These two brothers are the same ages as my girls… As I mentioned in this post, we ended up in the hospital at the same time in rooms next to each other with our first babies. This time around we had our babies about 4 weeks apart but had the same room, how is that for ironic?!  

These boys are adorable, here are some of my favorites…..

Love, love, love this old fire truck!

Love!

It is hard to believe that Jillie is graduating high school. This gal holds a special place in my heart. She is my cousin and I used to babysit her when she was just a little thing, and now she is all grown up and getting ready for college! Wow.

We plan to do a full senior shoot, but for now we only did a couple in her cap and gown. Here are my favorites:

Love me some jumping action!

I don’t often get pictures of myself since I am normally the one taking the pictures.  But, my friend Alicia recently stopped by and snapped a few of me and my girls. I really wanted pictures of us snuggling on my bed and just playing around. I was not under any illusions that Kennedy would cooperate, but I was sort of hoping. What we ended up with was mostly Kennedy on the move. And really, I love it because it is real! Here are a couple of my favorites.

First one is Bristol and I….

This next one is my favorite!

Kennedy may be a blur in this one but I love the feeling of movement!

Thanks Alicia! I am looking forward to our family shoot!

In other news my sister, Holly, got engaged this weekend! I am super excited for both her and her fiancée Jonathan! She actually called me on the phone to tell me the news, I was out taking pictures and she had come to my house to tell me in person, but when she found I was shooting she just called so they could call everyone else. (Sisters have to be among the first to know of course!) Luckily I knew the family I was shooting, because I started screaming and yelling and if I had not have known them I am pretty sure they would have thought I was a lunatic! But instead she looked at me and said “Is your sister getting married?!” Then: “Give me your camera!” and she started snapping away while I was yelling and screaming into the phone! Haha! I am so glad she thought to do that…. I’ll have to post them as soon as I get a chance!

Meanwhile, here are a couple of pictures I snapped of Holly and Jonathan last year….

Think we could get them to do that in their wedding attire? I think so! Congrats to you both! XoXo!

Aja, Lauren and Madison gave their Mom the gift of pictures for Mothers Day. Which in my opinion is the best kind of gift! They actually had a tough time surprising her. Because like most Mom’s she didn’t make it easy. But they were able to pull it off and she loved the pictures! Here are some of my favorites…..

I’ve mentioned before that I love pictures with laughter in them…. so I am posting a few here! To me these are the best kind. They just make me happy!

This little cutie belongs to my cousin Ginny and her hubby Kyle. She came over one afternoon awhile back for a little photo shoot on my makeshift backdrop. Here are a few of my favorites!

I have people ask me all the time if they should bring anything when getting their kids pictures taken. I always tell them to bring anything ‘meaningful’. It does not matter what it is, if the child loves it then you are sure to love the pictures because it captures that ‘special something’. Ginny brought a taggie and monkey that Jax adores… and I love the pictures we got with them!

Seriously! I think this picture is the sweetest!

Love.

At the time we took these he was just about to start crawling (he is all over the place now!) but I love this one with his little tongue out trying to figure out how to do it!

I am a big baby about bugs of any kind. I just don’t like them. Especially spiders, ugh! I’ll kill one if I have too, which is only when I am by myself, but you can bet that if anyone is around I’ll be asking them to take care of it for me! And if I do have to kill it myself, well, lets just say I am glad no one is around to witness it.

I act ridiculous.

I found some sort of insect with way to many legs in my house the other day and I nearly had a heart attack. I kid you not I heard myself saying  ”Die! Die!” TO THE INSECT as I went at it with a shoe.  Seriously! It sounds awful I know, and it sounds even worse now that I typed it out… But at the time I obviously thought that was going to help.

Meanwhile, Kennedy is standing there watching with a look that clearly said “Mommy has lost her mind”. She would have gone right up to it and just picked it up. She loves bugs!

When my husband and I were dating we were at a restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating. We were seated inside next to the windows overlooking the patio. There was another couple sitting at the table just outside our window and at one point I looked up and saw a HUGE bug on the back of the guys  shirt. It was a collared shirt and the bug was crawling up towards his neck and I could just imagine it getting into his shirt… so, I had to do something of course! Much to Stuart’s horror I jumped up, ran out the door that went to the patio, ran up to their table in a state of panic and, nearly shouting at the couple, said something like “Excuse me for interrupting! But you have a huge bug on your shoulder!”

