Two Year Old Eli

This past week I had the pleasure of meeting Eli and his mom, Trisha, at Homer Lake for a session commemorating his 2nd birthday.  I had never been to Homer Lake before; it is a really beautiful place.  I saw lots of trails for walking/running and it seems to be a pretty popular place to fish.  They've recently added a really nice kids' area that is perfect for little ones.  Eli loves water!  Like, really, really loves it!  It was hard to get him away from the water but for a 2-year old on the go, he did amazingly well.  He is just so sweet and completely adorable.  Even though it was humid and the bugs were eating me up, I had a great time capturing Eli's personality!

I know Trisha didn't want his hands in his mouth but I love his face here!

There's a sweet smile!

This could just be my favorite picture

Oh, this face!! 

Daisy is One!

Wow, has it really been almost a year since I first got little Miss Daisy in front of the camera?  I'm sure Rhianna can hardly believe it either.  We took Daisy to the Arboretum (had to have a colorful background to match her colorful tutu!) for her one year pictures.  I think Rhianna and I were both a little nervous about how Daisy was going to perform considering it was about 45 minutes before her bedtime.  Thankfully, Daisy was in a wonderful mood and smiled and giggled the entire time.  It helped that Rhianna was over my shoulder doing all sorts of silly stuff.  It is clear just how much Daisy adores her momma (and looks like her too!).  This was altogether a completely great session.

Teacher Appreciation

Today was my student teacher's last day (sniff, sniff).  I had already been slowly collecting things to create a goody basket for her since you spend so much money your first year teaching just on things you need in your classroom.  On Monday after school, I got a great idea for a photo collage; something that would let her know just how much the students and I loved having her in our classroom.  I was fortunate enough to get all the pictures taken on Tuesday and Wednesday and I finished piecing the collage together about 9 PM last night which means I had to wait until this morning to pick it up from the photo lab.  Truthfully, I finished it around 6:30 last night but then when I picked up the first round of pictures, I saw that I had made a pretty big mistake with the collage and I essentially had to start over.  But thankfully, the collage turned out beautiful and I totally admit to tearing up a bit when I first took it out of the envelope.  And yeah, it totally made my student teacher cry.  And then all of my girls started crying (and did.not.stop).
I guess I should mention that every morning at the end of assembly, our principal has the students turn to someone and say "You are ____" and he gives them a complimentary word to use.  I made a list of the words he's used over the year and I let the kids pick a word that they wanted to use to describe my student teacher.  Anyway, I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I'm pretty sure I'll be doing this for all of my student teachers in the future.
Oh and I know it's a little hard to see all the words- this file is not resized for the website and I had to let Blogger shrink it (a LOT) in order for it to fit.

Alana's One Year Session

Last week, I did a session with little Miss Alana.  Her mom and I had rescheduled the session at least 3 times.  The weather just would not cooperate!!  We tried to sneak in a session on the ONE day it was somewhat warm and nice out last week.  Alana took her time in front of the camera very seriously.  Actually I think she was just mesmerized by how crazy Emily and I were acting just trying to get her to smile (Justin Bieber songs anyone?).  Hey it's hard to keep a smile on your face at the end of a long Monday, right? 
And I think Alana wins the award for longest and thickest eyelashes on a baby.  Holy moly, this girl will never need mascara!

Quinn is One!

I've got a bunch of one-year sessions coming up (lots of spring babies...hmmmm) and Quinn is the first one of the bunch.  I was so excited to work with Quinn, Jessica, and Carl again; they are such a beautiful family and so much fun to do sessions with!  We had a beautiful day for the session; warm, lots of sunshine...well okay lots of sunshine isn't always ideal for a photographer but we made it work.  It's just nice being able to take outdoor pictures without my jacket on!  Quinn was an absolute doll as usual and we had a blast walking around the Arboretum.

Peek-a-boo, Quinn!

 

Introducing Katherine!

Remember Christina and Tony?   I was so excited to get Christina's email to say that little Katherine had been born on March 5th.  Last weekend I got to meet sweet little Katherine for her big debut.  I don't remember my girls ever being that small but they certainly were!  Ahhhh newborns; you just have to love them!  Katherine did great during the session.  She was very alert for the first half of the session but after a quick meal and a diaper change, she eventually drifted to sleep.  By the end of the session, she was completely out and I knew Christina and Tony were going to get a well deserved hour or two of peace. ;) 
I hope I get to see Miss Katherine again; she is absolutely adorable!

Bright-eyed!

Who doesn't love a giant purple daisy?

I love how big the rings are in her little hand

As I said, completely out by the end

Ezra 10 Months

Time for another session with Ezra!  I know Kim fretted over how serious Ezra was throughout the session but I did manage to get quite a few smiles and smirks from him.  He had a blast playing with balloons and I think he was very relieved when we took the blazer off.  And we did some pictures with his helmet on since he won't be wearing it that much longer!

This one is my favorite!!

Notice the pictures are a little crisper now?  I finally figured out how to resize them properly for Blogger!  Thank you I Heart Faces forum!!