Spring photos

I cut my run short to 4 miles so I could spend more time with the boys; I'll run long tomorrow while they're at school, before I pack for this week's trip. Also got some laundry done, and cleaned up the joint a bit before we headed out for our annual spring photo shoot.

I try to take the boys' photos as often as I think about it, and prefer casual snapshots to posed portraits, but at least once a year, I get them into their Easter outfits a few weeks early and we find someplace to get something a little more "formal," but with me as the photographer. This year, with all the change in our lives, Easter snuck up on me, so we had to go out today, and I don't think we could have picked a better afternoon. We met up with our favorite aunt for lunch, and then headed over to the lake and the Dallas Blooms! at the Arboretum. We'd never been out there before -- last year we went to the Gaylord and the year before that we went to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. All were great spots, with lots of benches and nice floral and foliage backgrounds. My subjects get a little more cooperative every year, but I'm a little rusty with the camera, so I was a bit frustrated today with the technical results. But I did manage to get a few wonderful shots that really did make the day worthwhile. I'm still trying to decide which one will be the wall portrait -- I usually send one to a local lab to be enlarged to 11*14 or a bit larger.

Here are the best of them (click the photo for the slideshow):