My dad, Richard M. Thomas, passed away quietly on January 4, 2009.  He suffered a stroke in November and his health went from bad to worse.  We celebrated his life at a funeral service on January 13, 2009.

It was a beautiful service in a little chapel in Placerville.  Since my dad was in the navy, he was honored by the VFW with an honor guard and a beautiful send off and the family was given a burial flag.  It was extremely touching and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.  My brother’s good friend, Pastor Steve Moore performed the service, my brother and nephew played an echo taps on the trombone and trumpet.  I provided a picture video of my dad’s life.  It was very respectful and a celebration of the gentle, intelligent and funny man that he was.

As a surprise, my good friend Pam (background) contacted my best friend, who lives in Southern California, and encouraged her to come.  I was so surprised to see my beautiful friend Julie and darling Pam walk into the chapel right before the service.

After the service, the family, the pastor and his wife, and my good friends headed downtown for lunch.

Here, my two sons and my oldest son’s girlfriend pose for me before heading to lunch.

Here are my youngest son, my daughter and my niece…waiting for lunch.

I’m a very lucky and blessed woman to have had such a wonderful father.  He loved me, my brother and my mom very much.  We were his life.  He taught me to study hard, have a sense of humor and above all, there is nothing more important than family.

Thanks, Dad.  Rest in peace.

This past weekend, Thanksgiving weekend, was a time to visit with my family and spend some time at Tahoe with my brother and his daughter.  Although I love to take photos of people, there is no better photo opportunity for me than photographing my family.  This weekend was great for that.

My niece (above right) asked me to take a few head shots of her for a Christmas gift for her grandfather.  So, I took her outside and we just had a good time together taking some photos.  She’s quite photogenic (maybe aside from the above photo) and a fun gal to be around.  She and my daughter (above left) are close in age (6 months apart) and close friends.  They also look quite a bit alike…many people mistake them for sisters.

So here are a couple of my favorite photos that we took together.  Isn’t she just the cutest thing?

She also brought her boyfriend along.  So, I dragged him outside to do a brief photo shoot of him.

He was cooperative and fun.  It doesn’t hurt that he is very handsome.  I enjoyed getting to know him a little better.

But, the most fun was when I took my niece, my daughter and this young man outside to do a photo shoot with the three of them.  They found some old hats in the cabin and insisted on using them as props.  I’ll let the audience be the judge.  (I told them to pretend they were at a cowboy’s funeral.  This is the pose I got…snort.)

Then what? Now I know why the old time photographers used to have a little toy squeekie birdie and they would say, “Watch the birdie”.

At any rate, here’s some of my favorites from the workshop I attended in Redding. Keep in mind that there were approximately 10 photographers pointing their cameras at this family so it was just pure luck that I got almost all of them looking at me…I think I might have said something like “Watch the funny lady” and then jingled my jester hat…just kiddin’

This one turned out much better than expected. Several of us wanted to get all the boys/men to sit on the table so we could take a picture of their matching shoes. All the photographers were giving instructions about crossing their legs and sitting the same way. As most of the other photographers finished up with their shots, I kept shooting and got this one. This little guy had an uncanny awareness of where the cameras were pointing and was not in the least bit camera shy. I didn’t even have to crop this one except a little on the sides. (He was a lot of fun.)

All in all, this was a fun and darling family who really helped us out with improving our skills as family portrait photographers.