My Favorites (part 1 of 2)

My old computer had crashed awhile back so I thought I had lost everything. Now that I recently purchased a new computer, my husband (the genius) was able to retrieve some of my pictures from the old hard drive onto this new one. Thank God I married someone who's a computer geek! So, I decided to share some of my favorite photos from past photo shoots. This will be a two part segment as I have so many pictures I want to share with everyone! These photos are NOT with my new camera (Nikon D7000) but instead with my old camera Sony DSLR. Enjoy!

Above pictures are of Kha and Ntaj. This was taken during early autumn down by Lutz Park in Appleton. I just love the beautiful multi colored leaves in the background! Autumn is my favorite season. Now that I have my new camera, I vow to take many many more pictures in the fall!

Above pictures are of Alicia and her kids. They were an absolute delight to work with. Her children are so energetic and so photogenic. I'm glad that she allowed me to have such an opportunity to work with them! Her kids smiles and expressions are so priceless!

Above  pictures are of Jessica's family at their house out in the country. This was my first time taking photos of animals so that was quite the challenge but to my surprise, the animal portraits turned out awsome! I would love to shoot more animal portraits in the future!

I'm going to leave this 1st segment with pictures of my baby sister Annie. She's so pretty, I love shooting her every time! She makes my pictures and my photography look beautiful!

This is it for now. Check back for another segment part II of this! I hope you enjoyed viewing these photos as much as I did! Thanks for stopping by!

There are always two people in every picture:  the photographer and the viewer.  ~Ansel Adams

Old Photographs and best of two worlds

Have you ever had those photos where you had stashed them away for a very long time and one day, you decided to or happen to come across them again? Well, that's what I did a couple of days ago. It just brings so much memories back. I've uploaded some of these pics for you to view...let me tell you, hahaha...some of these are very humorous when I think back about it or even look at it! Ahhh...brings back memories.

Above picture: Me when I was in Jr. High? This was back in the lat 80's.This was the "fashion" and "hairdo" at the time with the hair parted to one side and hair sprayed it like miles high!! lol!! This hairdo wasn't too bad..lols. Ahh...good old times. This was right before I got married to my 1st husband.

The 2 pictures above: They were of me AFTER I became single again from 1st marriage. Gosh, I was soo young! I had good times then too!! Should've stayed singled FOREVER!!

Above photo: Picture of me and my  now current husband. Our very first photo together...our very first time meeting each other. This was taken at Sabre Lanes Menasha, Wi at a party there. I still remember this night...hahaha. Husband and I are married for 13 years now...gosh...too long? hahaha..j/k...I still love him to this day!

Above picture: From L to R: sister in law Lori, me and sister in law Kay (prettygeeky.com). They are my sister in laws from my 1st marriage. They've been with me ever since to this day. I'm so blessed to have them as my sister in laws and I love them just like my own sisters. Usually, when you leave one family and go to another, they wouldn't care about you but I have been very blessed with this family and I couldn't ask for more from them! Love you guys! Gosh, look at me...I was super skinny then!

Above picture: From L t R: Niam Laus La, sister in law Kay, May Li, me! Look at us...we soo owned black top and jeans/sandles!! ahahaha!!! We didn't plan on matching up..it just happened. This was a very few years ago when we decided to take our 1st all girls trip to MN. I believe this was when Kay met Ty too. Such memories! (Lor side of the family)

Current picture, Xmas 2010! Here's a picture of my kids, hubby and my now in laws. They are super great to me and very accepting. I love them all too!

 Above picture: My current in laws

 My 3 beautiful sister in laws: From L to R: Ka, Mai Tas, Hlau (Vang side of the family)


What can I say? I'm blessed to have two very different families in my life and I wouldn't trade these families for anything!

Winter Wonder....

Land. I decided to take my baby (Nikon D7000) out to the park this afternoon. I'm so glad I did because I caught a beautiful scenery along with the blue sky and the sun trying to peep out of the gray clouds that was trying to overcast it. I immediately fell in love with these pictures that I took. At first, I was disappointed because when I approached the park, it looked like it had nothing for me...snow was knee high and I couldn't go into the park. Disappointed, I drove out of the park...to find....the blue sky waaaaay above the white clouds and what appears to be the sun shining through! What luck!! This is what I caught on my camera. Non of these pictures are edited. Camera set on manual and taken with my 18-105mm lense with flash (flash set a 1/65 ISO) and set at landscape. What do you think?

Lions Park located in Greenville, WI. Above picture...to the right of the picture is a little walking trail that's very wooded. It's actually very pretty when all the leaves and brushes along with the wild flowers bloom! I wanted to go in there but snow was too high. We'll wait until spring arrives for this then, aha!!

Sun behind the tree..the sun adds a glow to the tree.

 I love the shadow of the tree on the glistening snow...

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better".  ~Albert Einstein

Over the hills and through the woods...

to St. Paul, MN we went over the past weekend! We haven't taken a family road trip since June 2010 so we were really excited. It was only a 1 day event but at least we got out of the house and did something. Everyone went except for my oldest son Brandon. He stayed behind to play video games with my nephews. I usually make everyone go but this was a one time exception. We hit the road at 8 am (needless to say, we were suppose to be on the road by 6 am...us and our hmong times!) after we made a quick stop at McDonald's for breakfast. I like long road trips because it gives me time to reminiscence about everything and it helps me to clear my conscious. Anyways, I love it how driving along the way, I see all these cool barns. I love barns and their rustic red color look to them. I'd love to do a photo shoot by a barn one of these days. So, to try to not fall asleep and keep the hubby company while he's driving, I played with my camera and started to take pictures of barns along the way. Here's a couple of the barns that kind of caught my eye:

Our first stop when we got to St. Paul was the hmong flea market. We headed straight to our "favorite" vendor. I contemplated whether I should take my camera into the flea market or not and I decided not to because I really wanted to concentrate on purchasing movies instead (otherwise my camera would be everywhere and I would end up with no movies!). Of course, my kids had spotted their favorite vendors as well...the toy section! So, I ended up buying them each something. After we all got what we wanted, we decided to head to the food area. My gosh....if I ever lived in St. Paul, I'll be eating out every single day, especially at the flea market. They truly have FOB/MTT food, which is the yummiest! We decided to just grab a quick snack and then headed out to Como Conservatory.

 The Como Conservatory was just about a 5 minute drive from the flea market. It was soo crowded that I didn't take as many photos as I should/wanted to.

 Selina and Princeton looking down at the "make a wish" fountain. My Princeton said "Mommy, I want to make a wish"....I turned around and there he had 2 quarters that he scraped off from the bottom of the fountain!!

 Look at the above picture of the leaf. In the middle of the leaf is a little seed/flower growing in it. I thought this was pretty interesting.

My goofballs...hahaha....I had to "yell" at them for this group shot.
After the Conservatory, we headed to Rice Palace Buffet. The very first time I eat at this place was about 4 months ago and I thought the food was really yummy. However, I didn't really care for it this time. It was not like last time because the food wasn't as good anymore. My husband said that I was just too hungry last time..haha. After eating and filling our tummies up, we headed back home. My kids wanted to go to mall of america but it was about 5:30 pm and by the time we get there it would've been about 6:30ish and not enough time to do much. Told them that next time we'll go there instead.

Overall, we had a good weekend. Sunday, we just lounged around and watched our movies we bought from the flea market. Can't wait for our next road trip again!