Dhila Backstrom Photo Blog

year is the 2nd Annual 4th of July get together where my sister, Putri, and her many children along with my sister, Ade, and her one year old Jaka, come up to spend the weekend at the Backstrom's cabin.

Allow me to introduce you to my nieces and nephews.

First up Jaden Jaka. I photograph Jaden when he was 6 months old and was so excited to photograph him again now that he's walking at 1 year old. This kid has the longest curled up eyelashes I've ever seen.

This is Zahara, Putri's youngest daughter. We call her baby ZZ. The girl is so girly with many characters! She's such a smart ass most of the time, a tattle tale but yet so sweet. She's quite spoiled by all the girls in the family because she's so darn adorable and she knows it and knows how to work you through her charms. This is the joke she told me over the weekend that made laugh so loud I was practically rolling over on the floor. As you can see my camera loves her. Her facial expressions and body gestures just beg to be captured.

ZZ: "Auntie Dhila, auntie Dhila, how do you wake up Lady Gaga?"
Me:"I'm sorry what? How do you even know who Lady Gaga is? Well, whatever, how do you wake her up?"
ZZ: "You poker face"

And then we have the Twins! Zack and Ivory

Zack is so easy going, mellow, doesn't talk much but super smart. He loves painting, and creating arts and superly duperly athletic. He's in boyscout, chess club and basketball. Jeff introduced him to Agate hunting when we went and took the kids to Grand Marais last year for the first time. He's loving agate hunting since and this made a very happy Jeff.

This is Ivory. Super smart, super fun, helps out mom a lot and adores by Jaka. Loves the outdoors but the outdoors can be cruel to her. The girl is super allergic to bugs. Her face was so swollen over the weekend by bug bites. She and Zack are very very close (go figures, being twins and stuff). She is in girls scout, chess club and basketball.

This is Jacob, loves playing video games and can be overly competitive at times.

And then there's Treyton, my 5 year old. He couldn't be anymore excited to spend time with his many cousins, next to buying toys, this is his second most favorite thing to do. Although he always claims to prefer playing with Zack over baby ZZ, Treyton and spent an awful lot of time together. Click here to see them playing together.

As much as I am excited to not be at work and to spend some quality time with my sisters and my nieces and nephews, I was mostly excited to spend some quality time with my "nifty fifty" 50mm f/1.8 lens to shoot some fireworks for the very first time!

Allright, allright, enough with the kids, click here to see some FIREWORKS!!

I was so ecstatic to be spending time with my sisters and my nieces and nephews. I spent practically all day the weekend before to clean up the cabin before their arrival. It was exhausting. Here are a couple of things we did. Don't worry, the fireworks are at the very bottom if you want to skip all these exciting things we did.

We played video games
Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of kids playing Kinect. It was quite hilarious.

We watch cartoons and movies

We played card games

We played dominos

Jeff and Cale doing crosswords puzzles

We shoot targets

The kids went Fishing

Ate a lot
on the deck

Drank A Lot

Cooling off with popsicles

Agate hunting

Smores by the fire

play in the water

And one of us take random shit loads of pictures like madness
Hey, we all have different ideas of relaxation.

And of course, play with FIRE

This is my very first attempt to photograph fireworks. I was SO excited. I beat myself up for forgetting to bring the remote shutter and almost had a heart attack when I thought I forgot my tripod. Thank goodness for Jeff for remembering!

I had planned to set the equipment up far in advance, until we found out that the neighbors are lighting their fireworks a day earlier than we thought. Here I was scrambling to gather my camera bag and the tripod, ran my tush down the many many many stairs to the lake. I had forgotten about slathering myself with bug spray. Bugs absolutely loves me. They think I'm so delectable as either a corpse or a sweet flower. I'd like to think the latter.

So here they are. I think I did okay.