City of Ames

My husband used to work in the IT department of the local hospital. One of the coworkers with whom he had the most in common has a wonderful wife, Katie, who worked for the Ames Parks and Recreation office up until recently when she retired.

Katie and I were friends on Facebook. She saw some of the photos that I took of the kids over the years, both in Parks & Rec activities and in the parks - I try to take photos of the children once a month to put into a calendar that we use annually, and send one to grandparents. She sometimes needs photos and covers for the different messaging and catalogs, so she reached out to have me submit photos.

This photo of A was taken for her birthday at Ada Hayden Park in Ames several years ago, and was used as the cover of the Ames Parks & Recreation course catalog for Spring and Summer of 2019:

Um, in case you weren't aware, she is the curly haired doll in the lower right. You can usually tell our children by the quantity of curls.

Like any big sister would, A lorded this over C any chance she got. He was about five at the time, so any teasing was catastrophic for him. Fortunately, Katie used this photo of C playing blastball a few months later inside the next catalog:

You may not be able to tell here, but C was wearing Top Gun-style aviator shades while playing, because that's what Daddy wore and C was obsessed with being "a guy." He also took to polo shirts around this time.

C also later got the cover in Spring/Summer of 2022, which pulled the kids up to even-ish:

Hey, I'm available for hire as a lifeguard. I should warn you I'm not able to swim much beyond the crawl.

C got the last laugh, however, when this image was submitted by Katie to the Iowa Parks and Recreation Association magazine and selected as the cover for the entire state for November 2017:

I mean, how cute is a little kid in a cardigan? And when the sleeves go over their little teeny hands? Dead.

Also, just because I thought it was adorable. This is not my photo, but a friend who works at the United Way asked if they could use C as a model for their brochure during the pandemic, as he went to the daycare where they were going to be shooting. This got sent out several times on paper and via email in 2020:

Why did I put my bandaid-ed fingers in here? This clearly was sitting on a flat surface, it wasn't going anywhere. I think this is when I had to get stitches making a cheese knife. The pandemic was a hard time for us all.

C "lucked out" that I got my camera around the time he was born, so there are a larger quantity of high-ish quality photos of him than there are of A from her first four years. I use these quotes ironically, as both kids are suuuuuuper over getting their photos taken by this point.