I love this time of year, it really makes you think about how important your family & friends are. I feel so lucky to have my caring & supportive husband, my two awesome babies & a wonderful group of family & friends close by. I hope everyone else had a wonderful thanksgiving!

I thought I’d share a few personal pictures from the last few weeks. Be prepared though, because it should be a weird mix. I didn’t post any Halloween pictures yet, but I feel I should, so I’m mixing ghouls with warm fuzzy Christmas tree moments.

My super studly zombie-obsessed husband.

I’m a vampire, cause that’s what Crystal wanted me to be.

My adorable sweet little vampire bride.

I take back the sweet part.

My cute little fireman! He doesn’t like his picture taken anymore so there’s only one.

Ok, a little bit after Halloween, a friend of mine from work gave me a surprise for Crystal. It was going to be Christmas present, but we would have had a hard time hiding this one in the attic.

Isn’t she just adorable. Crystal named her Raven, although we’ve been calling her “meep” because that’s the sound she makes all the time.

She’s too cute for words!

I love this one because he’s trying to steal her candy & hoping we won’t notice.

I swear our house isn’t usually this messy, it’s just Christmas tree boxes. Ok, I might be lying, I am not an awesome house cleaner. Thankfully my husband’s pretty good at it.

Sadly, this is probably the last year daddy is going to have to lift her up to put the star on the tree, Crystal is growing up way too fast.

About 10 minutes after we put it all up, (and yes it’s a fake tree, it looks bad, but I hate cleaning up pine needles.) trouble here came along and destroyed the bottom half of the tree & then proceeded to climb it like a crazy kitten squirrel.

Anyways, I hope the rest of you have a wonderful holiday season!

Excuse the melodramatic sounding title, I’m just being silly. Sorry for the lack of recent posts, we’re in the process of trying to buy a home, I’m working on a sample album project from last year and I have a portrait session that needs editing (look out for some super cute munchkin pictures) , but I felt like sharing today.
So anyways, remember thinking how dorky your mom was/is (love you, mom). Yeah so I always thought that wasn’t going to happen to me, nope, I was going to be a cool mom. Not that I’m actually cool, I’m pretty dorky, but I like to think it’s the cool art school kind of dorky (yeah probably not). Anyways, today I told my daughter she looked like Punky Brewster. So she rolls her eyes at me, and asks”who’s that mom?” with a little teenage attitude going on.
Yikes, so that’s my old lady story for today.

Holidays are crazy, and I’m partially glad to have them over with. I always get stressed out before hand, we have so many places to go, gifts to buy, errands to run and shopping is a pain with huge lines and no parking. I’m always sad when they’re over with though. I love the christmas lights and getting together with family that you don’t see often. Mostly I love how excited the kids get.
I hope everyone else had a great holiday season! Here’s a few pictures from ours.

I love this series of Crystal, I think it would make a cute flip book.

I’m hoping she doesn’t kill me one day for posting her bedhead robe pictures.

Anakin always looks so serious.

My family always had a traditon of getting a new ornament every year, so I’ve continued with my family. Can you guess who’s is who.

It just wouldn’t be Christmas without Missy playing in the wrapping paper.

As promised I managed some time to get Crystal out for her school pictures. My other favorite munchkin Jade (my cousin’s daughter) came along for some pictures too. We headed out to Vandaveer park, and lucked out on the gorgeous autumn weather. I was really loving the bright colors both of the girls had on. Crystal’s obsessed with Hannah Montana right now, so we had to have both the Hannah Montana outfits for the shoot. Jade and her mom love horses, so she’s got cute little horses all over her pink sweatshirt. Love it.

This shot was so difficult Crystal didn’t want to lay down for some reason (found out on the car ride out that there was a really weird bug flying overhead, poor kid)

My favorite picture of Crystal.

She was just chewing on her bracelet, and I thought it was cute.

Isnt’ she a cutie.

This just reminds me of playing in the leaves as a kid (or yesterday, whatever). Too fun

This is the Jade we all know and love, hands on the hips & lots of attitude.

The whole time they just wanted to make funny faces, these were some of my favorites.

Jade and her mom had places to go, so after we split up after Vandaveer and I took Crystal downtown for some “Rock Star” pictures. I pretty much just let her be her for these pictures.

No guitars were actually harmed in the making of this shot. She just wanted to fake it.

It’s that time of year again. Cory and I took Anakin out to Vandaveer park to take his school pictures. I know the school does them every year, and the ones the school takes are fine for the yearbook or whatever, but they don’t really capture personality that well, so I’ve been taking the kids out for my own version of school pictures each fall. I probably posted way more than I should have, but I’m a mom and I’m biased this time. Crystal was at Grandma’s this weekend when we did Anakin’s, so stay tuned for her pictures in a few weeks.

