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Kate Parker Photography | | | McKinney | TX | 75070
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This email was sent to kwaite@prodigy.net by kate@kateparkerphotography.com |
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Kate Parker Photography | | | McKinney | TX | 75070
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I think I believe it. Despite being nearly two and three years old, I’m fairly sure these two brothers are on The Nice List (as their shirts indicate). I’m not going to lie… photographing two and three-year-old kids is not the easiest game in the photographer’s season, though.
And I have to shamelessly point out that getting a photo with two toddlers AND their parents all in the same frame smiling AND looking at the camera… well, it’s like the Holy Grail of family photography. So I’m more than a little proud of that family shot (*excusing myself for the loud tooting of my own proverbial horn here*).
Thanks to this wonderful family for coming to my studio again! I’ve been photographing them since Big Brother was a wee newborn, and it is always a pleasure (even now that it’s two toddlers running around the studio!).
First year my youngest made it all the way through trick-or-treating without going into a premature chocolate coma in the wagon. I think maybe he used the force. 






Give yourself the gift you REALLY want this year.
Call 214.578.8578 to book now… limited availability
These sessions are already booking up quickly, so do call soon if you don’t want to miss this year’s limited mini sessions.
I am adding a few new features to this year’s holiday mini sessions… THREE DAYS of sessions and a FRIENDS** promotion.
WHEN:
Saturday, November 5th (ordering sessions on November 11th)
Thursday, November 17th (ordering sessions on November 28th)
Friday, November 29th (ordering sessions on December 2nd))
WHERE: Kate Parker Artisan Photographer studio
WHAT: 20-minute session on my holiday set. You’ll see approximately 10 to 20 images at your ordering session Your session fee is $50.
SPREAD THE WORD! FRIENDS PROMOTION**
Bring a friend who’s never been to me before (or convince them to book a first-time session with me) and get an full artisan session (booked for 2011) at the price of a mini session (a $285 value). (They get a complimentary 5×7 print.)
Book your session by Halloween and be entered into a drawing for a FREE ARTISAN SESSION FOR 2012!!
($285 value – weekday studio session)
Packages begin at $550 and are geared toward holiday cards and gift giving. Call for more details. Packages also include NEW About Me prints (above).
Okay, so it’s not really a coven of witches. It’s really the amazing women who are members of my book club… but we look like a coven of witches, don’t we?
They were brave enough to follow me on a creative adventure, and I can’t thank them enough for being willing. And yes, I said “we” because I make an oh-so-tiny appearance in this image… see if you can find me (like a freaky version of Where’s Waldo, right?).
The women of my book club teach me so much. I believe our little group covers five decades of age range and a world of difference in points of view, which provides for an amazing breadth of life experience and perspectives on the books we read. Ever since I joined this book club, I’ve known I wanted to try to convince these women to allow me to do some photographs of them. I hope to follow this image with more in the future.
Once again, I’ve been neglecting the blog… sorry, guys! I’ll start back with a featured session. :)
During his photo session, this boy simply defined “precocious.” He was not only very smart but also incredibly able to express himself. I’m pretty sure he’s going to do something amazing one day. Thanks to his mom and dad for allowing me to photograph your family!

I knew when I was shooting this photograph that it just might make me cry when I processed it.. and I was right. There is a special comfort a boy gets from his mother, a soft place full of love and kindness, a vulnerability that appears, in this way, in no other part of life. For me, this image, captures it. I hope he and his mommy agree.
Can you see it? He is clearly explaining the meaning of the universe.
It’s here… my little man’s first day of kindergarten. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can make a mom cry like the scared little face of her kindergartener staring up at her on the first day of school.
He was brave. He didn’t cry. And neither did I. Until I got home.
My third grader, on the other hand, was totally fine. I remember her first day of kindergarten… I was fine until she became hysterical and BEGGED us not to leave. That was that, and I became a basket case in short order.
Some more photos from this morning’s first day of school:
So I’ve been asking myself all day why it’s so hard to drop my kids off on the first day of school. Here’s why I think it is… it’s a complete loss of control. I hate feeling like I can’t save them, protect them or even hug them all day while they’re away from me. It’s also that I remember school. Some years seriously sucked. Others were great. Surely it will be so for my children, as well. And, on that first day, the anticipation is great… knowing that it will be one or the other, hoping it will be the latter, fearing it will be the earlier. Lastly, each year’s first day of school is a hallmark of growth, and it means that my babies are getting older. It means that they are one year closer to moving out of my house and being on their own. I know it’s ridiculous to think of it this way when he’s only five, but I also know that I’ll blink and he’ll be more big than little, more grown up than baby, and more independent than dependent. So, for now, I will bathe in the beauty and joy of every moment I have them little.
