Regardless of feelings, my baby boy is all big now and we had a heck of a party for him last Saturday.  We turned our backyard into a mini-waterpark thanks to the generosity of our good friends who loaned us their water slides for the weekend.  We filled the yard with lots of little people and good friends and family and celebrated his 3rd year in style. 

 I plan to do a future post on my little man with lots of comments about what he’s up to these days.  I hope to get a little photo shoot in of just him in the next few weeks.  I have the clothes all picked out I just don’t seem to have the time!   Anyway, in the meantime, here are some unedited shots from his party.  (If I were going to edit them, they might make the blog by the time he’s FOUR!)  I’m sure my blog stalkers (ahem, my family) are anxious to see some photos.

 Happy Birthday Brett man!

My clients for this session were friends with my clients from this session and they each helped each other’s session by doing dog duty.  It is a great help to bring along someone to assist with dogs if you want them in your photos.  It made all the difference with both of these recent sessions.  Anyway, it was great fun to hang out with both families on two different dates and I really enjoyed both shoots. 

What made this session special was that my client’s mom was visiting from out of town and we included her in many, many photos.  She was so cute when she said to me, “I had no idea we weren’t going to a studio!”  She was surprised to find out that we were going to be taking portraits outside.  I think she’ll realize our motive in shooting outside when she sees these beautiful photos.  What a gorgeous backdrop we had on Tuesday evening.  The lighting was fantastic and the orange sunset just spectacular.  It was a little warm out (mere 90’s) and we got a few raindrops at the end from a random dark cloud that passed over, but all in all we were very successful!

M-I hope you love your sneak peek.  Sorry it took me so long to get it posted…I just couldn’t narrow down my favorites!  I’ll be in touch with you soon with your online gallery.

Here are some more of my favorites!

But, this post is about a wonderful couple who recently celebrated a wedding anniversary and wanted to have some updated photos taken of the two of them and their pups.  They admitted that it has bascially been since their wedding day that they’ve had photos taken of them together.  I do know how that is and after doing this shoot, I decided that I need to find someone to take some couple shots of my husband and me.  I want photos like these of us!

The dogs did really well considering what we wanted them to do-pose!  I think everyone enjoyed the walk around their neighborhood to capture these images!  Thanks so much for a fun morning and I’m so glad the rain held off for us!  Here you go with your sneak peek…

Aren’t their puppies cute?  You can click on the thumbnails below to enlarge the images.

I blinked an eye and the calendar now says July.  Mid-June saw the wrap up our Jake and Nick’s sports.  And wow, what a season they both had.  Nick’s 6-8 year old flag football team under the coaching of an incredible duo, clinched the championship with an undefeated season.  They were the first team in the history of this organization to go undefeated all the way to the championship.  It was such an amazing experience to be a part of this team.  I think it changed Nick in very positive ways and gave him something to be very proud of (and something his brother was very jealous of!).  We will never forget this season and the excitement and the joy and the fun these kids had playing a game they loved.

Keeping with the sports theme, Jake played baseball for the first time and we couldn’t have asked for a better coach or team for him to have that first experience.  And Matt was right out there with him assistant coaching.  Jake fell in love with the sport and will play again in the fall giving up football.  They pulled together as a team, made incredible improvements throughout the season and came within ONE game of the championship!  AWESOME!  They played their hearts out in the last game but came up short.  They still held their heads high and knew what they had accomplished was indeed great.  Jake made some wonderful friends on the team and I hope we see them again in the fall.

The school year wrapped up first for a special girl in our lives, cousin Sarah who graduated from high school among the top of her class with her choice of college acceptances!  She made it into all the top schools around here and that is no small feat this day and age with competition so fierce!  This is Sarah last summer when we did her senior photos…

And here is Sarah with her little admirer, Brett!  He truly has eyes for her and she is so sweet to him. 

We had a lot of fun at her graduation party visiting with family and Brett even got to climb into a school bus and take a seat!

I got to hang out with this couple and catch up on their upcoming wedding plans (they didn’t know I was taking this photo…I thought the shadow was cool!).  We’ll be doing fun engagement photos in the next few weeks!  Can’t wait for that!!

The boys’ school year came to close (finally!) on June 18th.  I got to spend a few hours at Nick’s Luau party in first grade.  It was a super hot day but the kids made the most of it and played lots of fun games!

Nick had a fabulous teacher and we’ll definitely miss her next year!!!  (She’s up at the top posing with Nick)

I wanted the make the last day of school special for the boys so Brett and I ran around and got some decorations and some fun snacks and we had a little celebration when they got home. 

So, now we’ve had two weeks of summer already.  The boys have been busy for sure with lots of sleepovers, trips to the pool, the Waterpark, pick up baseball games, and today their cousins from Arkansas are on the way here to spend a few weeks.  That will bring lots more sleepovers and exciting adventures for sure! 

I’m trying to keep my train moving slowly at least for the summer.   Or if not exactly slowly, not at mock speed either!  I’m definitely going to do a better job at keeping current with my blog posts!

I’ll have more from this session to post after I get through them I’m sure!

Anyway, I think this is my last post on their wedding.  I think.  I might be lying and after I go through them more closely some more may appear on my blog.  I’ll also be working on their slideshow and may post that here as well.  Chris and Evyn, I hope you are enjoying your honeymoon and are not checking my blog, but if you are, I hope you love what you see!!! Thanks so much for asking me to be a part of your very special day.  I wish you all the happiness in the world! 

The ceremony and reception took place at the gorgeous King Family Vineyards in Crozet, VA.  Such beautiful countryside in that area and an incredible setting for a wedding. 

Enjoy these first images…

Check back soon for more of my favorites!