I’d love it if you’d take a moment to fill out the ballot on pages 39 and 40 and vote for Emily Steele Photography as Best Family/Kids’ Photographer.  You must vote for a total of 10 categories for your ballot to be counted, and ballots must be mailed by Sept 23, 2010, but Maryland Family Magazine pays the postage for you!  Thank you for your vote!

(Don’t have a copy?  Find out where you can get one here!)

He certainly has gotten big!  And one more of my no-longer little guy:

Hope everyone else in Howard County enjoys their first day of school today too!

First, we went to Virginia to visit the in-laws.  We went to Doumar’s and spent a day at Busch Gardens, among other things.  Then, the boys and I went to visit my mom in NC.  We stayed there for almost 2 weeks, doing not much of anything in particular.  Last weekend, Noah and I went to my old camp for their 75th reunion weekend.  It was fabulous.  All the old camp activities I remembered, including sleeping on bunk beds in a cabin!  (Noah wanted the top bunk, and I was more than willing to let him have it!)  And while I remembered the songs, and the fun, and the people, the one thing I’d forgotten was how strikingly beautiful the place is!  It’s in the mountains of NC, nestled practically in the middle of nowhere (the 300-some acres of the camp is a conservation easement) and it’s just glorious.  I didn’t have as much opportunity to take photos as I would have liked – it rained all day saturday, and we were frequently busy doing all the fun things camp has to offer, but here’s a couple I did get (there will likely be more at some point – these are the only ones I’ve gotten edited so far).

This is a real, working mill!  They mill corn there, and use the resulting cornmeal, flour and grits to help feed the campers, and they also make chicken feed for the chicken’s on the camp farm.

I spent a lot of time swimming in this lake as a camper!  I’d forgotten how incredibly peaceful it was to see.

So that’s a small glimpse of camp.  It was a wonderful weekend, one I won’t forget for some time.  Now I just have to convince Noah that he wants to go to camp there.  He still doesn’t see why he would ever want to spend the night away from his parents.

We went to Doumar’s:

We went to Busch Gardens and saw our Sesame Street friends:

And rode a lot of rides:

Noticed some interesting math at walmart:

And rode some dinosaurs!

And we’ve still got half a vacation left!

There may or may not be blog posts while we’re gone, depending on if I have time to write them.  You can, however, expect a lot when we return, as I’m sure I’ll have a lot of photos to share!  In the meantime, I wanted to give you a sneak peek at some of this year’s holiday card offerings.  The holidays will be here before you know it, so start thinking about your fall photo sessions.  I will have email access while I’m away, so contact me to schedule your session.  Available dates fill up quickly, so schedule early to make sure you get a spot!  These are just a sampling of the cards available – I have many more!