July Fourth, part 1

For the Fourth of July weekend our wonderful friends the Pepinos drove up from Nebraska to celebrate with us! Their oldest son is exactly Tessie's age, so we often say that their family is the continuation of ours. Since we've never had relatives living close to us, we've often formed great friendships with other families who turn into our pseudo cousins (I've mentioned another such family before), aunts, and uncles. The Peeps are one such family.  We also call them the Cukes since pepino means cucumber in Portuguese!

The Pepinos plus an intruder-- from my mom's Facebook.

Not having seen them since Marguerite was a flower girl in my wedding nearly two years ago, I was really excited to have them here for the weekend. Getting to know each child's individual personality better now that they're older has been lots of fun. 

Sweet Marguerite

Early on the Fourth we walked 10 minutes down our beautiful residential street to one of Brookings' main drags, wanting good seats for the city's Independence Day parade!

The early contingent

And again. Probably the only picture of me you'll see from this day!

I had fun taking some portraits while we waited for everyone else to catch up and for the parade to start.

Funny little Louise, who I joke is named after me.

My mama looking patriotic.

Aww I love my Bia.

Finally the others arrived, including the darling of the weekend, three-year-old Josephine.

The papas

Minutes later we heard some sirens and the parade began.

Marguerite was happy that the waiting was over! 

The parade was very much a small town parade, including what seemed like every "public" vehicle in the city and surrounding towns (firetrucks, ambulances, even a few buses!). Advertising was also a big part of the parade. 

This was the only real "float" of the parade. I'm not sure what the Sons of Norway are, but we sure have a lot of Norwegians in South Dakota.

The university here, South Dakota State, where my brother Thomas studies and my dad works, has a very strange unofficial mascot-- Hobos. Some of the university students in town had fun dressing up and amusing the kiddos there.

Throughout the parade there were some pretty cute things going on...

...but let's be honest, most of the time it looked something like this:

But the kids had fun, (even the teenagers!), and collected and ate lots of candy,

and even some ice pops! Because we all know that no parade is complete without sugaring up the kids!

Photographing those college kids

As I mentioned in the previous post, my sister Isabel, who is between her sophomore and junior years of college, visited with two friends of hers this past weekend. She actually just came to pick up the car she's taking for the year, but we'll pretend it was to see her family. We had bunches of fun meeting her friend Katie, and new man, Matt! 

We took lots of walks and naps and pictures throughout the few days they were here. I didn't mean to do a photoshoot with them or anything, but during a potluck my parents held on Sunday there was great lighting for photos, so I grabbed my camera. Lil sis number two, Maria, was my lovely and faithful assistant, doing essential things like holding my beer and the camera's lens cap.

Katie was all sorts of fun and made this house vibrate with positivity— plus we all enjoyed her "Oh Mama-Braga!" comments directed at our mom.

The whole family loved Matt, who let me try playing his French Horn (and was very patient with my honkings) and was nice enough to say I have some natural talent for horn playing! Maybe I'll take up the bugle someday.

And, well, they're adorable, right?

Yep.

Isa and Katie are roommates in a big off campus house this year and I'm so happy that my sister is surrounded by such good people. College seems so far away by now (I was blown away realizing that I graduated from college before Matt, who is a year older than Isa, even graduated high school. Yikes I'm old.) and I'm just happy she's been having such a fantastic college experience. Good friends make all the difference.

To end, I'll quote Katie. "I'm loving this Braga-Henebry lifestyle. Work hard, play hard, sleep hard, eat like you mean it." Yep Katie, that pretty much sums us up!

Bonus picture, entitled "The Yogi and the Sun Goddess":

You know you're home in the US when...

...the huge South Dakota sky greets you with beautiful skyscapes,

that constantly change.

...giant baskets of candy greet your supermarket entryway.

...this is your parents' new house, long-awaited and more perfect than anyone dared to hope for.

...this is the place where you learn of the existence of strawberry salsa, make it, and almost die from the pleasure of being able to eat salsa for the first time in five years!

...you get a haircut for the first time in two years and a lil sis does a before and after pic. (My hair in the after picture is a bit funky but hey, it happens.)

...this is where you eat breakfast.

...your breakfast is the best yogurt ever, the best honey ever, blackberries and strawberries,

including a homemade latte made with frothed almond milk. Mm mm delish.

...this gorgeous dining room is your current workstation,

and this is your inspiring view!

I'm so incredibly happy and thankful to be home for two months this summer!! I've been extremely busy up to now with daily walks around our new historic neighborhood, garage sale-ing, taking tons of pictures with phones and cameras, including of visiting Isabel and her friends (stay tuned for that!), doing tons of summer reading, and of course eating delicious food. It's gonna be one good summer.

Photographing a family of three

I'm in the USA!! I had a veeery long but surprisingly smooth trip, and am so happy to be home, and in my family's new house! They moved just a week before I got here, and we're all thrilled with the house (they were house hunting for almost two years while living in temporary housing, so this move has been long awaited). I'll be doing a nice big post about it soon, but before I get too far from Morocco I want to share the pictures I took of my beautiful friend Jessica and her family last Friday!

The photoshoot was a breeze and we all really enjoyed the time we spent doing it. Can you believe that all of these were taken in their living room? I couldn't ask for better light. My sister thought it was in a studio!

Recognize these??

Little Noor is just the cutest.

I see Noor at least once a week, and now that he's 3 months old he recognizes me and smiles huge when I come to visit. It's a wonderful feeling.

They have such a beautiful family.

Right?

Here's daddy being a model...

and now it's mommy's turn!

 He's getting so big, at just three months, it's incredible. But seeing the way he eats it makes sense!

Noor is an incredibly alert and curious baby. From the very start his eyes have been open wide, staring at the world around and taking everything in!

Family peace, family love.

Snuggles with dad,

snuggles with mom.

He just recently discovered his hands, and watching him look at them and play with them is so fun—you can feel his fascination!

Thank you Jessica, Ahmed, and Noor! I feel so privileged to be able to capture your family's growth and development like this! We've done a pregnancy shoot, a three week old shoot and now three months, so I guess six months in September is next. I can't wait to see how much he'll have grown by the time I get back to Morocco!