The Three Amigos....

I have known these three little guys for almost a year now and let me tell you, they are a force to be reckoned with!  The older two are twins with loads of personality and the youngest is one of those "full speed ahead" toddlers who skipped walking and moved straight on to running. Needless to say, our sessions are high energy, which I love!  Here are a few from around Christmas time. On your marks, get set, go....

Sweet Lily Taters and Action Jackson....

Since my desktop is on it's last leg, I have been sorting through all of my old images as I back everything up onto external hard drives.  Here are a few of my favorites of my adorable niece Lily Kate (and one of my nephew Jackson) from at least a year ago.  Trust me, they are still just as cute today as they were back then....

Hello again, Hello....

Anytime you can reference in Neil Diamond song in the title of your post, you know it is a going to be a good one:) Now that I have backed up my entire desktop in preparation to migrate my system from my PC to my Mac, I am ready to get back to blogging! Hopefully I will be able to get through this update without my computer freezing up and then making loud whirling noises which force me to then unplug the power cord to reboot..... gotta love technology:) So I had my first session since Christmas this past weekend with a beautiful newborn and his two older siblings. I love photographing newborns, they are just so incredibly tiny and sweet - they make my kids seem like giants when I get back home. It is hard to believe I will have another one of my own in a few months. Take a look.....

Still here.... I promise!

My promise to blog everyday has been compromised by illness - a virus in my desktop that is. Hopefully by tomorrow I will be able to access the pictures that I intended to post over this past weekend which include some of Riley's new room, which I finished up arranging today. Her "big girl room", as we call it, turned out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself. We moved her from her little green room (which will not need to be repainted, since we are trying are darnedest to let this little nugget's gender be a surprise) to a two-tone violet room across the hall. She is sooooo proud of it and thinks she is such a grown-up now. In fact, she is completely convinced she is six years old. Just ask her - she will tell you emphatically, without hesistation that she is six. Jake has also become quite entertaining- here is a sample of his burgeoning humor.....
Jake: "Well Dad, I've got some good news and some bad news".
Ryan: "Okay, what is the bad news?"
Jake: "My right leg hurts."
Ryan: "So, what's the good news?"
Jake: "My left leg doesn't!"

Classic....

Repeat Offenders....

One of the best things about my "job", if that is what you want to call it, is that I get a chance to work with some amazing families time and time again. It is wonderful to be able to see kids grow and change before my lens while learning the best approach to photograph them. Fortunately, they seem to become more comfortable with me as well. Here are some clients that I have actually photographed at least three times over the past two years. As always, I look forward to seeing them in front of my camera again.....

Fun Ones....

One year old kiddos are so much fun to photograph. They are interactive, giggly and starting to develop their own little personalities. And although they are mobile, you usually can get them to stay still long enough to snap a picture or two. Here are a few of my favorites from some "I just turned One!" sessions that I took this fall....

The Great Picture Project of 2009....

For Christmas this year, Ryan and I pledged that we would not be getting each other any big gifts. Neither one of us really wanted anything, so we decided to get each other something "from the kids" - flannel pajamas for me and some lounge pants for Ryan. Of course, I could not stick to our pact. Ryan is the guy that has guessed almost every birthday present I have ever got him. Since he had been commenting for months about how we have so many amazing pictures of the kids, but almost none of them on display - sad, but true - I thought this would be perfect! I could legitimately pinky swear not to get him a gift and then wrap up all kinds of framed prints for him to open up on Christmas morning claiming they were actual presents to the house - brilliant! For the weeks leading up to Christmas, I was secretly cashing client checks to avoid suspicious credit card charges, sneaking off to Aaron Brothers Frame Shop every other day to get collages put together and smuggling large boxes of prints in to the garage as soon as they arrived from UPS. All in all, I replaced the 12 pictures we have in the playroom of the kids with bright metallic prints, put together four 11x14s for my office, collected about 16 pictures from various trips to the beach in a hallway grouping, put three wedding images together for another hallway and printed about seven images for miscellaneous bedrooms, bathrooms, etc. I wrapped them all up, stashed them in closets throughout the house and waited. On Christmas morning, after the kids had opened most of their gifts, I sly commented that I actually had gotten Ryan something small and then proceeded to present print after print for him to open. He loved them all - except one, in which he thinks Jake is giving you a "I am about to completely misbehave" stare. I was so excited to finally surprise him, albeit somewhat deviously. I plopped down on the couch, proud of my ability to actual pull off a rouse of this magnitude. I gloated for all of about four minutes, until I was shocked to tears to find a gorgeous diamond eternity band wrapped up in my flannel PJs. Did I mention my husband is completely awesome?

So here are some of the images I used of my family (my nephew Jackson is the front toothless cutie). I always get questions about putting together collage ideas, so I will post pictures of the actual arrangements I hung at the house at a later date this month - don't want to run out of material too early....