Omg, you guys! Clara, Wyatt and I are the faces of the City of Paso Robles’ Fall Recreation Guide!! They invited us to do a photoshoot in July and you know I replied yes in a hot second!
We all got together at Barney Schwartz Park to take fall pics in flannels with pumpkins and picnics on the grass. A professional photographer was there and it was so much fun!
The pictures will prep for the rec guide featuring all the city’s fall classes.
We were asked to dress for fall and – of course – I had literally just boxed up all our cold-weather clothes.
But one trip into the attic later, here we are. Hitting FOURTEEN THOUSAND mailboxes this week!
People are seeing the guides around town and telling me about it!! It’s SO COOL. Thank you, thank you, thank you, @prcityrecreation!! Also, the photographer took some pretty amazing family pics and now I’m scheming up ways to photoshop Bowen into them for fall family pics/Christmas cards 🤣.
This was all made possible by creative soul Heather Stephenson, the city’s recreation coordinator.
I first met Heather in 2015 when I was a newspaper reporter and I interviewed her for a Tribune article on a Paso library event called Super Hero School. She was the children’s services librarian then. I remember Heather as this pint-sized ball of excitement and energy, all dressed up as a superhero – all the while smiling and totally humoring me as I did a video interview of her.
Two years later, after I left the paper bc daycare for two costs more than working, I launched my blog and reached out to some former Trib sources and readers, the kid-stuff related ones, crossing my fingers that they’d still consider me as some sort of authority in local things and take a chance with me on this new solo writing endeavor, without the backing of the newspaper behind me.
They all did. To those sources and readers: Thank you. I appreciate you. Really and truly, 1,000%. Heather is among them. In 2017, I reached out to see if I could partner with the city to try out and promote its youth rec classes. Heather was SO receptive and after partnering on many programs since then, I feel lucky to call her a mama friend now, too. I love hearing her stories and telling her mine.