Due on Turkey Day! ♥ Maternity Sneek Peek

The other day I got the opportunity to shoot the adorable Jenny and her loving man Jerry. They are such a sweet couple and love each other so much. This shoot is a bit of a milestone for me since this was the first time I met them! Jenny works with my brother in law, Matt and he pointed her in my direction. I'm so glad he did, because this is my favorite session to date!

Aren't they just the cutest couple?



Jenny is seriously pretty...and one of the cutest pregnant women I have ever met!


It was a BEAUTIFUL fall evening. The weather was PERFECT!


This was all Jenny's idea. If you can't see the tag, it says, "To:Mommy and Daddy, From: God" So cute!


Thank you so much Jenny and Jerry! I appreciate your patience with me while I figured some things out. This was a great experience for me and I hope you love your pics!

A little early Halloween fun!

So last week the kids and I met up with my parents and my sisters family camping up at the KOA near Port Huron. I'll be honest and say that I'm not normally a huge fan of KOA type campgrounds, but this one is really cool! Not to mention less than an hour away. Anyway, every year they have "trick or treating" for the campground. The whole campground is filled with kids and decorations and it's just tons of kiddie fun.

This year, Aidan is a Ninja for Halloween. I'll be honest and say that I'm disappointed that he's not being something more "cute", but his heart is set on it. I have to say, he does look pretty tough....which if you know Aidan says a lot!


Miss Addie is a witch. A good witch because she's so cute. And to make it sound even cuter to her, she's a princess witch. She just won't keep her hat on. ;o) Here she is with not one, but two suckers while trick or treating. That's my girl!


And here's Uncle Matt! For those without young kids, he's dressed up as DJ Lance Rock from Yo Gabba Gabba! This is a favorite kids show of MINE! Haha! But what is even cooler is that he was very into character and all the little kids loved him.


And we can't forget his lovely wife and my little sister Aunt Kim! I think she's one cute kitty!


Here we have Addie hanging out with her Grampa Wilkins. I need to make a mental note and take more pics of the kids with the grandparents!


Aidan got tired of wearing his mask. I actually like his costume much better without it. And doesn't he look like he's up to no good here?


This is a very typical face that I see very often from Addie. She's no doubt voicing her displeasure about something. Always drama with little girls, but still so very cute!


It was such a beautiful day. I love fall days like these...



When we got back to the campsite, I tried to get pics of my parents dogs for them. I really really love this pic of their crazy dog, Gretchen. I curse myself for cutting off her little paw at the bottom! Darn it!


Addie just loves this dog. Not the best focus,I admit, but cute nonetheless...


This is Molson. He's getting up there in years! If memory serves, he's about 13 or 14 and isn't doing the best health wise.

Check out this smile!!!!


Of course I can't forget my little cutie nephews! Here is my little Oliver...look how big he's getting!!! I love love LOVE his blue eyes. ♥

And who can forget Elliot? I've mentioned this before, but this little guy gives me a run for the money! Seriously, I tried to take a picture of him and what does he do? Scream and run away! You'd think he was one of MY kids! LOL! Somehow, I managed to get a shot of him on the campground train. I count my lucky stars that I got both eye contact AND a smile!!!!!

My newest favorite pics of the kids.

OK, so I probably say that a lot. I'm OK with that. That means that I'm taking better pics each time, right? While I'm not saying these are photographic perfection, they're my kids and they are perfection to me.

Here is my Addie Joy, just hanging out on a ride on toy. I tried getting a little funky with my processing on this one. I hope it worked!

And my silly boy Aidan. I love this, because it' "him".


And lastly, one of the two of them together. I just love this. Now, I can't tell you how hard it is to get the two of them both looking at me with nice expressions. Then add that it's even more hard to do what I mentioned without their hands and legs all over the place. I've attempted to take a similar shot to this earlier this summer and failed. I can't tell you how many more I took with this attempt. Not one perfect keeper. So, I had to do a photography secret. Let's just say I had to do some swapping. I took and cut out a shot of Aidan that I really liked a few frames up and pasted him into this pic. There's a little more to it than that, but I have to say, I think it worked!

