And our backyard after a 30-foot section of locust tree came tumbling down, luckily missing the shed:

There is another chance for storms overnight tonight. Hopefully they will play nice this time.

One thing that was on the “must have” list when we were house shopping last year was a front porch. Our last house had a back porch and a deck, but it’s just not the same as a front porch where you can sit and watch the neighborhood happenings. We all love hanging out on the porch on a warm summer evening.

I recently decided to grab the camera and document one of our many porch outings when the boys started acting zany. And yeah…another advantage of the porch is that it provides great portrait lighting!

Enjoy…

Lately, Trevor has been all about showing off the two most recent empty spaces in his teeth. He lost both of these within one week of each other:

Aaron and Corey looking at a model train mag (a common interest between the two of them):

Just plain silly:

A petunia that fell off one of my hanging baskets:

Have a great rest of the weekend!