I’ve been asked a lot of questions about taking good photos yourself, especially during this quarantine. Families are stuck at home and can’t have professional photos taken of their family. This is a great time to learn how to take better photos and be able to capture special moments yourself. These tips below are ways to get professional looking photos at home, with your phone or your DSLR camera.

Now that I’ve shared a blog post about what to consider when buying a house, from things like square footage, location, if it’s your forever house or not, and more, I want to share this post about the whole buying process. We have been through it twice now, with houses in Livermore and Atascadero, but since I’m not expert, I brought in our Livermore realtor Katie Moe and Bay Area mortgage broker Andy Spellman

When we were in Kauai with Adam’s family in November we decided to do family photos of the whole crew. Obviously it can be challenging trying to figure out what 7 people are going to wear (plus Jenae’s boyfriend, Ryan’s best friend, and their family friends).

We took our second big trip of the year to Kauai in November with Fischer, which was his second flight! This flight was almost 6 hours (compared to 1.5 hour flights over summer), so it was a little harder. It was more challenging because he’s older which means he sleeps less and is more aware of his surroundings. On our way to Kauai, a worker from the airlines asked us if we wanted to change seats so we could have a whole row to ourselves. (THANK YOU TO THAT LADY!) It was great, because it gave us room to spread out and let Fischer nap and we also brought his Dockatot solely for the flight and we put it between us for him to sit in. On the way back home, I went up the desk and asked if there was a full row available and there was! So that’s my biggest TIP for flying, asking for a whole row! Fischer took 1 long nap both there and back and the rest of the time we tried to entertain him with his favorite toys.

It’s been so fun to see Fischer really change and grow into a big boy these last few months. He learned to crawl while we were in Kauai in November and two teeth came in! He’s crawling everywhere now (baby gates are in our future), pulling himself up to stand, and just overall more interactive. He’s also eating a lot more food then he was just a month ago and super interested in it. Here are some things that we’ve found useful or fun at this stage:

Click HERE to buy all the items below that I mentioned:

Buying a fixer upper has been a goal of ours for a long time (bucket list item for sure!). In case you didn't know, we've been together for 12 years, so dreaming of our future started when we were 17 years old (2007). When it came time to buy our first house in 2014 in Livermore, we had wanted a fixer upper. We offered on a house in a neighborhood that two of our friends lived in, and I really had my heart set it on it. It was a good price, it had the potential for an amazing kitchen, and overall would have been a good flip . We wound up having the highest offer, but lost to an all cash offer that was lower than ours.