A Little Western Flair from Thursday...

Here are a few more from last Thursday. Love the attitude I'm getting in some of these. Of course, she threatened to steal my boots and take them back to Hawaii with her.

A few more from downtown...

Just a few more from downtown. These were taken at Legislative Plaza.

Our Downtown Session

So after the field in Kingston Springs, we headed to downtown Nashville. I should have been paying attention to local news, and I would have known they were getting ready for CMA-fest, previously known as Fan Fair. So some of the place we wanted to shoot were either inaccessible because of flood damage, or because of CMA-fest. The Symphony Hall was still barricaded while they tried to dry out all the water damage from a month ago. The Country Music Hall of Fame had a bunch of white tents in front of it for Fan Fair. And there was heavy machinery on the Pedestrian Bridge. We worked around all that as best we could. That and the harsh sun which was still blasting down on us.

How freakin' awesome are these shoes?

Saying goodbye for more than 6 months sucks!

So the kid left today. She's driving back to Memphis, where she will spend the night and catch a plane tomorrow for Honolulu. She was only here for 8 days--not nearly long enough! It's been six months since her last visit home (Christmas) and we won't see her again until December when we fly out to Hawaii for her college graduation.

Of course, I had to take just a few more photos of her before she drove off...

Her Last Evening at Home...

Parrish is leaving tomorrow to go back to school in Hawaii, so we had to have another portrait session tonight. We started in Kingston Springs, in an empty field...

I'll share the ones from downtown in a few days.

Vintage Betsy Johnson

This is Parrish's favorite dress, from Betsy Johnson's Vintage Collection. Betsy is Parrish's favorite designer, and she was absolutely thrilled to find this darling dress in a second-hand store with the original tags still on it. She got it for a steal! We shopped everywhere for the perfect shoes, but couldn't find what we were looking for. We finally gave up and she wore my Kenneth Coles. I made the headband for her.

So this morning, we met up with Rebekah, Aleah, and Skye, and drove down to my favorite neighborhood in Franklin--Westhaven. It was the perfect spot for this session. Unfortunately, it was miserably hot! We lasted about an hour and a half before giving into the heat, and deciding to go to lunch.

Just as we were about to leave, Rebekah discovered the battery in her van was dead! If I had driven my car instead of Parrish driving hers, we would have been fine, as I have two sets of jumper cables in my truck. But Parrish didn't have any. A very kind man coming home from his morning walk knocked on several doors to try and find us a set of cables, but no one who was home had any. We finally drove to Wal-mart in Parrish's car and bought a set. But first we had lunch at Genghis Grill. Love that place! (Ran into Zach while I was there, too.)

Fortunately, Rebekah's van started right up with a little jump from Parrish, and we all headed home to our air conditioning and Photoshop!

Here's the first set of images from this morning...

First Snow of 2010

Well, the kiddo has gone back to Hawaii. We actually had to take her to the Marriott near the airport last night, because we knew with the weather forecast of snow and ice, we wouldn't be able to drive out of our neighborhood this morning. I felt awful leaving her at a hotel alone her last night in town, but she couldn't afford to miss that flight early this morning. Classes start on Monday, and she has to work this weekend. She wasn't upset about it, but I was! She only gets to come home for a couple weeks a year now, so I treasure every day of her time here.

But the weather forecast was right, we did get snow, and we couldn't get out of our neighborhood. And you can see here that Woofey was not at all pleased with this turn of events. He's definitely not fond of snow. No matter how pretty he looks in it.

Parrish

Whenever Parrish makes it home from Hawaii, I have to update her portraits. She has always been my favorite model--she's willing to do just about anything I can think up!

Rummikub

I love playing board games, but my darling husband doesn't. So when my kiddo comes home from college for visits, we play our favorite game--Rummikub. It's kind of like Gin Rummy, but with tiles instead of cards. You have to create sets of the same number in different colors, or runs of sequential numbers in the same color. First one to get rid of all their tiles wins. And Parrish has mad Rummikub skillz, let me tell you. She is hard to beat. While she was home on this trip, we spent hours playing this game. I think I beat her maybe 6 times to her 2 dozen wins!