The Weekend

Even though it was a school holiday for the kiddos, I had to get up early and go to Kiddo's school at 8AM this morning. It is a teacher work day and so they hold all the parent teacher conferences on this day.  And I guess because Kiddo's name is the first on the roll, I had the pleasure of not only being up early, but dressed and made up as well.

Ugh.

Happy Monday!

Actually it wasn't all that bad. It's not like a pony tail, powder and mascara takes too long to do.  It was however, difficult for me to concentrate on the teacher knowing that my french vanilla laced coffee was waiting for me in the van.

Thankfully the meeting only took about 10 minutes.

Kiddo is doing great.  He gets along well with other kids, they all like him and his teacher is completely blown away by how well he reads.  She has tested him as best she can with the tools she has and she said her test maxes out at the 2nd grade level for reading. She says he is reading way above that and want's to know exactly where he is though, so she is going to try to set him up with the specialist at the school that can test him further. She said she is going to set up a special box for him with more challenging reading materials and that she has already been giving him books from the Magic Tree House series to read while the rest of the class is working on reading (he already owns and has read several from that series).  She said he writes really well and that he just needs to work on putting more space between words.  His math and social skills are "right where they need to be", and her only "issue" that she mentioned was that he gets his feelings hurt easily.  She said they've been working on all that as well.

She gave me a folder with a bunch of things for him to work on, and then admitted that he doesn't need to work on any of it because he has already mastered it. lol! I had to laugh at that - she had a stack of laminated sight words and said that since he already knew them, maybe I could start working with Port on them.

I am proud of my boy and glad that his teacher has recognized his strengths. I was a bit worried that he would be bored while the other children are working on reading and writing, so it is comforting to know he will have more challenging work to keep him occupied.

This weekend was great! I had a senior session on Friday evening and on Saturday I shot a maternity session in a beautiful location in Dallas.  I drove up there with my friend Jen, who is also a photographer and who consequently had her own session to shoot there as well. We brought along 2 other friends to assist us on our shoots and it was such a blast having them there.  We left town a little before noon, stopped at Sonic on the way out and headed out for adventure.  Along the way we talked, laughed and even called 911! (more on that in a minute)  We arrived earlier than expected and had plenty of time to walk around and scope out the area we would be shooting in.

It was the most amazing place.  I am so glad my client suggested we shoot at the Mandalay Canal at Las Colinas! The Thursday night before we left, Jen discovered that we had to pay a fee and needed a permit to shoot there. It was a huge scramble to get the permit notarized and the payment made in time, but I am so thankful we did because it was sooooo worth it!  That place was absolutely crawling with photographers! We spent the whole time jockeying for position in the different spots along the canal; it was comical to watch each photographer and their clients do an almost choreographed dance between the prime spots. Everyone was very cordial and did their best to stay out of the way of other photographers. I was very impressed. I have had sessions at certain locations in Austin that are popular with photographers, and things have not been so polite. ;)

I had parked my van up at the street level close to, but no where near the front of an Italian restaurant. The street parking was not designated specifically for any one business in the area, so I knew it was ok to park there for the duration of the shoot. However, the restaurant has valet parking in the evenings, and when I came back to the van at one point to grab a shirt out of the back, I noticed that the valet service had set neon green caution cones (with the word "valet" written in black marker) up along the side of the street. They were positioned for at least 100 feet in either direction of the restaurant.  There were several cars besides mine parked along the strip, and I know many of them were from the photographer and clients in the canal below.  I got my shirt and was locking up the van when I heard the valet call out to me.

I turned the opposite direction, ignored him and hastily ran down the stairs to get back to my assistant and gear down below. The valet actually chased me into the stair well and told me I needed to move my van. I knew he had no authority to make me do that. I was legally parked on a city street and had parked there LONG before he put out his Sharpie inscribed "caution" cones (neon green??? really??).  So I turned and said, "ok, in just a minute." and continued down the stairs.

We didn't finish up until almost 2 hours later. ooops...

Jen ran up sometime in there too and retrieved a gift for her client from the back of the van and was also yelled at - she just ignored the "Valet Nazi".

After we wrapped it all up and got back to the van, we debated on where to have dinner. That quest began a wild goose chase that took us all the way to downtown Dallas and then back in the van for another 30+ minutes before we finally found a Cracker Barrel on the side of the highway.

Dinner was late, but it was good. :)

We got back home sometime after 1:30AM.  The drive went by relatively fast thanks to late night giddiness and great conversation.  It is a trip I will remember for a very, very long time.

Until,
D :)

Oh and the 911 call....well for the full story you could listen to this week's episode (due out Tuesday or Wednesday) of Musing Mommies... :)