Ashley & Dan's Wedding in Virginia

On August 8th Ashley and Dan were married at the Historic Kinloch in Supply, Virginia. What an honor it was to be able to photograph my cousin as she wed such a wonderful man. It was wonderful to watch the two of them over the few days that I got to spend with them. Their relationship is truly wonderful. I look forward to sharing all the photos with you. Here are a couple of my favorites.

"WOOOSAAAAAH!"

That is what I have to continue to repeat to myself as I lay in bed with my oldest daughter and try to get her to focus on reading. She loves books. She loves being read to. The problem comes in when she has to read. She knows how to do it but her personality just doesn't help her in this situation. Her mind wanders, her eyes wander, her feet twitch and there I am trying to get her to focus and pay attention long enough to read the first word. Did I say first? Yes, first word.

Last night she picked out a perfect book. It was a Level 1 Fancy Nancy book. I paged through it quickly to make sure that she wouldn't have too much trouble reading through it. After a quick glance I knew she would have no problem. We climbed up into her bed, tucked ourselves all in and I opened the pages, reading the author and illustrator to her. Then . . . the first page.

I tell her, "Ok, sweat pea. Your turn." She grabs a strand of her hair and looks at the page. I wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Finally she says, "That word is too hard. Can you read it?"
I reply, "No! You can read this. I will give you a hint though. It is a silent e word. What happens to the vowels in a silent e word?"
She quickly tells me, "Oh, so I just say their name, right?" I quickly affirm her thought and tell her to give it a try.

Now, the word she is trying to say is Before. She says the sound for B and then waits. She says the sound for e and then waits. She says the sound for f and then waits. She says the sound for o and then waits. Finally she says the sound for r and then waits. And waits. Playing with her hair. Then she exclaims that she is just too hot and needs to get out from under the covers. So I get her out from under the covers, nicely ask her to take her hair out of her mouth and tell me what the word is. "I can't remember" she exclaims.

By this time I am starting to get a little frustrated. It has been over 10 minutes and all we have read is the title, author, illustrator and the letters B-e-f-o-r-e and one of those letters is silent. I tell her to try sounding it out again only to say the sounds a little closer together this time.

Her fingers go into her mouth and she is looking at the ceiling. Examining what, I am unsure of. I ask her to focus and read the word. "But mom, I don't know how to read." Oh my gracious I am going to explode. I exclaim to her that she does she is just choosing not to at this moment and she needs to pull herself together and read. Again we go through sounding out each letter.

Now if you haven't done so already I want you to sound out the word Before slowly making sure to say the vowel names in their place. This is what was happening. Then I would ask, "OK, now what word is that?" She would exclaim with an exhausted expression, "I don't know mom. I can't read." What, but she had just said it. Can't she hear the word? But then I got clever to her and realized it wasn't that she couldn't figure it out. . . oh no, it was that she didn't want to. She wanted to lay there and have me read to her.

After almost 25 minutes working on the word Before I decided that she was way to tired to continue and told her we were done for the evening and could read another night. I think really that was an excuse I used so that I could get out of the room before I totally exploded. My patience level was about at the end of a frayed rope.

I wonder if there is a way to skip past the "learning to read" and get right to the "able to read?" I am sure this will be some sort of great bonding experience for my girls and I, right?

Gonzales Ramseyer Wedding.

Wow! What an amazing last few days. I was given the fabulous opportunity to photograph the wedding weekend of my amazing and wonderful cousin Ashley and her fiance Daniel. They are an amazing couple. Up until this weekend I hadn't had the opportunity to meet Daniel yet, and now that I have I know just what a perfect couple the two of them are.

They were a blast to photograph and I can't wait to get the pictures up for you all to see.