The Nebraska Week

We've had an eventful week here in Nebraska. The main bullet points:

• Cameron has thrown up 6 times and hasn't been himself all week.

• He has made the name change from "daddy" and "mommy" to "dad" and "mom". Much to "mommy's" dismay and sadness.

• Emerson has continued to smile and eat everything in sight. Labecca definitely has the best tasting business cards.

• We survived the tornado on Wednesday night. It actually never even rained on our side of town, but the west side got destroyed. See the previous post.

• Cameron has asked all week to "go home to my yellow house"

• We have made countless trips out to the cornfield/fire hydrant to check the bird baths (puddles) along the way.

Nebraska Tornado

What a night we had on our trip in Nebraska!! We are staying in the small town of Aurora, NE for a national FFA event.

Your typical very humid still evening turned pretty crazy pretty quick. The event center we're in is on the east side of town right on HWY 34 which runs east/west through town. We got word that there was a tornado warning in our area and be prepared to take cover. We had just put the kids to bed and thought we would just keep an eye on things. While I was taking photos of the birds on the wire in the lightning, word came that there was a tornado on the ground just west of town heading down HWY 34.

We got the kids out of bed and took cover in an interior conference room since there was no basement.

We had the weather radio going and they were talking about the tornado moving along HWY 34 right towards town. Pretty scary stuff.

We had the kids tucked under the table and Cameron never woke up through the whole thing!


The next morning I drove out and snapped a few photos before the Nebraska Highway Patrol yelled at me. A freight train was turned over as well as the damage that you see here. Pretty amazing to see the path that the tornado left through the cornfield.

FFA State Convention

I have had several people asking "Where are the photos from the State Convention??". Well I posted them on my old website here. I had to get the high resolution versions available for the State Convention newsletter publisher, so I just put them all there. I only upload smaller low res versions to my proof area just to save time/space since people are only viewing from there.

So for all of you FFAers looking around...

HERE THEY ARE!!

47 pages worth!! Enjoy.

A Busy Tuesday

Had a personal day from school and spent the day in the the cities. Shot the final session of the 2009 MN FFA State Convention at Northrup Auditorium at the University of Minnesota. This has become a yearly tradition for me since my wife works for MN FFA. Throughout the year, I am fortunate to photograph many events for FFA and love working with those kids. This is also the day that the state officers for the upcoming year are announced which is always exciting. It's sad to see the past year's officers go, but I can't help but think about all the times new officers will be in front of my cameras over the next year.





Following the Convention, I headed off to Como Park for Lindsay and Chad's engagement session. We had a great time on this beautiful, sunny, spring day and got some great photos. I am anxious for their wedding coming up in June!!

Also got two more client meetings in following this session, so like the title says...it was a busy, but really productive Tuesday for me!!

2008 MN FFA State Convention - Day 1

I have the pleasure of shooting the MN FFA State Convention again this year. This is an event attended by over 4000 high school students from all over the state. The FFA (formerly Future Farmers of America) Organization is one close to my heart since my wife is employed by them as their leadership coordinator. It is a great organization that promotes leadership among young people in an awesome way.

This first main event that I shot was the Change Lives seminar encouraging chapter leaders to pursue careers in education. These shots were at the Cargill Building at the University of Minnesota. It was a fun group of leaders from high schools and the University of Minnesota. This was also the event that I did some previous design for in the logos that you see below.