Punkin

Ally is my niece.  She's 11 now, and she is absolutely awesome.  I call her Punkin because, well, she does look like a pumpkin a bit.  She's round and sweet and has the very special skill to make me laugh even when I feel the least like laughing.  I love this kid to pieces; she's so grown now and she'll soon become a teenager, blooming into a young woman and her baby girl days will be a history.  I don't mind keeping this history fresh, though.  It helps me miss Ally and home a little less, and it tricks me into believing that I'm not really getting old.

Here are a few of my favorite Ally portraits; I will add more to the Portfolio page later today, but this set just deserves a separate showcase post.  The swirl photos with the Teddy Bear are a part of a series I did for a Flickr competition (which I won), and the rest are just random shots of Ally's cute face when she was about 9 years old.