York County Fair

A few weeks ago, on one of my last weekends before Wedding Madness 2008 (I'm basically shooting every weekend from mid-September to mid-November) kicked back into high gear, we took a trip out to see my parents in York, PA. The York County Fair was in full swing and Jake and my mom and I spent the better part of the afternoon taking in all the sights and smells and rides and tasty goodness that Central Pennsylvania has to offer.

Jake's brilliant mother, you know, the one who is a professional photographer, managed to forget her camera in the car. So I had nothing to record Jake's first glimpse of racing pigs, no photos of the look of sheer terror when he saw a (really ugly) turkey live and in person ("Oh no! Mommy what happened him?"), no pictures of him meeting and petting a half-dozen live baby deer, not a single image of him riding round and round with squeals of delight as he sat in the car of the kiddie rides. Nope, not me. I left my camera in the car.

Luckily, some of the amusements at the fair capitalized on the forgetfulness of parents, an offered (and by offered, I mean charged willingly) to take photographs of your child enjoying themselves and printed the photos before your very eyes!

I present for your viewing pleasure, the trifecta of cuteness:


Yes, this is Jake. In a basket. With a baby piglet. And a baby deer. I mean, REALLY??!! Do you know what torture it was to see this image unfolding before my eyes and NOT having a camera to document this??

And we also got a picture of Jake and myself with an enormous Clydesdale horse. Jake was rather vocal about the fact that this was DEFINITELY a boy horse. If you get my drift.


I've been a little better about remembering my camera now after this debacle. ;)

Jake-isms, Installment One

These fun little "Jake-isms" have been typed into my Blackberry NotePad as they happened over the last month or so, and copied and pasted for your viewing pleasure today:





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Returning after being shooed from the kitchen so that mommy could clean up the broken glass: "I bring my firetruck. He wanna get big boo-boo too."


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While brushing our teeth together:

Jake: "Doing Mommy?"

Me: "I'm brushing my teeth Jake, what are you doing?"

Jake: "I eating cake."


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Jake, after giving a pretzel stick to the dog: "You're welcome!"


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Jake, authoritatively, after taking a long sip of mommy's iced latte: "It's decaf."


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Pointing to a spot on the back of his head that just got a boo-boo: "It's red!"


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"Mommy, what's wrong? What's wrong wiff my butt?"


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Eating noodles: "I wanna haff too much. Okay Mommy?"


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Pointing to a small brown leaf that blew into our kitchen from outside: "Look, dat's dog poop, okay?"


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About the dog, who is playing with his ball: "She's a BAD dog!"


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Jake has a paper cup filled partially with water, and another with puffed wheat cereal. He begins to mix the two together: "I'm making juice!"

Labor Day Indeed!

I'm a little late to post this, but it's so cool I just had to mention it on my blog. My twin cousins, Shane and Shawn, both were expecting their wives to deliver babies roughly around the same time. To add to the excitement, Shane and Shawn's big sister Kristen was also expecting a baby. So my Aunt Donna Jeanne had 3 of her 4 kids expecting babies within a very short time period (must be something in the water at the Yarnall household!). You may remember that Kristen had her baby girl a few weeks ago.

Well Shane's wife Tina had a few trips to the hospital that were false alarms, and all the while, her sister-in-law, Shawn's wife Tiffany, was progressing too. Well fast forward to Labor Day where Shane and Shawn are having breakfast together in Chester County Hospital (where I was born too!) waiting for the babies to progress. Later that morning, both of their wives give birth to gorgeous healthy babies -- on the same day! Shane and Shawn were born on February 1st, and both have babies born on September 1st - Labor Day! How wild is that?!

