My baby girl

Here are a couple of Mackenzie. It looks like I may have another brown eyed girl. I LOVE brown eyes so that's fine with me. I seriously need to get some more girly shots of her but these were just some quick shots I grabbed while I had her in her birthday suit. 

This one has some focus issues and wouldn't be a keeper other than I LOVE this big ol' smile she has here. She gives anyone who catches her gaze this sweet grin.

I'm still hiding : )

I thought I would go ahead update those of you who are waiting on me to come out of my cave and start taking pictures again. I'm thinking maybe in a couple of months I'll be able to get this sweet baby on some kind of schedule so that I can be a little more productive. I'll make sure to post on my blog when its official. BTW she's doing really well she's just a little unpredictable and not crazy about sleeping in her bed. 

A while back I came across this picture of Samuel that I took in the back yard and I just decided I love it. He's got all those big permanent teeth in the front now and man, it makes him look so much older.

Here are the girls givin' each other some love at Samuel's baseball game.

Okay, one of these days Samuel is going to have his own room being the only boy and I'm toying around with the idea of putting up a collage of four square pictures up in his room..all processed like these. I can't decide if I want to do all black and white or a mix of both. (I'll add other shots to the mix). What do you think! Color or black and white?

I thought this shot of Brianna was kind of fun. I'm trying to break out of my little box and try some more creative things with the shots of my kids. Brianna is bouncing on one of those bounce balls here and I have one of Samuel that is halairious  I haven't processed yet. 

...and a couple of head shots of the girls.

These are some I did just before Mackenzie was born and Brianna came down with the flu the night I took these so that's why the squinty face. 

I guess you noticed I changed my blog layout. I may change it again I just really needed to go ahead and use the logo I had designed a while back. Well, maybe someone will read this..its been so long since I posted. Leave me some blog love if you're reading : )

I Heart Etsy

Being a photographer I've really gotten into looking for cool photo jewelry and have been looking for a locket for forever. I think the first time I heard of hand stamped jewelry it was from my friend, Alisha, when she posted this. (Click on Lisa Leonard Designs). She told me they also had lots of hand stamped jewelry on Etsy. So I had this locket custom made byDonnaODesigns. Here it is. Its about the size of a quarter...

Here's another one of my finds on Etsy. This sweet little hat came from Portland Beanie Company. I was really impressed with the quality of this hat. I sent Nili these pictures hoping she could use them and she already has one of them up on her site! This is my little Mackenzie again BTW.

My friend Julie also gave me some CUTE hats from Etsy I know I will be photographing as well. (Julie, maybe you can comment and remind me who you got them from.) She also told me about some others that were too cute and I'll have to hunt down the site and show them to you. I think I posted the picture of my diaper cake and there were tons of cute hair clips that Julie found on Etsy. Anyway, I just thought I would put in a plug for Etsy and all the people there who are working hard to produce some really unique things. It can be hard in America to make a living making things...ya know? 

All 4

I can't believe I managed to get a picture of all 4 of the kids looking at me!! Anyway, I don't know if this is the best picture in the world but as a mom I just LOVE it! I ordered a hand stamped locket I found on Etsy and had  to get a picture of them to put inside the locket. I will have to post a photo and the link when it comes in. Here they are...

I couldn't manage to get the paci away from Mackenzie. She was crying so hard I had to settle for the pacifier. Whew...she cries a lot. Samuel cried a lot and I think she cries as much or more. Oh well...at least I know they don't stay little that long. So, hopefully it will fly by...the crying part.

My new model....Mackenzie Faith

Well, here she is...Mackenzie Faith. She weighed 8lbs and 5oz and was 18 1/2 inches long. Its a good thing my Dr. induced me early or she might have been 9lbs and 5oz. Since the day we found out our due date Chance has said we were going to have her on his birthday, March 11th and she barely made it. I went in to be induced at 6am and didn't really start having contractions until about 2 in the afternoon. My body reacted pretty slowly to things so by 10pm I was ready for a baby and an epidural. I ended up with an epidural that worked so good I couldn't walk until the next morning. If I didn't have the baby by 12am I would have had to have a C section so there was a little more at risk than missing Chance's birthday. She finally came at 11:39 pm. I hope this doesn't mean she's going t be a procrastinator : ) Here she is....I'm sure there will be more to come.

