Hawaiian Shaved Ice--In Kansas!!!

Who would imagine finding a Hawaiian Shaved Ice stand in Kansas??!!! This little place in Junction City, Kansas was a surprisingly great find.  Living in Hawaii I'm used to having some delicious, authentic shave ice.  Pelican Pete's in J.C. was a treat!  The ice used at Pelican Pete's was more finely ground than what we're used to in Hawaii (I liked both kinds), and the flavors were just as yummy.  The 110-degree heat index also made these taste especially good.

We got a huge kick out of the decor......

 Tiki man was a bit scary-looking.....

And I'm pretty sure we don't have alligators in Hawaii....at least not on my roof we don't! 

The kids (my two daughters and a friend) enjoyed the oversized swing.

But my favorite decorative item was the pedal-boat-to-nowhere....

A great place to go on a hot summer afternoon!  (Evenings are great, too--the place is ablaze with twinkly lights and happy music.)  How can you help but love a place like this??!  It'll definitely be on my tour stop the next time I'm in town.

City Girls and Country Cows

I was in Kansas recently, helping my oldest daughter get settled back at K-State.  It was also a great time to visit with friends and family.

One of the first days I was back home, we visited a dairy.  Since my girls are "city girls," my mom thought it'd be fun for them to see some cows close up.  Visiting cows was not on my girls' list of things to do while on vacation (their idea of sightseeing is to visit shopping malls), but they went along for the fun.  We were warmly welcomed at Hildebrand Farms and invited to go visit the cows in their pens.  (I had to remind the girls to stand upwind, not downwind!)  It was great fun, and I'll bet those cows have never been photographed so much!  

This little calf craved attention:

She even offered free kisses:

And more pics:

It was a great little visit to Hildebrand Farms.  Although we didn't get a chance to try the ice cream, we did buy some delicious fresh cheese curds.  The ice cream will have to wait til our next trip....

Shooting my kids

This was literally one of the hardest sessions I've done in a long time.  It was hard because these are my daughters.  And they wouldn't sit still!  They kept giggling, tickling each other, refusing to get close, and then they'd complain they were hungry.  One would make a comment and they'd fall over in a fit of laughter.  I told them it was easier to photograph the family pets than it was to photograph them!  (You can see some of the pet pics in an earlier post.) 

We'd been planning to do a formal session for awhile.  My oldest daughter (the one on the left) was home from college for the summer and both girls wanted formal portraits taken.  (Caroline will be a sophomore in college and Catherine will be a high school senior this fall.)  My friend Corvette Dela Cruz is an awesome hair and makeup artist and she offered to come over and make the girls up.  They were so excited!  You would think that being the daughters of a photographer they'd be tired of getting their pictures taken.  Not necessarily.  When they're in the right mood, they love to ham it up for me.  This session was especially fun (and challenging!) because I'd shown them some ideas I had and they were just plain giddy.

It took me over an hour to finally get the shot I wanted.  Not because I'm slow, but because they'd sit for a second, then look at each other and burst out laughing.  It's a far cry from when they were younger and would argue constantly or simply refuse to cooperate.  (Someday I'll have to post a pic I used for our Christmas card when the girls were little.  I tried to get everyone smiling, but my youngest refused to smile.  So the annual card had a family pic with her scowling while everyone else was smiling.)

For this session I was finally able to get them to settle down by doing what I always do when working with wild animals.  I bribed them with food.  I told them that if they'd sit for just a couple more shots, my husband and I would take them out for a nice dinner.   It worked like a charm.

It's nice to have this image of the two of them because creating the image was almost as fun as seeing it finished.  I smile every time I see it.