Welcome to the world:

It's a Boy!
Brady Joseph

Born September 1, 2008
proud parents Shawn and Tiffany
(and big brothers Brett and Brian)
11:30 a.m.
7 pounds 9 ounces
20 1/2 inches long


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It's a Girl!
Alaina Michelle

Born September 1, 2008
proud parents Shane and Tina
9:27 a.m.
7 pounds 3 ounces
20 inches long

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It's a Girl!
Presley Marie

Born August 19th, 2008
proud parents Kristen and Chris
(and big sister Madison)
2:52 AM
8 pounds 1 ounce
20 3/4 inches long

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*I can't take credit for the gorgeous pictures - they have all been "borrowed" from my cousin's blogs...

We are still waiting on hearing good news from Cousin Stephanie, who is awaiting the birth of her second baby in the next month.... We're also waiting on Tina to get a blog. I am sure with all of her "free time", she will throw one together any day now ;)

The Massive Ocean City Vacation post you've been bugging me about waiting for!

In my defense, I took over 500 pictures on my vacation, so I had quite a bit to sort through, in addition to catching up after taking a week off in the middle of wedding season... See, even a photographer ends up working on her vacation! ;)

Without further ado, and in no order whatsoever because I refuse to spend any more of my Labor Day sorting through images...

Heading to the beach with Geedah and Peepa.


Eating his first (and last) Rita's of the summer...


"I so happy!"


Stopping at Wawa in Dover on the way down to OCMD, we decided to rock out. Here Jake does his "rock horns."


Geedah and Jake having fun, and luckily for me and my camera, it was in the perfect late afternoon light!


My two favorite pictures of Jake for the vacation:


Someone stole my fresh-squeezed lemonade:


On the boardwalk


Bludgeoning a crab


Our little guard dog, who managed to bark at every other dog she saw from our porch (and she is not normally a barking kind of dog)


Playing MTV Drumscape with Daddy


We try to take this shot every year, I should try to find last years's shot of him...


jake, Dada, Geedah, Peepa. (No, we didn't think to get one of all five of us. Duh.)


The Boyds (Caley, Uncle Bob, Aunt Marianne, Brad)


Cosuin Bec, Rollin, Aunt Nancy


The moms and daughters: Caley and Aunt Marianne, Beccah and Aunt Nancy (Jess had to go back to school), me and mom.


Jake and Geedah onthe beach, eating leftover Dolle's caramel corn.


Balloon hat, made by non-enthusiastic somewhat scary Russian teenage clown....um..yeah....


Peepa, Jake and Daddy on our last night on the boardwalk, catching the train back to where our car was parked.


We had to get rid of the leftover Carvel ice cream Birthday cake in the freezer before we left, so Jake volunteered to take one for the team and had, gasp, ice cream cake for breakfast. There goes my mother of the year award....


Playing skeeball on the boardwalk. Jake throws it overhand - ha!


Jake and Dad in the gorgeous afternoon sunlight.


My dad spotted this from the Boardwalk, and I just had to go back for the photo.


I took as many pictures as possible when the sunlight settled over the bay. GORGEOUS light!


The one and only picture you will ever see of me in my bathing suit on this blog. Ever. Jake fell asleep and took his nap on my chest while we were on the beach. You can see the bathing suit marks on his little cheeks!!


There is some kind of fellowship who builds these amazing sand sculptures each year. They are so amazing. We went to take a closer look, and I looked down at Jake in his stroller and he has his hands clasped in prayer! I was so proud and full of joy to see that! :)


My favorite cute boys :)


The amazing sunset over the bay that I was mentioning


More Boardwalk fun...


This was after playing miniature golf one day. This was about five minutes before we went into the arcade and Ralph spotted former Phillies player and current ESPN Baseball Tonight host, John Kruk!


A mean game of Pictionary broke out one night between Aunt Nancy,Bec, Caley, Aunt Marianne, my mom and I. Guess whose team won? I'll give you two hints: she was an art major and she writes this blog.


Jake got the chance to sit in an actual OCVFD firetruck! Very cool! I couldn't believe the firemen invited us in to do this! :)




The aforementioned miniature golf course.


And one more of my happy cute boy on our last night on the boardwalk.


Already counting down to go again next year! :)