Winter Sessions....

Here are a few from my winter sessions. I'm wrapping things up and getting ready for Mackenzie. I'm pretty sure the name is going to stick this time since Samuel, Brianna, and Alexis are all calling her Mackenzie...at least Alexis is attempting to say that long name: ) 

I guess I won't tell a story about each of these since there are so many different people. I had a lot of brave clients this winter. Some of these sessions were really chilly! Thanks for being such good sports!

Oh, yeah and I just had to process this one with the final proofs. I thought this was too cute...look at that lip. In his defense he had just woken up from a nap and it was quite chilly out. 

I don't know if you noticed but I have a new watermark! I had someone at Design Outpost design it for me. I'm thinking when I start back up after maternity leave I'll have a new look to my site. I'm changing my main color from brown to black for what might seem like a silly reason...its really hard to find brown photo packaging. So, I'm just going to change everything and while I'm on maternity leave I'm planning to get a new website, take some time photographing my family, and take some online workshops. 

Next, I attached a picture of my "diaper cake" from a diaper shower my friends Katie, Julie, and Chelsea threw for me. I was so impressed with this cake. I'm sure you've seen them before but this has to be the cutest one : ) You can probably see that everything on the cake is functional. Some of the little decorations are hair clips and pacifier holders. Anyway, the shower was a huge blessing and I'm so thankful to have so many precious friends in my life. God is good!

One birthday, two lost teeth, and four Christmases

December has been the craziest month for us. My baby, Alexis, turned two on the 6th. She wasn't feeling great, barely recovered from an ear infection. We took her to one of those jumping places with just our immediate family and my mom. She had a pretty good time but wasn't quite herself. Here's one of her tasting the icing to her cookie cake.


Not long after her birthday her "big girl bed" came. I always fret about the adjustment of getting the little ones into a bed when they can actually get out!! You never know what kind of war it will be keeping them in the bed. It went so much better than I imagined. She loved it and I think it was because she loved being in the room with her brother and sister. I'm sure it made her feel more included.

Next, it was time try and get some good shots of my own kids for a Christmas card. Its almost impossible to get a good shot of three kids together that young so, although this one's not perfect its the one I used.


I also ended up with some shots I really liked of Samuel and Brianna. Alexis was on the move and I couldn't catch a really good one of her. I still have so many shots to process from that day. You may notice Samuel is missing a tooth in this one and now he's missing the other one, too. I'm glad I was able to capture this snaggle-toothed smile.




Samuel and Brianna were also in a Christmas musical at church. It was just about the cutest thing I've ever seen! Brianna really doesn't like attention so I figured she would chicken out and Samuel was complaining of looking like a bumble bee the week before BUT they both pulled it off and made their mommy a really special memory. I'm so thankful to all the adults who worked and continue to work so hard with the children at our church.


Next, I'm posting some random shots of our four Christmases. Some of the ones of my dad, step-mom, and two sisters are from a visit a few weeks earlier. I didn't manage to get my camera out each time so I don't have pictures from each Christmas. Sometimes when I have my camera with me its like having another child because it takes so much of my attention and I'm better off leaving it in the case. (The white balance is probably all kinds of wonky in all my indoor shots. I upgraded to the 5D and couldn't help but take a lot of indoor shots since its specialty is low-light.)

The first two are my two teen-age little sisters, Allison and Melissa.


This is Christmas at their house.

This one is from Christmas at our house with Chance's dad, step-mom and little sister, Lacey.


I think this one is my favorite shot of the month. I really wanted a low-light shot of the kids in front of the Christmas tree before tearing into all the gifts.


Well, I think that's enough for now : ) Next time I'll share some from my December sessions...