We left San Diego last Friday. I didn’t really dwell on saying goodbye to it as a place since I was caught up in the details of moving. On our last morning there, at the forefront of my mind was keeping the cat as comfortable as possible (he threw up about three times on our flights–it was gross) and keeping the tot from wreaking too much havoc. He’s flown a fair bit for a two-year-old…this was his 20th flight already. And I experienced both my best moments flying with him (he slept the entire duration of our second leg after we took off) and the worst (before we took off on that leg, he was kicking the seat in front of him and then screaming at the top of his lungs when I held his legs down–it was a very long ten minutes).

But now that we are on solid ground with some time to relax at my mom’s house in Dallas, I’ve had a chance to think about all the places and sights I am going to miss in and around San Diego. It is an amazing place.

Palm trees in our neighborhood

Sunrise from the park

A few shots of the beach in our neighborhood, Ocean Beach, all taken after sunset on different days

The road up to the mountain town of Julian

Outside of Julian

Winery, Temecula, CA

Joshua Tree National Park

Moonrise in Joshua Tree NP

The Flower Fields in Carlsbad

San Diego waterfront

Point Loma Tidepools near high tide

My new website is now live! Check it out. With a shiny new logo and everything.

This week has been crazy with moving stuff. We had the movers pack our stuff for us, which I thought would make it easier (and it did), but it was still stressful. And the movers were a few hours late getting here and then it took them until 1 A.M. to finish packing and loading the truck…AND they forgot a couple drawers in the kitchen! But it’s all out now, and the cleaners came today and worked their magic (and I highly recommend Maid in America for cleaning services if you need cleaners in San Diego).

And now I have to go out to dinner (can’t get this sparkling clean apartment dirty).

My two-year-old recently realized that my camera was cool to play with. It started when I said to him one day, “Some day I will show you how to use a camera and you’ll be able to take your own pictures!” He looked up at me, thought for a minute, and then started pointing to my camera like he wanted it. Haha…maybe I shouldn’t have given him the idea?

He doesn’t understand looking through the viewfinder so I just hold the camera for him–it’s heavy!–and we point it at something and he presses the shutter release button. Then he looks at the LCD screen and laughs when he sees the image. Especially when it’s MOMMY on the LCD screen. (I now have bunches of out-of-focus and up-the-nose photos of myself…) Here’s one of his:

All the orders have been placed. I’m now just waiting to get the prints from my lab. I should just manage to get those delivered before we leave here. The movers come in a week and the reality of that hasn’t really hit me yet. At least they are packing for us, so I don’t have that task to deal with, too.

I’ve been working on redesigning my website lately. Just tweaking the existing design, really. But all new colors, so it’ll look pretty different. I hope to reveal that here very soon.

And so this isn’t all text, here’s a photo. Most of you probably know that I have a photoblog where I post a new photo each day (taken that day) of my son. I’ve never missed a day in over 2 years! They’re just snapshots of his day, and as annoyed as he sometimes gets with me for always pointing the camera at him, I hope that some day he appreciates having this collection of photos from each day. Here’s one from last week. (And the whole website can be found at CuriousLyle.)

Ok…a couple of pics from my very last photo session in San Diego. I am trying to get everyone’s galleries up so I can get orders in so I have time to order from my lab and have them back in time to deliver them before I leave town. Whew. It’s coming up quickly. I move in TWO WEEKS, people. Hard for me to believe, really, but that’s a whole other post.

Here’s the S-H family. We did these on the grounds of the Marston House in Balboa Park, which is beautiful. I’ve got color versions of these, too, but I think I like the b&ws best.

I’m done with photo sessions for now. I will be setting up shop in Houston once we get settled there, but that’s going to be a few weeks out. We’ll be living in corporate housing (a short-term, furnished place so we don’t have to move our stuff twice) while we look for a house. I’m not sure how long it will take me to get set up there.

But on to the images! One of my best friends here is pregnant and due in November. She asked me to do some maternity photos of her before I leave. And even though she’s only about 20 weeks along, she’s already showing quite a bit (hello, second pregnancy!). Here are some of my favorites from our maternity shoot. (I know the first one has nothing to do with maternity–I just like it!)

What is cuter than a toddler at the beach? How about ELEVEN toddlers at the beach?? And ten beautiful moms who get together at least once a week for a playgroup who asked me to get a few group shots of them all.

The cute was out of control. I will share two pictures with you for now. There is probably some funny caption that should accompany the first one, but I’m so bad at being clever. Any ideas?? In this first shot with the naked bums, you can see there are only six and not all eleven. This was the most I managed to photograph in a line at once (naked, anyway–we did a different series of a line of babies with clothes on). Moms kept setting down the kids then running out of the frame real fast. Kids would stand up, toddle off, run off, cry and look for mom, whatever, so the quantity and identities of toddlers in the naked baby lineup was ever-changing. I just stayed behind shooting constantly as babies moved in and out of the lineup. It was probably very comical for outsiders to watch.