Millbrae Photo Booth: The Results

I woke up on Sat­ur­day morn­ing almost as excited as I do on Christ­mas morn­ing. I said…almost. It was the day for the Mill­brae Photo Booth and I was so excited to see all the lit­tle kid­dos in their cos­tumes. I miss my own nieces and nephew des­per­ately so I’ve come to fill that void in my life by lov­ing on all the kids we get to pho­to­graph. Sat­ur­day was like love over­load. I’m not sure how many chil­dren we pho­tographed because too much was going on to count, but it was ALOT, a whole heck of ALOT. And I got to pour out so much love and excite­ment on the lit­tle cuties until I found myself asleep that after­noon for a two hour nap. They took it all out of me! Vitaliy was so spent by all that he poured out, he caught a stom­ach bug and slept 10 hours dur­ing the day on Sun­day. Love was shared by all that day and I hope and pray that each fam­ily knows how much, not only Prokopets Stu­dio cares about them, but how much our entire church body that came out to serve that day cares about them. It was a glo­ri­ous day! We sure hope to be a part of it next year.

Before I show you a few of our favorites, I have to tell you one of the fun­ni­est kid sto­ries from the day. Vitaliy and I dressed up as a cat and mouse. Vitaliy was the cat and I was the mouse. He likes to chase me, what can I say? There was a fam­ily next up in line so I walked over and bent down to chat with them for a minute before I brought them over. You know, let them feel me out before we take them away from their moms and stick a big scary black thing in their face. These kids didn’t need any warm­ing up though. In fact, the one lit­tle guy had beef with me and we hadn’t even met yet. I walked up and he blurted out, “Why are you guys a cat and a mouse??” I smiled and was intrigued to see where he was going with this — you know “kids say the darn­d­est things”. I said, “What do you mean?” He imme­di­ately replied, “Well cats and mice don’t even like each other! What are you two doing work­ing together?” Every­one in his vicin­ity was crack­ing up laugh­ing, includ­ing me. Amused with him­self, he put his mask back on and proudly made his way to the bench to have his pic­ture taken. I assured him he made a sub­stan­tial argu­ment but that this cat and mouse loved each other.

Here is a small slice of all the amaz­ing peo­ple we got to pho­to­graph and hang out with on Sat­ur­day. It was a well spent Sat­ur­day and I would do it all over again in a heart­beat. How­ever, it will take me until next Hal­loween to get the amount of energy needed to pho­to­graph the amount of chil­dren we did in a two hour time slot. I’ll start con­serv­ing energy now. Next year I might need a four hour nap after­wards because I hope we get to pho­to­graph twice as many kids. So every­one out there — put it on your cal­en­dars now!

~Can­dace

P.S. A spe­cial thank you goes out to Tom and Ronda O’Leary for let­ting us bor­row their awe­some antique tool chest for our photo booth. The pic­tures wouldn’t be as amaz­ing with­out it. Thank you so much for your generosity!

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This was one of the first guys to come to our booth. He walked straight in, sat down and posed just like this. I was so impressed I asked the mom if he had prac­ticed. She said absolutely not! He was a total nat­ural — made my job very easy.

I really don’t think I need to say much about this lit­tle princess. No, she’s not a doll, she’s a real lit­tle girl with major cute­ness going on.

I asked her to wave her magic wand and help me lose 10 pounds. I’m still wait­ing to see if it worked.

Even the par­ents got into it! How fun is that?

So many of the lit­tle boys tried to sit on my bench and refuse to smile. I just wouldn’t let them — here is Bob the Builder break­ing under my “I’m gonna make you laugh” skills. Those skills usu­ally lead to my humil­i­a­tion, but if I can get the kid to smile and make his mom’s day, it’s totally worth it to me.

I knew when I saw this one, there was no break­ing her. This was what she looked like from the moment I first saw her in the stroller till the moment I sat her down on the hay. Her face never changed one bit. And it made me want to squeeze her even more cause she is just so darn cute. If I had a daugh­ter this age, this would be the cos­tume I’d want.

Is she so sweet and proper or what! Her smile, the glasses, the hat — I’m in love.

Famil­iar faces. These two come from this amaz­ing fam­ily. And they are lucky there was a long line behind them oth­er­wise we would have 1. not stopped pho­tograph­ing and 2. I prob­a­bly would have not let go of them cause they are both absolutely squeez­able. What a per­fect duo!

The smile and those wings! I’m think­ing that if I could wear those wings while cook­ing or clean­ing that I could be a lit­tle more inspired to do them. I think these wings could really make some things hap­pen — they look quite mag­i­cal to me.

Favorite shot of the day. Her smile is as big and wide as her dress. And check out that bow tie! They are just too cute.

Beau­ti­ful, just beautiful.

Hug­gable, lov­able, and squeezable.

These are our new friends and were our help for the day. We couldn’t have done it with­out them and they are such a beau­ti­ful fam­ily. Thanks for all your help guys!

This lit­tle one just totally refused. No mat­ter what I did to try to make her laugh — she was not hav­ing it. I admire the deter­mi­na­tion! Vitaliy kept try­ing but I actu­ally adored the pouty face. And by pouty face, I am refer­ring to the pump­kin kid, not the mon­ster pouty face.

Dis­ney Land seri­ously needs to hire this one. They are miss­ing out!

Favorite fam­ily shot of the day! I love the unity in this fam­ily and the excite­ment for the hol­i­day. So much fun!

Last shot of the day. You always save the best for last. I do!

OH wait! I guess I had one more to share. Are we one cute fam­ily or what! That’s my momma by the way with her awe­some home-made witch hat. Every­one was super jeal­ous and cov­et­ing it all day. And of course the hand­some cat is my hubby and pho­tog­ra­pher extra­or­di­naire, and the cute bumble-bee is his beau­ti­ful sis­ter Leska. Oh, and that’s me, the mouse, “where is my cheese?”