I’ll never forget the look on the girls face (she had been in the middle of talking when I came up to them) she seriously thought I was crazy. They both did.  But, when she saw the bug I think she understood, and after swatting it off of him and jumping around in a little bit – all of which she did - they seemed to not think I was so crazy anymore. Or at least that is what I like to tell myself!

Who knows, they may be sitting around right now talking about that ‘crazy’ girl! Haha!   

So, there ya go. I am a big baby about bugs. Now snakes, that is another story. But believe me, it is the same in the sense of I am terrified!

Now I am going to share a few of my favorite pictures from Bristol’s weekly shoot last week… For those of you who do not know, I took a picture every week for the first year of my first daughter and put them in a book in an effort to ‘see’ her grow that first year. And now I am trying to do the same with my 2nd daughter. So far so good! These are from week 9:

Did I mention she can wink now?!

Ah! I love her!

Happy Memorial Day to you all!

 We concentrated mostly on Claire and Piper (the two adorable little girls) in this shoot, but we also got a few with Mom and Dad too…

Silly faces!

I am really into shots from behind these days, and I LOVE this one!

These next three are very similar, but I loved each of them for different reasons so I am posting all three!

Another shot from behind and I really love this one! Love that Claire is walking next to Piper crawling, both in their matching blue dresses… sweet!

I have done several shoots with Sol now, I am capturing his first year - and hopefully more after he turns one year old! Each shoot we have done I have had so much fun, but this one is my favorite so far. I went to their house and just captured him doing his everyday stuff. Eating, playing in his room, I loved shooting these because it was just laid back and fun, but I also love the fact that these capture Sol just being Sol.

I noticed he had his feet crossed while eating so I had to get a shot of that!

Sol has 3 older siblings and this toy bunny belonged to his older brother, now 17, and is one of Sol’s favorite toys to play with!

LOVE this shot:

I snapped a few details in his nursery:

A friendly reminder to everyone: Back up your images! Don’t just put them on your computer and then delete them from your camera, because if your computer crashes (like mine did) you’ll most likely lose everything. I had all mine backed up, but it just made me think of how awful it would be if I didn’t.

Being a photographer definitely helps me to back up my images. I have too, it is what I do, I can’t lose peoples pictures! But, the pictures that you Mom’s take of your kids are just as important. No Mom wants to lose those pictures! The same goes for any pictures - family, friends, they are all important. So go out and buy you a pack of CD’s and put those pictures on them!

Okay, now that I have that out of the way(!)…….. I’ll share with you a couple of snapshots I took of Bristol. First, in her car seat:

Then finding something very funny!

I know, I know, we think she is adorable too!

Now, for my ‘something random about me’… I love to have my teeth cleaned – at the dentist! I know I am probably one of the few (or am I?) but I love the feeling of having my teeth scraped and cleaned! I would just say ‘I love going to the dentist’ but that would not be entirely true. Because I don’t like having anything done to my mouth except having my teeth cleaned, if I have to go for anything else I dread it terribly! And believe me I have had enough dental work!

So there you go… my something random! I have some great shoots to share with you this week, so stay tuned!

Happy Monday!

Isn’t it funny how certain things become very …. familiar to us? Like your computer for example. And then it decides to just not come on one day. Yep, that is what mine did over the weekend. And I am feeling a bit lost without it!  Hopefully it will be fixed soon…It is in good hands right now!

I have decided I am going to try to add a little something random about myself every Monday, because well, it is Miscellaneous Monday after all! And I love random stuff! 

Okay, so for something random this week… I pulled out a recipe book over the weekend in hopes of finding something new to cook for supper and found that I am definitely a ‘visual’ person when it comes to food!  The book didn’t have pictures of the recipes, and honestly I found it very hard to flip through a huge book with no pictures! I want to see what I am going to be cooking! I want to turn pages and see something that looks good then read the recipe. I didn’t find anything I wanted to try… probably because I couldn’t see a picture! haha! But if you have something yummy you’d like to share with me, please do!

By popular demand I am posting a picture of  my sweet baby Bristol! This is a shot of her I took last week. I’ll be posting more of her, and other shoots, when I get my computer back. Till then, take care and have a fabulous Monday!