These are my neighbors, the Ringers, AKA “Crazy Town”. You will usually find us all outside around a bonfire with all our crazy kids running around hurting each other. I’m not going to write anything else, because I think you’ll be able to see how much fun they are by their pictures. 
John wanted this picture because this is the way he feels most every day! 
I can’t take credit for this idea. Thanks to The Image is Found for the idea!
Filed under: updates
I hope that Santa treated you all well on Tuesday. We had a wonderful morning and then wonderful evening with both sides of our family. As much as we love being able to share Christmas with everyone, we always forget how tired we are at the end of the day. We also don’t get a chance to play with our new toys till about 10 that night. It’s totally worth it though. We got sad news though. Adam’s grandfather passed away Christmas afternoon. While we’re sad to lose him, we were expecting that call. So Adam and his brother joined their parents for the 14 hour hike up to upstate New York yesterday for the funeral services today. I was told that the fire hall where he had volunteered draped everything in black and the American Legion are hosting a reception following the services. I’m praying that this loss will be start of some healing between my father-in-law’s siblings. Since Adam left yesterday and the trip is 14 hours both way, I’ve been single parenting it for the first time this weekend. This weekend has been crazy already. Yesterday was Noah’s 2nd birthday. So we just spent it together. Our friend’s Dave and Kathi came over with their son Gavin to have dinner and cupcakes with us. We opened presents and had a good time. Then my friend’s Sarah and Rusty called me at 6:50 this morning to let me know that they were in labor and I should head over to the birthing center so I could grab some shots of Miss Eleanor being born (nothing gory of course). However, by the time my neighbor John got to our house and I got in the car, I had missed it! We’re all amazed at how fast she had her. She was born at 7:15 this morning. I was still able to get some wonderful shots of the three of them even though I wasn’t there for the very first moments. WELCOME TO THE WORLD ELEANOR!!!! So now Noah’s napping and I’m going to try to do some much needed catch up. Here are some things to come….The Ringers, Christmas, Noah’s 2nd Birthday, and Miss Eleanor
This has been a wild and crazy year with many ups and downs. I can’t believe that it’s already Christmas Eve! I feel like it’s supposed to just be Thanksgiving. However, we made the trip down to Atlanta yesterday to spend Christmas Eve and morning with our friends and family down here. Then we’ll hop back in the car at about 1 tomorrow to make it back to Knoxville to be with Adam’s family for dinner and presents. Even though we spread ourselves thin in order to see everyone, it’s what we want to do. This time of year is so important to us as we celebrate our savior’s birth and there’s no better way of doing that than being with those we love the most. Well, we also like to drag out Christmas day as long as we can (when I say we, I mean me)! I sent out 250 cards this year, but I KNOW that I missed a ton of people. I want to do much better at getting everyone next year. So if you would like to receive a Christmas card next year, e-mail me your address and just a brief little something about being on my christmas card mailing list. Oh, here’s my e-mail address, mvelasco@comcast.net. Some of you may not have gotten your card yet, but they are in transit. It’s not personal, you just fell through the cracks while we were putting together 3 different lists. 
So when I was in New York, I stayed with my friends Emily and Joe. You should remember Emily from her pictures with their son Emmett a little while ago. We took advantage of me being up there and took some pictures around 5th avenue. We started at Rockefeller Center, along with about 100,000 of our closest tourist friends. So it wasn’t the easiest shoot I’ve had. We had a good time though. 
If anyone from FAO is looking at this, this didn’t happen or you didn’t see this. Please don’t get this poor soldier man in trouble! 
Filed under: Misc
Kelly Moore Clark is a photographer who’s blog is one that I “stalk” (you should stalk her blog too). She just had a baby about a month or so ago and has asked her friend Jenn to nanny for her. Jenn has a baby about Posey’s age as well. Jenn has started posting about the adventures of Po and Siri. Here are the two posts that she done so far. They are stinkin’ hysterical!“the first encounter”“the bumbo”
Filed under: engagement
Last weekend I flew up to New York to visit with some of my friends. While I was there, I figured that I might as well make the most of my time and the incredible cityscape and get in an engagement shoot. So I called my friends Emily and Mark to see if they would be up for it. We spent the entire day just playing around the city. We would shoot for a little while, then take an hour long coffee break, shoot for a little longer, eat lunch for another hour, then shoot some more. We had such a great time catching up and just playing! I really wanted to get some New York landmarks. You know, the areas that everyone recognizes. Shoot, I want people to know that I’ve done an engagement shoot in New York!I was really inspired by the movie “Manhattan” by Woody Allen. (if you haven’t seen it, it’s a good movie and really beautifully shot) I wanted to shoot in Grand Central Station with the sun streaming through the windows, but that wasn’t going to happen since it was cloudy the entire day. I’m not complaining though. Towards the end of the day, it started snowing! We were on our way to the 59th street bridge and it started to really come down. I wanted to go back and shoot everything over again in the snow. 
I can’t decide. Color? 
Or B&W? Let me know what you think. 
Fun with traffic! 
After we went to the Botanical Gardens with Scott and Amy, we went to Lenox to ride The Pink Pig. Mom never took my sister and I to ride when we were little, but she went as a little girl. It used to be on the ceiling of the toy department. Noah was happy when it started going, but he was really squirmy till we started moving…shocking, I know.
Talk about a nightmare to white balance! The entire tent was HOT pink!
All that squirming can tucker a brother out!
But not tired enough to stay out of the dryer!
I’ve had such a crazy wonderful travel schedule. After Charles and Kacey’s reception, I stayed in Atlanta so I had an extra set of hands with Noah so I could get some of this holiday rush work done. While I was down there, I got to take pictures of my cousin Amy and her husband Scott. We went down to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens and had fun playing around. While we were there, they were shooting a Quaker commercial with the giant quaker man statue. I told my mom to hang around the set with Noah to see if maybe they wanted to toss the most handsome baby ever created in there, but they didn’t. Oh well, their loss. Anyway, here are my favorite pictures from my fun session with Scott and Amy. 
Filed under: Meggie Updates
I just got an e-mail from John and Lindsey to tell me that they finished our pictures from our mini-session last week. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go look at them! I’m not kidding, I got a little teary when I started watching the slideshow. We’ve NEVER had pictures done and really have never had pictures of all us. I can’t even begin to tell all of you how incredible I think all of these pictures are. Let me know what you think. More importantly, let John and Lindsey know. Go to the Bamber’s Website, go to “Portraits”, then to “proofs”. Type in the password “velasco” (it is case sensitive). You can watch it in a slideshow by clicking on the play symbol on the bottom left hand side.
FINALLY! I’ve finally caught up on my blogging.
Kacey and Charles got married November 15 on Peter Island. No, sadly, I didn’t go with them (not from a lack of trying). However, they asked me to come down to Atlanta and shoot the black tie reception they had at The Capital City Club. So I met them at their house to get some pictures of them getting ready and then we headed over there early so we could play around and get some great shots of them. We were going to try to make it to The Varsity, but time and light wasn’t a luxury we had. So we just took our time and played around the club’s grounds. Then we proceeded to dance the night away. I had such a great time with them and all of their guests….even if we didn’t make it to the Varsity!
