Teenager

My niece K is 13 today. I didn't forget her birthday, but I almost forgot that I planned to do special posts for my nephieces when they turn 13! It's been since February when my nephew turned 13, so it slipped my mind. But here I am! (Don't let me forget when it's Z's turn!)

(Me holding K, fresh from the oven.)

When K was born, her family was living with my parents and me for awhile. So K and I were roommates way back. ;) She was born very early in the morning (1-something, I believe), and my mom and I went to the hospital to wait for her arrival.

Because I didn't yet have a digital camera, I don't have many photos of her as a baby. But these are from when she was closer to 1, I think, and both with her older sister L. (She and L are exactly 18 months apart, so of course they played together a lot and we have lots of photos of them together back when they were my sister's only two daughters.)

However, I have thousands of pictures of her from about age 2 up, and it's very hard for me to choose some for this post!

I don't really like this photo of myself, but here we are again.

I have a memory of K that gets me emotional just thinking about it, but this photo reminded me, so I'll share. One year, her family got tickets to see Lion King (the live musical), but then her dad had a migraine and couldn't go, so I went in his place. K, probably about 3 years old, was on her mom's lap, and both girls seemed really into the play. You know how the Circle of Life song kind of builds and climaxes with holding up the lion cub for all the animals to see? Well, K was so into it, that when the music got very strong and they held up the cub, she shot her little fist up in the air all victorious-like. It was like she couldn't contain herself. She probably didn't even realize she was doing it. Oh my, it was SO ADORABLE. Too adorable.

K is both laid back and kind of zany. She doesn't take herself too seriously and can be goofy without self-consciousness.

Her personality makes her a natural with kids. She is calm and will spend time playing with them, reading them stories, etc. But then she'll also get riled up and lead them in noisy excitement, too. She's energetic and naturally skilled at physical things like climbing and running.


[Same tree as the first photo.]
Something else about K is that she's always a willing subject for the camera. She's naturally able to find and hold poses for me, and doesn't ever seem to object when I want to get pictures. In that and many other ways, we are opposites.

But in some ways we are alike. She loves art and music. She likes to draw and puts together scrapbooks of design ideas. She writes song lyrics. She's generally compliant.

There's so much more I could say, but to sum up: K is awesome, and I love love love being her aunt/tia. I only wish we could hang out on a regular basis. The plan is for her to fly out to see me next summer, like her older sister did. I can't wait!


(We used to do a lot of sleepovers when I lived in the same town, and we would put on face masks.)

(She is in the background, but I came across this funny photo and wanted to post it. She's dancing with L and their cousin J.)


Happy birthday, beautiful K-meister!

Portraits from my CA trip (Part 2)

Continuing on from my first post, here are the rest of my favorite portraits from my recent trip to see family.

K is almost 13, and is always a patient and natural model for me. I barely have to instruct her, she just changes her pose naturally and holds for a photo.

Love.

Just a snapshot of her using her phone, but I thought it turned out prettily.

Next is L, age 14 and looking suddenly so grown up. Don't you love her glasses?

I wanted to take some with L and K together because I have so many of the two of them when they were young. I wanted comparison shots. Look at those girls--they're almost the same height, both over 5'7!! In our family, that's very tall.

For a little comparison, here they are in 2006.

Then I wanted photos of K with N, because they had matchy-match dresses on (actually, all three of the older girls had very similar dresses). This was one of those situations where K was kind of annoyed at the matching dresses, but little N was proud to be matching her big sister. I love how N's like a mini-K in these.

K made sure to point out that her dress had a striped pattern underneath and N's doesn't. So they're not quite identical.

Another family picture of my sister and her girls. E had just woken up and was not super thrilled about picture time, so I didn't push to get a perfect smiling photo. We just let her have her lollipop.

Thanks for looking!

Portraits from my CA trip (Part 1)

Last weekend I got back from a quick trip down to northern California where my sister and her daughters were visiting my parents. It was convenient and cheaper for me to get in some visiting time while they were (relatively) close by, and I'm sooooo so glad I did it. The weather was awesome (70s, sunny), I got some quality time with everyone, and it wasn't as overwhelming as when I'm around all of my nephieces at once (not that I don't like seeing all of them!). When it was time to go back to dreary Oregon, I really didn't want to go.

(How good looking are my parents?! I love this picture!)
My favorite day was Friday. My parents had planned a gathering for some friends and relatives to come visit, and so the girls all dressed up and I took lots of pictures. It was really fun and I hope they had a good time, too. Here are a bunch of my favorites. I'm going to divide these into two posts.

This is 6-year-old N.

She loves posing and is very good at it.

She wanted to make sure I got a photo of the back of her dress.

Her poses are adorable, but I like the in-between moments when she's just being herself, a beautiful little girl.

There she is with my mom's dog Sheridan.

Then it was E's turn. She's 2, so it's trickier to get decent photos, but she did very well. I never use this word, but she looks so precious in that left photo. Her innocent little face. I love her!

I cheated a little--some of these photos were not totally in focus, but hopefully at this smaller size they aren't too bad.

This spot in my parents' back yard was ideal for pictures. The light was so nice.

The girls love that big fish. They like to sit on it.


Goodness, it's hard to look at these because I miss them so much!

Coming next: some of the older two girls!