I must say that I love getting our family pictures done… well in theory that is!  Being photographers, we really cherish our photos and the priceless memories that they create for us.  Donny and I are constantly looking back at pics of our kids and thinking, “I don’t remember them looking like that” or “oh yeah – remember when they did that!” We are so grateful for the memories that we are able to document for our children.   … All that to say that we try to do a family photo shoot at least twice a year and although I look forward to it, I know in advance that it is going to be stressful — well, doing anything with 3 kids under 3 is!

I will never forget driving to this location (stressed out after getting all the kids ready and in the car) and telling Donny how I had curled my hair (twice actually) but I should have bought a different hair spray because this one clearly wasn’t working… and our oldest daughter tells me, “Mommy, you are supposed to be content with what you have.”  LOL… coming from my three year old!!!  It made me stop and laugh and think about what really mattered.  What mattered is that we were together.  That we would have awesome photos of our family. That we were blessed to be able to have something tangible to help us remember what life was like at this point in time.

So as you celebrate with your families this weekend, I encourage you to take a step back from the hustle and bustle of traveling, gift exchange, etc. to enjoy this stage in life.  Enjoy your families.

Wishing you all a safe, happy and wonderful Christmas!

P.S.  Thank you to Mae & Michael for our family pics!!

Today marks Donny & I’s 10 year anniversary!  I am so excited to celebrate with him and have the chance to reminisce over all that we have been blessed with over this time.  I truly have the most awesome and loving husband and am am grateful for days like today where I can focus on how blessed I am to have him in my life!!  I thought I would surprise him and post a loveblog for him…

Hey love!  It feels like it was only yesterday that we were two young teens falling in love…  giddy and trying to figure out who held who’s hand first….

Two kids excited about playing house and looking forward to where God would take us.

We’ve come a long way from just the two of us…

To our first little angel joining our family…

And then two more joys entering our lives…

I know life is often absolutely crazy, sleepless, way too busy and usually looks like this-

But there is no one else I would rather share my life with.  I look forward to raising our family together and continuing to grow closer to you as the years go by.  I love you!! 

As I’m sure many of you noticed, our blog kind of stopped being updated this past year almost completely… Ummm… you could say that I just simply wasn’t up to it.  When I got pregnant with the twins, I literally could barely do much of anything but sleep.  The first 4 months were so incredibly draining…I guess it sucks a lot of energy out of one’s body creating 20 fingers and 20 toes!  Once that was over, I had about a month of feeling OK before I was simply SO huge that it was like being 9 months pregnant for months on end!  I can’t tell you how many people would ask me at 5 months pregnant if I was due that week! LOL.  Then the pre-term labor and bed rest… and then what can I say — WE HAD TWINS!  Now they are 8 months old and I am finally feeling like my head is screwed back on somewhat correctly!  We are starting to get some sleep, starting to find some sort of routine and I’m excited about being able to get back into doing some of the things I love — including posting here! 

You can be looking forward to us sharing some of our recent work, along with some of the work from this past year for you to see!  For now, I thought I would share a pic of our family (thank you Mae & Michael).

Most of you know that we just had twins!  It has been the most amazing thing and we love them to death!  The adjustment has been huge, but manageable.  We have been working like crazy to be able to keep up with everything and still be able to enjoy just how precious and tiny they are.  We feel incredibly blessed that God has given us these little gifts!  The pregnancy was rough and we appreciate all the prayers that went up on our behalf.  I was able to carry them to full term!  Amazing!

Many of you have been waiting to see pictures for a long time and we are so excited to finally have a chance to breathe and show off our little angels!

Probably my fave shot of the two of them.

Another cuddly shot.. You know it’s kind of funny. When we look at them now we can see all their little differences.  However when we were at the hospital, we could barely tell them apart!  We had to get pink & blue blankets so that we knew who was who!   There were several times where we thought we had one baby and come to find out it was the other one!  Now they look completely different!!  I can’t figure out how they could grow inside me for 9 months and come out looking the same but then change so drastically in just a few short weeks! … or we can simply blame it on complete sleep deprivation!!!

Oops.. too bad our logo goes right through her face on this one! 

Our little boy

Our little girl in Daddy’s hands

Well, we hope you have been enjoying that we have been blogging  a bunch again!  The pregnancy was really hard on me and our blog kind of went by the wayside.  However, we have so much to show you!!!!  Keep checking in!

Well, make that TWO storks!  Our two little bundles of joy arrived on Friday night!  We just got home from the hospital and can’t wait to share some images of our new family additions — which will be done as soon as we have a chance to sleep!!!  :)  – Just fyi, feeding 2 newborns every 2 hours is crazy!!   We will be quite busy this upcoming week, so please be patient if there is a delay in our returning phone calls or emails.  Feel free to follow our status on Facebook as well.

