Memorial Day Weekend Pics

What a weekend it's been! Josh and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary this weekend! We had such a fun time getting away and relaxing. We stayed at a nice hotel, went out to a nice dinner and got massages! :)

It was so great to relax because I had shot a wedding on Friday with my friend Missy (which was great fun), but by the time I got home and crawled into bed my feet were pretty sore and my back felt like I'd carried a camera around all day. :) (btw, I should have some photos to post from the wedding one day soon - I'm swimming in pictures at the moment!!! It was a beautiful wedding and so much fun to photograph! I'm in the process of editing down 1,200 pictures!!)

I did attach a photo (at the bottom) that Missy took of me during the wedding day shoot, sharing a little moment with a camera lens. :) Also, here are some of my peonies that I clipped for the house. They are in full bloom in my front yard and smell sooooo wonderful! I LOVE peonies - they are my favorite flower! I also put in some pics of my sweet little boy looking extra cute this past week. Jude has been watching me water the herbs and he likes to demonstrate his watering skills too. I think he saw his neighbor friend, Daphne, doing this also, and he wants to be cool like her too. :)

. Senior Sam .

silly sam. smiley sam. sweet sam. spunky sam. serious sam?

Sam is one of the most fun, sweet, spunky people I know! Her smile causes you to want to just hang around her. So, I wondered if she would be able to pull of "the serious face" for some of her senior photos... and she did, well! Her eyes pull you into this photograph.

Sam brought a great guy along with her for her photo shoot and this was my favorite picture of the two of them.

I had such a fun time with you both! Thanks for the hair help, Tucker! You have quite the eye.

Colorful Claire

I really enjoy h.s. senior photo shoots. I feel free to be more "out of the box" and "punchy" with my photography and colors. And it's always fun to use semi-crazy locations. :) Plus there's the added bonus of hanging out with some really fun people.

The weather was perfect this afternoon and Claire and I did a photo shoot for her rep cards. She is Bethany F. Photography's other 2008 Senior Photo Rep. We had such a great time and Claire was a very natural model. I had a tough time narrowing down my favorites.

I love this first shot (above), and the look of the first black and white shot (below).

Family

I grew up in a wonderful town and had the privilege of living out in the country, with my extended family living 1/2 a mile down the road.

In the summertime and on Christmas break when it snowed up where we lived, we cousins (7 of us) would play outside all day long. We would hike, build forts, play in the yard, wade in the mini pool on a really hot day, listen to the radio and dance to it singing into our bad mitten racquets, swing on the tree swing (that broke one year while I was in mid-swing!), make home video movies (like our own James Bond movie), eat Popsicles... and in the winter we'd have snow ball fights, build snow objects, sled down the hill into the blackberry bushes by an old abandoned truck (which would make such a cool photo setting now), etc. It was a pretty amazing childhood that I was blessed with. And I got to share it with my two brothers and four cousins. Such fun!

Since then, all of us kids have grown up, most married and moved away. My parent's sold our childhood home years ago and my Uncle is now selling theirs. So they threw a Farewell party, yes one last shin-dig, and all of my family attended (minus my one brother who had to work). :( It was such a fun and special day for me!! It was like returning to my childhood one last time and saying goodbye to it. What a bittersweet treasure!

The highlight of the day was when we cousins hiked from their house, up the hill half a mile to my childhood home, and we reminisced all the way up and back! We laughed about the summer we all camped out in the forest and tried to "live off the land" (we were home by lunchtime grabbing yogurts because we got hungry!) And all the memories we had walking that gravel road and often times meeting "half-way" because in our little minds that driveway was REALLY long!

What a gift our parents gave us to raise us in such a beautiful place and give us such sweet memories. I'm really thankful and I hope my children will have it at least half as good as I did!


This is my cousin Chelsi and her husband Eric.















This is my cousin Ian's son Lucas. Isn't he cute?























This is the new face he makes!









Our large family all together.






Cousins hiking up the road & My childhood home.

All Girl

Here are more of McKenna now that I'm finished going through them all. I had sooo many good ones, but here are a "few". I went a little crazy! :)

These were shot in her home and backyard.

Thanks for the fun afternoon, McKenna! You're a doll.

McKenna turns ONE!

On Tuesday I got to photograph McKenna and it was on her first birthday! She greeted me with the sweetest smile and joyful expressions.
I will have many more pictures of her to post on Friday evening, but for now this is the only sneak peak I can offer.

More Rowen Sweetness

I got some shots of Rowen in his home before we did our outdoor shoot and his sweet puppy joined us for some pictures! I love the shot of Rowen sitting in the chair in his nursery with his puppy laying at his feet. So sweet!