Bluebonnets

Everyone that I know that has kids has already gone out to the rural areas of Texas to take pictures of their children in the bluebonnets...so I'm fully aware that we're behind the curve, but here's the story...

One of my dearest high school friends was supposed to come into town this weekend because they had two southwest airlines tickets that were about to expire. So in order to capture sweet bluebonnet pictures with Colton and her daughter Audrey we delayed our trip. Well, the trip didn't work out so here we are posting our belated bluebonnet pictures. Doug and I always have a great time on a road trip so we were looking good to that part of this trip. Actually I was looking forward to it all, but Doug was not enthused about the "weeds". Well, we got a late start because Colton was quite a bit more tired today than usual, and we were trying to time his nap for the drive down. Well, he napped from the time we left the house until we opened his door to get him out in La Grange. We changed his clothes - for those of you who don't see him on a regular basis, we are teething which means we lose about 6 gallons of saliva per day down the front of his onesie. Jen picked up a very cute Mickey Mouse outfit at the Ladies' Night baby/maternity swap so we put him in that cute outfit. He looked adorable!

Before Doug and I got Colton out of the car, we went out and scoped out the good spots so we wouldn't be dragging him all along the embankment in order to find the right shot. Well, we noticed that there were a bunch of fire ant mounds in the area so we made a mental note to scope it out before we put Colton down - anywhere. So we get him out to the bluebonnets and set him down in a safe zone. I stepped back to make sure I was a good distance away from him in order to get some good pictures. I looked around me to make sure I wasn't going to be in an ant hill. None in sight...so I knelt down to get closer to Colton. I started taking tons of shots like a professional photographer. I was catching some great shots!!!! Then all of a sudden...my right foot is on fire!!!!! I jump up to find the entire top of my foot covered in fire ants. For those of you who don't know, I am allergic to fire ants. I've had to go to the ER once before from 5 ant bites on my right pinky finger when I was building Texas Aggie Bonfire my sophomore year in college. So needless to say, I went in to frantic mode. This is not how I envisioned this day going...and we even scoped it out...sheesh! So for the rest of the shoot, I carefully ran around getting pictures with only my left shoe on. We were able to get some great shots and then rushed to town to get me some Benadryl. I put some cream on my foot and took some pills to tackle an allergic reaction from both fronts. It worked! I have a bunch of bites on my foot, but oh well. I have some of the most gorgeous photographs of Colton, Doug and even myself in the bluebonnets in 2009.

We ate at the Riverside Cafe on the north side of La Grange and grabbed some pastries and kolaches from the bakery at the Shell Station. We made it safely home and all crashed when we got there. All in all, it was a fantastic day! Even Doug admitted taking the road trip in order to get bluebonnet pictures turned out to be a great idea! Thank God we had a great time, the rain started on our drive back to Austin and Colton didn't get any fire ant bites. I thank You for those little things that made our trip a success.