There won't be much of a weekend ahead as I have to work Saturday and we have two sales sessions scheduled for Sunday.  There isn't enough time in a day anymore.  The "To Do" list keeps growing longer and I've started outsourcing some of the work that needs to be or that I want done.  Even with Jodi and an intern working together 3 hours a day,  the work keeps piling up. 

We have one month remaining before our conference in St. Louis and we have a lot more prep work to complete for that.  Jodi needs to finish a dress and we have several outfits that require additional pieces.  We are still working on some logistics for the off site shoots we plan to do.  Hopefully it will all work itself out.

JD's team is off to an 8-4 start.  He is 2-0 on the year but has yet to find his previous form.  He needs more mound time to start hitting his spots better.  His velo is just 1 mph shy of where he was when he first started college so his arm is gaining strength but he doesn't have his stamina built up entirely.  He was out of gas after 5 innings this past weekend.  Now that he is throwing consistently, he should be in top form in the next week or two.

We had a super busy weekend and it was a lot of fun.  We had a photo shoot on Friday and we wound up on a 60 acre farm with a red barn/stables, 3 horses and a girl in a prom dress on our Victorian sofa in a field at sunset.  The pics are amazing.

The next morning, we picked up Jayson and drove to St. Louis.  Jodi's family had a 3rd birthday party for him and he enjoyed running around on Jodi' sisters' 5 acres.  That afternoon, we headed down to the Jones dome for Monster Jam.  Kyle went with us and we all really enjoyed it. To start the show, they always doa  couple parade laps at high speed with the place darkened and red lights illuminating the place.  As all 16 trucks poured into the dome with their thundering engines, fireworks went off around the stadium.  That freaked Jayson out a bit.  I think he was a little overwhelmed!  He settled in afterward and enjoyed seeing some of his favorite trucks race and jump.  They were doing back flips and getting some big air.  I'm looking forward to reviewing all of the pics and video I took. 

We drove back to KC early Sunday morning as we had another photo session scheduled.  This session turned out pretty awesome too and I captured the moon for the first time in a session with it rising above the Kansas City skyline while we photographed the senior on a bridge overlooking the city. 

I decided to take Friday off work and enjoy a three day weekend.  Typically our intern doesn't work with us on Friday but we decided to get together anyway and do some shopping for costumes and such for our upcoming photography conference and the shoots we will be doing there. 

We started with some breakfast before hitting a few resale shops.  We found a few cool things to use and wound up in a vintage clothing store downtown.  Before leaving the area, we did a quick photo shoot.  It was pretty cold and windy so we just tried a new feature on my strobe that allows me to shoot up to 1/8000 in HSS mode.  This lets me shoot at a wide open aperture even in bright sunlight. 

After the quick shoot, we returned home and got out our new pink parachute to see how we would go about making it into a dress for our models.  With it being a 25 foot canopy, it's pretty big and will be pretty amazing to work with I think.

Our plan for the St. Louis conference is starting to come together.  On Monday morning of that week, we will be photographing 15+ models at the City Museum.  The location is pretty awesome and I'm looking forward to getting a lot of images there with all of the models and locations that can be used.  We also have some other tentative photo shoots in thew works.  One could possibly be a photo shoot with a vintage bi-plane at Creve Coeur airport and the other a shoot with some exotic vehicles (Lambo's, Ferrari's, etc.) at a location in West County.  Hopefully everything pans out. 

We'll be in St. Louis this Saturday for Monster Jam at the dome.  We may have a photo shoot n Sunday afternoon so will have to get right back that morning if that is the case.  Jayson turns three years old next week and this is his birthday present from us.  He really likes the monster trucks and I think seeing them live is going to really be a thrill for him. 

Just a few more days to get in and I get a weekend off.  It used to be pretty easy to work 12 days in a row.  Now, the other things I'd prefer to be doing instead are making it more difficult.  I have a bazillion projects going on and it's hard to get them done, even with an intern and Jodi at home.

We have 15 more potential models coming to our studio this weekend to learn more about our model team.  We had a full house last Saturday as well and we will deciding who makes our team next week.

We are looking forward to going to Monster Jam next weekend.  I think Jayson is excited and I'm kind of pumped myself.  We've been watching it on TV together and I've been buying him the 1/24th scale trucks to play with.  I think he has about 10 or 11 of them now.  It's our "thing".

With our C crew scheduled to work Sunday night, in all likelihood they wouldn't due to too many AWOL's because of the Super Bowl.  So, the company has moved them to the day shift that day and in turn, that requires me to work since this is my weekend.  Double time is always welcome but eh closer I get to retirement, the less I look forward to it.

We have 15 young ladies and their moms coming to our studio tomorrow to learn more about our Model team and we get to learn more about them so that we can make our selections.  The following Saturday, we have 15 more coming.  Once both meetings have been completed, we will choose our team for this coming school year.


I don't recall if I mentioned it previously but we bought Jodi a sewing machine recently so she could make some outfits and costumes for some of our themed or creative photo shoots.  She had her first sewing class last night and she apparently enjoyed it.  I don't have any expectations at this point on how quickly she will be able to produce something for us to use but it's certainly something that will come in handy in the future.

Something different for our business this year is that our phone continues to ring, even in what is typically our slow season.  We have people wanting to book their Juniors for this summer.  We have people wanting to schedule sessions now for their Senior who didn't get in during the Fall. I'm not saying we are crushed with business but things are much more steady than they were last winter.

We are doing a lot of planning for our St. Louis trip at the end of March.  I have a 25 foot parachute that we are turning into a dress and we will have some other costumes ready for models to wear at the event.  We are doing a huge shoot at City Museum on the Monday after Easter. The shots from there should be pretty epic.

JD is shut down for two weeks as the shot was in or around a tendon and it can rupture if not given a couple weeks rest afterward.  He'll be out the first trip to Texas but should be ready to go the following weekend.  

We had a great weekend here with mild temperatures and we even got in a photo shoot on Saturday.  A client from a private school scheduled earlier in the week and the forecast was actually correct and we were able to have some fun Saturday afternoon.  Our intern served as my photo assistant and Jodi went along to video the behind the scenes.  We went to some new locations I had discovered while picking up some items I had won in an auction.  After the session, we all went to dinner and enjoyed relaxing a bit.

On Sunday, we worked on some projects around the house, a few business related items and had a nice dinner with JD.  He's gearing up for the season and his team will be playing 10 games in Texas starting on the 12th of February.  His shoulder seems to be OK but he's having a little flare up of his tendonitis so he is getting a shot today to help with that.

We are having meetings for the applicants for our model team the next two weekends.  We had a total of 50 applicants and have invited 31 to the meetings.  We obviously can't take them all so it will be a difficult decision to get the team down to a manageable level.