Ok – I am blogging a little out of order here and will come back to my CA posts soon, but I had family that was really wanting to see these pics!

I am so lucky to have some of the cutest kids in my life! Now, if only those cute kids would be willing to let me photograph them all the time

My niece, Peyton, is 4 years old and is my brother’s youngest child. They live a pretty good ways from us so I was super excited when they came up for a visit AND she let me snap a few pics of her. The only time we had was around noon on a Sunday – and we all know that noon light can be tricky. I think we pulled it off though!!

My nephew, Gavin, is 3 years old and is my sister’s only child (so far). He lives closer to me so my camera is on him quite a bit and lately he has not been a fan of it at all!! But on these 2 days depicted above he was being so sweet and such a little poser. Could just eat him up, especially when he is like that

Ok, oddly enough, I don’t have any photos from the actual party. Lame of me I know, but true.  I did however grab a few shots that day of my nephew and cousins.  Be prepared: the last shot might be the cutest one you will ever see  Even though there are no photographs from the party I will be able to look back on these images and remember the exact day they were taken and exactly the reason we were all gathered at my mom’s house that day.

This is Aaron, Aidan and Andrew – our 5 year old boys.  – another reason to celebrate 5 years

Magic hour was gorgeous that night and all of the other kiddos were just sick of me. haha. So I grabbed sweet baby Lily after she finished her dinner and took these shots of her. She was SO patient with me. I have had a pretty rough year and I can honestly say that she has been the brightest spot of that year. thankful for her and thankful that she still tolerates my incessant photo taking

Thank You Aidan for letting me be a part of your life. xoxo

I had such a great time with Leah and crew that weekend.  We went to see her oldest sing at church and then to a yummy bbq place that had the best side dishes: blueberry cornbread, sweet potato fries, fried pickles etc. I totally forgot my camera (like a dummy) so I have no documentation of that either! BUT, that night we headed to Laguna Beach to visit with friends of the Zawadzki family and that is where I captured these next images. Such a great time with great people and yummy food! Pretty cute kids too I might add

This next image is the only one we have from that day of all of the kids together. I overlooked it at first, or dismissed I should say.  It is flawed, not perfectly focused, no eye contact…but I love it all the same.  I am learning to accept the imperfections in life, in me, in my photographs.

And  that is what this image is, perfectly imperfect.

Leah and crew: I had a wonderfully amazing time with you and I hope to visit much more often on my next trips out west. xoxo

I took these photos back in February as a special Mother’s Day surprise for my sweet, sweet mom. These are all 4 of her grandchildren. The first shot is pretty much one of the only shots we have of the 4 of them together and she was absolutely overjoyed when we presented her with a 24×36 canvas of it.  There were tears, big ones. It made my day that I could do that for her.  She means so very much to me. I really have no words to express how much.  But a picture is worth 1000 words, right? So…Happy Mother’s Day mom. Enjoy my 4000 words!!!!

I am really behind on my blogging so I will probably be posting like crazy in the next couple of days.  This is my  baby cousin, Lily. She is 3.5mths old and is the sweetest, happiest little thing. I just love her to bits and clearly my camera feels the same way!