I love this one, I think he was trying to eat the flowers, but still cute.

He’s totally in love with that huge fountain, he’d be swimming if we let him.

I really love his “far off visionary” look. Anakin always seems like he knows some deep meaningful secret.

Hopefully this post makes any sense, I just had my wisdom teeth out on Friday, and I’ve been on pain medication ever since. I had been putting it off for quite awhile now, but they’re finally out. I just want to say thanks to everyone who rescheduled appointments with me for this weekend, I really appreciate it. Unfortunately I had to miss one of my best friends art show on Saturday, Shannon had some really fabulous pictures in it ( you can see them here: My favorite “Hope2″, my second favorite “Hope4″, Hope, Hope1, Hope3). I’m really excited for her, Shannon has been shooting weddings and portraits with me this summer and she’s working on getting her own portrait business going, I’ll post a link when she gets her site up!

Since I’m not doing much work this weekend because of the teeth thing, I thought I’d post some updates in my personal life.
August is crazy busy for my family, it seems we have an abundance of Leos. My sister, my daughter, my niece, two of my uncles & me. Crystal just turned 8 last week, and her birthday falls on my grandparents anniversary, which I always thought was sweet, my grandma likes to tell me that they were expecting my uncle to be born around their anniversary, so grandpa promised to get her a dozen roses if she had him on their anniversary, well she did, and he kept his promise. She tells it way better than I do, but I always thought it was sweet, and pretty special that my daughter was born the same day too.
Anyways we just had Crystal’s party last weekend and Thursday she went out & spent her birthday money on a super cute pink guitar (even though she hates pink).

As I’m writing this Cory just came home & surprised me with birthday cake (we’ll see if I can eat it) and ice cream, and some movies! Awe, he’s a sweetie, my birthday isn’t until Monday, and he already took me out to see The Dark Knight a few weeks ago (awesome movie by the way!). Ok, I don’t think I can sit up at the computer much longer. Here’s a few pictures of my other munchkin, Anakin. Have a good weekend everybody!

When my mother-in-law Jean asked me to take Easter pictures of the kids(my two and my niece Autumn) this year I was a bit stumped on what to do. Last year we just did a white backdrop with flowers, so I wanted something different this year, so we headed out to the Pioneer Village out by Scott County Park. Unfortunately nothing wanted to go right, Easter was super early this year and so the grass was still mostly dead and even though it looked nice out, it was pretty cold. The poor girls didn’t want to take off their coats, so most of the pictures they’re doing more shivering than smiling, lol. Anyways it was at least a nice drive out there, and we had some fun playing. I did manage to get a few decent shots out of the whole thing too. The one at the top was my favorite.

My favorite shot of Crystal, she looks a bit grown-up in it.

My adorable niece

Anakin wasn’t going to have anything to do with looking at the camera, but he’s a cutie anyhow.

My beautiful daughter

Proper little ladies.

After sticking a camera in their face the whole trip I thought it was only fair to let the girls throw eggs at me.

Ok, I freaking love that picture. My cousin’s daughter is probably one of my favorite people to shoot, because she is just full of attitude, and adorable. That picture about sums her up. Anyways, had night 2 of “Trick or Treat”. We hit up Moline with my mom and their family again. Anakin didn’t quite make it that long, I think he had it with the whole thing so we cut it short. Which worked for me, because it was way to cold and I actually decided to dress up.

I’m a witch, although you can’t tell because I had to take the picture myself, sometimes it sucks being the family photographer. Although I can’t have anyone else take my picture anyways, I hate having it done and I am always the one in the picture blinking or making some horrible weird face. ugh.

More of the “Gouhls” (yeah, I know that was bad).

We had “Corpse bride”, “Mad Hatter”, and a cat.

Oh and how could I not mention that Jay dressed up their dog as a “glow stick” he’s too cute. Didn’t get a great picture, because their dog is more active than Anakin.

And Crystal had her outfit picked out for months. We were checking out goodwill for photo props (they have some awesome stuff there on occasion) and she found this cool white “veil” ponytail holder thing, and decided she was going to be a Corpse bride. I was utterly shocked when 3 months later she still wanted to be Corpse bride.

This is the first face she wants to make everytime I break out the camera. Total ham.

Oh and we decided to stick with the Tim Burton theme (because we’re huge fans) and have a “Nightmare before christmas” pumpkin. Here’s Jack.

Anyways we had a great time, the kids got a ton of candy, and we’re headed back out tonight for Moline’s Trick or treat with my mom and their kids. Oh speaking of which, my little step brother Stephen went with us yesterday (actually we had a pretty big group of family). He totally scared all the little kids.