Okay, on to a couple of little funnies. When Little Man went in for his kindergarten assessment, one of the questions the assistant principal asked was, “A fish swims in a stream. What does a bird do?” His answer…. “He eats the fish.” Is this brilliance or just a testament to his extraordinarily competitive nature?
Last night, as we were getting ready to go to bed, I asked, “Who’s excited about the first day of school?” “ME ME ME!!” they both answered. Then Little Man said (with his oh-so-adorable lisp), “Mommy, I’m ethpecially exthited that it’th my firtht day of bento box luncheth!” This brings me to the bento boxes. When Big Sister started kindergarten, I was desperate for some way to encourage her to eat lunch. She’s always been a super picky eater, and I just *knew* that she wouldn’t eat lunch at school (at least not if it wasn’t Doritos or cheese). Hence was born the bento box lunch habit. I made the cutest lunches I could, buying all kinds of bento goodies and learning all I could about the Japanese bento tradition. Now that Little Man is in kindergarten, he got to do his own little shopping excursion for bento goodies, and today marked his first day with a bento lunch. So here they are… my little one’s bento lunches for the first day of school 2011.
The bear is Big Sister’s, and the bunny is Little Man’s. They have slightly different tastes (aka willingness to eat certain foods when forced or when the foods are so cute they just *have* to eat them (indulge me thinking they’ll eat this at least today, please)).
Little Man’s bento lunch: broccoli (how could he resist when it looks like a tree, right?), cherry tomatoes, carrot flowers, bing cherries (finally, after YEARS of searching, found a cherry pitter – awesome!) with a little man on a pick, three little pb&j bunny sandwiches, flower kiwi, sliced pluots with monkey pick and champagne grapes filling in the little spaces.
Big Sister’s bento lunch: cherry tomatoes with tomato girl pick, lettuce for salad with bears containing Caesar dressing, little bear pick (just because he’s cute), tiny little plastic fork for her salad and broccoli, three little ham and cheese bear sandwiches (although you can’t see their cute bear faces here), flower carrots, three croutons for the salad, bing cherries, broccoli (again, the tree, although she’d eat it anyway because she loves broccoli), more flower carrots just to make that layer cuter, flower kiwi and sliced pluots with little orange bear pick.
So here’s hoping they eat their lunch or at least open it and think about how much their mommy loves them.
I’ve decided to add a new category to my blog (earth shattering news, I know). It’s called “Lately I’ve Been Thinking a Lot About…” and will cover things unrelated to photography – no, that’s not exactly right… it will cover things unrelated to MY photography… no, not that either – it will cover things I think about (doh). Here’s hoping it won’t be an embarrassingly huge disaster that I have to delete in short order (as is initially indicated by the above disastrous paragraph).
*sitting here staring at my monitor trying to remember the hundreds of brilliant ideas I had for this last night*
I’ll leave this post at an introduction to the new category and hope it goes better next time.
Check out her entire session video…. love your music and your style, Shelby… even if it IS totally different from my own.
Enjoy your senior year!
The first Father’s Day for any father is an amazing one… even if it is marked by extreme sleeplessness.
You may remember this family from their maternity session posted not long ago. Well, baby G has made his big appearance. I must say that I am partial to this boy’s beautiful head of dark hair… so sweet and so full of that fabulous baby smell (love that new baby cologne, by the way, which I had not previously heard of before meeting this boy).
It is an incredible experience each time I have the opportunity to join a family during these very first days of a new baby joining a family – particularly when it’s a first baby. Each time, I am reminded of my own experience as a new mother, a new family. Each time, I go back to those first days of my own first child’s life, the awe of it, the overwhelming joy and sadness and worry and thrill… like the best and worst roller coaster ride I could ever imagine. I get to watch these couples looking at each other and looking at their new baby with that sense of awe, the purity of love at its most base, knowing now, through only what personal experience can allow, what it means to hold your new child in your hands and wonder what his life will be, what your life will be with him in it. It’s genuinely incredible. I especially love when Iget to go to families’ homes for their newborn photography sessions…. because it really is like being in their lives for a little while, a few hours.
Then I get to go home to my own babies, who now sleep all night (most of the time, anyway), who no longer wear diapers (thank goodness) and who can walk and talk and have little adventures all their own. But each time I go home, I bring with me a little piece of memory fresh in my heart of them when they were brand new, when I, too, held each of them in my arms and wondered who they will be and who I and my husband, our family, will be with them new in our lives. And each day it gets better and better.
Thanks to this new mommy and daddy for allowing me to be in your lives for a few hours and join you in your joy of your new baby – and for allowing me to, one more time, bring that piece of my own newborn babies back fresh into my heart. Congratulations!
by kate
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