First day of school 2009

So Aidan started back up to school this week! He's now in the 4 year old Preschool program, going 3 days a week. I still can't believe he's getting so big!

While he was excited for school to start, he wasn't too happy about me taking his picture to commemorate the event. As you can see here...

I have at least a dozen more with this same expression.

Still annoyed with me....

Then I think he figured out that if he just smiled, I would leave him alone.

The Snyder Kids

Meet Jillian, Jenna, Nathan and Nolan. They are the awesome kids of an old high school friend that I've reconnected with on Facebook. I admit to being SOOO nervous about this shoot. Aside from my own kids, I've only ever shot a single child. Here I was jumping into FOUR kids... definitely a big change of pace for me! They were SO good and I really had so much fun working with them!


Katie got a chance to get in on this one. She's such a great mom.

The girls had some fun jumping around.

Thank you so much Katie and kids! I had a blast working with you guys.

Little Northern Michigan vacay

Even though it was a little vacation, I have lots of pics! So, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy!

Last week we got back from Clear lake Resort, up in central northern MI. We had fun and it was nice to get away. It was the perfect distance too. Not too far, but far enough! I was pleasantly surprised that Addie did GREAT in the car. This is the girl that complains about the car ride to Target. A huge thank you goes out to Grandma and Grampa Hosking for the portable DVD player for the car. Definitely eased the pain!

So, here is where we stayed. It was..ummm...cozy. Actually it wasn't that bad, tight, but not bad. Well, the bathroom was a bit of a challenge. We'll just say that not only was it tiny, but the showers were lightning fast!

But, how can you complain when you wake up to this view every day?

Here we have Jim and Aidan getting ready to go fishing. Aidan was so excited to fish and I think Jim was just as excited to take him.

But miss Addie and Zoe were not happy that they weren't invited. Here they were just staring out the door watching the guys fish.

Here are they guys, doing their thing.

While the guys were fishing, the dew on the grass caught my eye and I thought it may be neat to take a pic. This isn't exactly how I hoped it would turn out, but I still like the color and clean feeling.


As many of you know, this summer has been dubbed the "bummer summer" since it's been a bit cooler than in previous years. With the weather up north being a good 5-10 degrees cooler, we were a little disappointed that there wasn't much beach time. It actually wouldn't have been too bad it wasn't so windy. Jim and the kids braved the weather to swim a couple times. The kids (especially Addie) love the water.

She LOVES the beach.

Digging in the dirt is her favorite part.

I don't know what Aidan was doing here, but he was having fun!

He loved looking for sea shells. I know, freshwater lake, no seashells. But he found a bunch of snail shells. He was pretty excited about that!

Even Zoe had fun!


Then we rented a pontoon boat for a couple hours. The kids really seemed to like it. Again, it was a little cooler than we would like, but it was nice and peaceful. Here the kids are enjoying ice cream candy.

Then the guys decided to try their luck at fishing again.

And Addie gave boat driving a try.

She finally got a chance to fish and LOVED it! She took it very seriously!

I don't know what she's doing here, but you can sure tell she loved being on the boat!

Aidan gives his best pirate impersonation. No, he's actually squinting from the sun, but he sure looks cute!

I was obsessed with the clouds over the lake. It was at this time I wished that I had a nice wide angle lens. I just love those big sky shots. I never get the opportunity to do that at home!

Then a rare thing happened. I handed Jim my camera in auto and had him take a pic of me with the kids!


I love this pic of Aidan. It was just one of those moments I was sitting down, playing with my camera when Aidan sat next to me. I said "Hey Aidan!" he looked at me and I snapped. I just love his eyes here. I didn't touch them in Photoshop either (except size/sharpen for web). Every once in a while I nail my focus and get so excited! And Look, you can see Addie in the bokeh!

Annnnd, here is our deck view from our last night on vacation. The first couple evenenings were too overcast to give much color. So pretty!

That was our little get away. I can't say it was exactly relaxing with the kids, but it was a nice change of scenery!