As you all know, we are expecting a couple additions to our family…. it seems as though they may be coming early.  We had quite a scare on Friday and Saturday where Holly went into pre-term labor and an emergency c-section seemed imminent…  but, as of this writing (11 pm Sunday night) its looking more hopeful that we can let them bake for a day or two more (and hopefully much longer).  Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us and checking in with us.   We apologize ahead of time for taking a little longer to follow up with phone calls and e-mails.   We are definitely going to be at the hospital all week this week without internet service.   We’ll check back in with you as we can.  Thank you for your understanding.

Well, from the picture below, it may not be that big of a surprise what our announcement is!  We are pregnant!!  However, the bigger surprise is that our family will be growing this summer by not just one baby, but two!  Thats right– twinsies!!  We are incredibly grateful and excited!  The past months have been such a whirlwind of trying to get things ready for the kiddos and adjusting to a twin pregnancy (fyi: very different from a singleton pregnancy)!  The picture below was taken about a month ago at only 24 weeks!!  Crazy, huh.  My belly wasn’t even that big when I delivered our daughter!  LOL.  Donny and I have been having fun recently and have done a couple photo shoots of my big belly.  Here is just one photo from one of the shoots. Hope to post more soon!

Funny story behind this shot.  We were on a somewhat major street and had pulled aside to get shots in the yellow flowers/weeds.  Donny wasn’t really liking the shirt I was wearing and suggested I take it off…. I kinda laugh now, because I normally am pretty conservative on these matters, but… when it comes to cool pictures… the picture wins, right?  — Cars definitely started slowing down!!  LOL…   So moral of the story is that I know we ask a lot of our clients to do funny things and ask that they trust us — we even have to take our own advise sometimes! (Disclaimer:  We generally do not ask clients to take their clothes off )

We can’t wait to share more with all of you as our family grows!  Thanks for being a part of our lives!

I had such an awesome time visiting my new little niece!  She is adorable.  Being an auntie is so great.  Little Hadyn is such a good baby.  I was there for several days and I never even heard her cry!  I found myself missing the cute little sounds that babies make — my favorite is the little humming sound they make when they are nursing.  Ohhh… so precious…

Anyway, our little one was so excited to see her brand new cousin.  I can’t even explain the look of complete adoration that she had in her eyes for Hadyn.  She held her so well and would pat her kindly.  Her first comment was “cute mouth!”  What made her think that, I have no idea.  Then she would move the baby’s face by pushing her cheek softly and turning it toward her saying, “Wook (look) at me.”  

Her sweet smile is precious!

This month is insane.  Between the two of us, either one or both of us is out of town for 15/30 days this month.  Crazy.  This past week we had the opportunity to go to Shoot with Beckstead in Santa Barbara and then we were in San Diego right after.  While we were in Santa Barbara, my sister had her baby!  I am so excited to be an auntie!  So… this morning at 4am, Donny dropped off our daughter and me at the airport and we flew up to Washington, which is where I am at now.

Let me just throw out some information — traveling by plane with a toddler — by yourself — is a task for only those who are a bit looney.  Seriously, what was I thinking?  Since I am planning on doing a photo shoot of my new niece, I had one shoulder bag on one shoulder full of camera gear, another bag on the other shoulder for my laptop and assorted diaper bag items mixed in (both really heavy bags).  On my hip I had our daughter who just “couldn’t” go without her “green blankie”.  Add to that a huge bag containing our little one’s car seat which I basically DRUG (literally) throughout the airport because I had no other way of carrying it.  All of those items I had to carry on.  Then I had a suitcase full of our things and a backdrop which I was able to check.  I know I must have been quite a sight!  Quite surprisingly almost no-one offered to help!!!  I was kind of surprised!  It was a fun trip… so glad Grandma will be flying back with us on the way home!

Donny took a few pics for us to laugh about before I left.  These are taken from the little point and shoot…  Honestly the picture doesn’t do it justice compared to the sight it was trying to see me carry all this stuff.  I literally had our daughter dangling in my arms!

And one of our Little Monkey with her monkey on her first plane ride!

Since we are traveling so much this month, please be patient with us if we are unable to respond to phone calls or emails immediately.

So, right now we are sitting in a hotel room in Santa Barbara using a borrowed computer!  We came up last night to attend one of David Beckstead’s seminars!  (totally awesome, by the way) However, once we got here our MacBookPro decided it won’t boot up.  Not fun.  …it doesn’t help that all of our installation software is at home and there isn’t an Apple store nearby… 

We were hoping to be able to blog some of the AWESOME shots we got while we were up here, but it looks like that won’t be able to happen for a few days.  This has rendered us unable to answer email as well, so please be patient and we will get back to everyone on Monday.  

Enjoy the weekend!