The Grad Bash

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168.​

That's the number of people we tallied out with a pencil on a napkin this week in the great wind-down from the great graduation bash.​ 168 people there to celebrate the graduation of my little sister Natalie. (Thanks to all for coming!!)

Natalie is 19. She is 5 feet tall. She is the baby whisperer. She can make you happier than you were before in no-time-flat. She is a joy to everyone who meets her.​ I'm so grateful to be her sister​!

The celebration went off without a hitch, including a flash mob, a fantastic speech from the graduate, about 20 lbs of pulled pork (of which we will be enjoying leftovers for the next year) and oodles of square dancing. A true shin dig.

We did lots of prep leading up to the party, including a little DIY action: we created some gigantic letters out of recycled cardboard to spell "CONGRATS NAT!" ​You can see the finished product on Pinterest here! They turned out splendidly, thanks to a team effort from my sister Anna (the featured model :-).

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A Real Pile

I love that part in the book Where The Wild Things Are, when the little boy Max talks about he and his monster friends sleeping in a "real pile."

I'm reminded of it sometimes after a I have (or, "survive" might be more appropriate) a weekend like the one I just had, when 1:30AM is full of slap-happy jokes, microwaved left-overs, and an inevitable pile of sleeping children on the carpet or couch or window seat or any horizontal surface. 

Don't call child services. Don't be alarmed. This is normal living ​when the goodness of family is bursting through. This weekend we had bunches of family and friends over to celebrate Natalie's graduation and you could catch the joy in the air with a butterfly net. 

Family is one of the things for which I'm most full-up with gratitude, which is why I love taking wedding photos. It's the fresh new family-of-two's very first celebration. Goodness.

These two people in particular are a gem of a new family! It was evident all day that, for them,  marriage means commitment and sacrifice and joy all bound up by a sincere love for one another. I had the privilege of teaming up with my wonderfully talented photog-friend, Nicole Floetker, to catch it on camera. Thank you, Nico!

(More on this weekend's graduation shin dig to come!)​

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Stars

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Truth: I love the stars. I moved about 30 miles outside the city nine months ago, and the stars away from the urban glow are simply TDF.

This long-exposure was taken of the night sky floating above Lake Ontario and the city of Toronto from the shores of the little town of Niagra-on-the-Lake.

The stars are a beauty! ​We didn't see this handy tutorial on how to photograph the stars until afterwards, but we tried out our street smarts on this one!

Taken with Canon EOS 60D, 18-135mm lens with a 30 second exposure.

Photo cred: Rebekah

​p.s. Do you see that spotty, blinky light? It's a plane!! Cool, huh?

New York in the Fall

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“Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly-sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”

— Joe Fox

So, maybe this isn't New York, and maybe you don't have quite the affinity for the fall that I do, but let me tell you. ​

​I love the fall. The autumn. The leaves. The apple pie. The sweaters. The boots. The cozy. No doubt, there is a Pinterest Board somewhere that visually displays the wonder of what I'm talking about (Seriously - do you know of one? Please comment and tell me!)

Part of my love for the season comes from my love for the movie, You've Got Mail. I may have the screenplay bookmarked on my home and work computers. I may quote it in front of people I don't know hoping for a reaction (thus proving them part of the secret society of YGM aficionados).​

For those of you who share in this obsession, I want you to experience this little gem I've just discovered that is perhaps the original website for the movie when it debuted in 1998. Click it. I know you'll love it...

The cusp of fall into winter caught this beautiful family in front of my lens. A delight to photograph! 

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Toronto Fruit + Detainment

My sister Rebekah and I traveled to Toronto​ this summer to...well...to go on an "exotic foreign vacation" without having to actually go to an airport. Intercontinental-type foreign. (Mexico is too far and too hot, and I've never particularly liked the accent of Mexican Spanish. I'm partial to the Spain-Spanish lisp.)

The trip was horribly planned. So horribly planned, in fact, that we were detained at the Canadian border for an hour. I've since noted that I should take people seriously when they say, "don't act like you're a drug dealer​ at the border," or "at least act like you have a hotel reservation," or "make sure to appoint one person to talk".

​We did all of those things wrong. After we had offered a measly "yersh" to the question about having hotel reservations (we lied), when the very strong-cage-fighter-ish border woman asked us if we'd been to Canada before, I said "no" and Reebs said "yes" simultaneously.

That put her over the edge. She was like, "these girls are crazy, drug dealing, evil Americans who love McDonalds. There's no way they're being granted entrance into the spotless kingdom of Canada."

​So, we had to wait in a sterile detainment facility while I contemplated how all the kayaks and moose and vineyards and mountains and lakes that Canada could muster can not possibly justify the meanness of their border patrol.

These photos are of the gloriously colorful ​Kensington Market in China Town, Toronto.