Summer's End (Christmas is Coming!)

Although fall doesn't officially arrive until the Autumnal Equinox, on September 23rd, most Americans look at Labor Day as the end of summer. The start of the new school year is a lot like January 1; there is an air of excitement and possibility, unknown challenges to face and potential triumphs to celebrate. The football season is starting up too.  Maybe this will be the year your team goes to the Super Bowl! We have 6 grandchildren with birthdays in October, November and December and Rick and I have just booked a trip to see the West Coast grands in October. They are all attending new schools this year and we planned the trip in late October so that they would be settled into their school routines by the time we visit.

October is a nice time to visit Portland, Oregon. It does make me a little nervous, though. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you might remember a post I wrote about another Oregon trip, planned for October 2021, which was derailed when we both came down with COVID! Since then, we have taken numerous other trips, including Paris, where we played sardines on the Metro for two weeks without getting sick. I will try to get a COVID booster, as well as my annual flu jab before we go. But the bottom line is: you can prepare all you like but nothing in life is guaranteed.

Fall is a busy season for photographers. I planned the trip around two large engagements, and this is also the most popular time for family portraits, ahead of the Christmas season. Many of my family clients use their annual portraits for Holiday cards and gifts, so the fall, with its colorful leaves as a background, is a great time to schedule a session. I have been creating and sending our own Christmas cards with family pictures on them since 2017. They are a record of our lives and changing, growing family. Over the last six years, children have been born, divorce and remarriage have happened.  Friends on the mailing list have passed away, others have been added.  It's the only time I correspond with some of my relatives in England and it's an inexpensive way to catch them up on the past year! The people who receive these cards often keep them; it's just one more example of the power of print to preserve your memories! 

So schedule a fall family session and record your family as they are, right now. You can use the images on your holiday cards, frame them and put them on the wall, and give them as gifts. They will only grow more valuable as time goes on!