Monday

Another week has passed. Will THIS be the week? Who knows.

We've had a fairly uneventful long weekend, although we did have some photography excitement! Last summer my photography teacher Dirk invited me to come along with him on a wedding shoot and assist. As a thank you for helping him out he offered to do some family portraits for us for free. I've been meaning to take him up on it forever, but it kept getting put off for one reason or another, but this weekend we decided that it was time to get it done.

He took us down to a pretty area right on the river on Friday evening and we took a bunch of photos. I haven't seen them yet, but I was really happy with the scenery and Dirk is a great photographer, so I think they're going to turn out really well. I'm going over later this week to take a look at them!

Then Saturday I borrowed his studio for a little while and I did some studio shots of our family for a project that I'm working on. I'm used to shooting in my makeshift studio, which is pretty much a backdrop set up in my dining room and hodgepodge of cheap studio lights, so getting to shoot in a real studio for the first time was SO much fun!! We had a ball.


So here's the project I'm working on for Clarissa. I'm making her a picture book of our family and things around our house that I can send to her in Korea for her foster mother to look at with her. I'm hoping that if she looks at it a lot, we'll look more familiar and less scary to her when we bring her home.

I did the studio photos on a white backdrop so that she'll be able to see us with no background distractions and then I had my korean translator translate some phrases to caption the pages.

I don't have the whole book done, but I can share the family photos and the photo of our house that is finished.

For some reason when I post photos here they always end up looking kind of crappy. The photos will look nice and sharp and bright in the book, but Blogger always makes them look a little washed out and grainy.

Here are the photos I have done so far. I'll translate for you. :)

This is Daddy.

This is Mommy.


This is Big Brother Josh.

This is big brother Matthew.

This is our house.

There are going to be more pages that I haven't finished yet, but that's all I have done so far. I had more translated phrases done, so I'm going to add pictures of both of our cats, her bedroom and possibly a few more things. I'm trying to hurry and get it done because I want to be able to mail is ASAP when we get our referral so that she'll have plenty of time to look at it before we go get her. From what I understand, foster mothers are usually really great at showing the babies photos of their family often so that they can get used to seeing them. I also have a few other photo related things that I'll be sending her as well. My hope is that if she sees our faces every day for a few months, by the time we go to get her we'll look a little familiar to her and that might make the transition a little easier. It might work and it might not but it certainly can't hurt! :)

So that's pretty much all that is happening around here these days. The weather is getting nice outside, the birds are back and enjoying the birdfeeder outside my bedroom window again and we're inching closer and closer to summer. That HAS to mean that we're also closer to our referral, right?!