All About Family - 12/6

OK I'll probably totally have second thoughts about this post and take down the photo of me, but I found these when digging for some other ones.

Last night we were at our neighbor's awesome Christmas party and Nichole and I were chatting about our pregnancies. She had toxemia and gained like 130+ lbs! Poor thing! I gained 55+ pounds with Jacob and Claire and retained SO much fluid - it was horrible! Here are my feet before bed one night (those are Jacob's feet at the top). They were so puffy and sore! I had to sleep with them elevated at night in hopes that by the morning they swelling would be a little better. My hands looked like that too! And she still wasn't born until 11/21/98 - like 1-1/2mos after this photo.This is fatty me - August 1998 (I *think* we used one of these for our Christmas photo - eek! I can't remember for sure though)And this is the photo I'll probably end up taking down. Have you ever seen uglier maternity pants? haha! This was taken 22 days before Claire was born. OK, so that's like the worst of the worst of the photos.....uggh! Here's Scott and I on our wedding day - Sept 7th, 1991 - and this was our very first Christmas card - for 1991.

And my awesome family - dad, mom, my brothers James & Jon, and my little sis Kate. Love you guys!
Good night!

Drew is ONE!

Here's DREW! He recently turned ONE year old and I got the privilege of photographing him for this big milestone! You may remember him and his cute mommy & daddy from this session. What a little cutie pie! He kept trying to grab for all of my toys....until I used the rubber chicken! hee hee! Love this expression! :-)We got some family shots in the studio...Is it just me, or does Cory look SOOOO much like the guy on "Yes, Dear" - remember that TV show? and some Drew/parent combos... :-)then the FUN part - cake!!! OH, and a huge FYI for all you locals - if you call Lunds/Byerly's and order a cake for your 1 year old - it's FREE! Molly called to order it (regular retail value $18.99!) and they said it's complimentary for the first birthday! How cool!He at a LOT of cake! :-)Then we went to Anoka for some quick outdoor/indoor photos. Aren't they so cute!? I love the jackets too - (I wish my hubby would wear a jacket like that!)awww.... Then we went indoors quickly - ahhh, nice to get out of the cold!

Took some head shots of mom & dad (Cory - I hope your friends don't make fun of you too much - haha!)so pretty!Thank for coming again Molly, Cory & Drew! Your family is way cute! And this was my last client session for 2009! Thanks so much to all my clients for a great year! :-)

Drew - sneak peek!!

Just a quick sneak peek of Drew from today. Yes, I said I would do no sessions in December, but they had to cancel their November session since poor Drew fell on his head on CONCRETE and had a huge goose-egg! Life happens!

It was a chilly 20+ degrees when we got to Anoka - but Drew was a little trooper!
many more to come!

All About Family - 12/5

Well, I just can't seem to go in any sort of logical order! At least I'll stay in the same year this time = 2003! Here's our Christmas card from 2003! Photo was taken by my boss' daughter Shawna. Then we went to Virginia that fall - these were taken at Mt. Vernon! photos were taken by Scott's niece Angie. :-)

I've been digging thru some old photos cuz now I'm on a mission to find every card since we've been married... 18 years! eek! But we'll see....! I probably won't have the energy to track them all down. I can't believe how unorganized my photos are! I have SO many albums that are all out of order and SOOOO many photos period! Another project I'd love to do is take the photos out of the albums and sort them by year. Some day! :-)

All About Family! 12/4/09

Here is our family photo from 2000! I LOVED this photo so much! I even printed it like 16x20 or something like that! This one was also taken at Great Photos in Maple Grove - but it was by a guy named Andre I think. this is from the same session - just different outfits. Jacob was 6, Claire was about 1-1/2. Awww....

All About Family - 12/3

Here we are - summer of 2002! This was my very favorite family photo for a long time! Taken by Kathy at Great Photos in Maple Grove. :-) And here's the letter/crossword I did with the photo. I used to love making these up! haha!

Some more flash backs - here's me and the kids on Mother's Day 2003 - at my parents' lake home. YES, that's how curly my hair is/can be if I don't straighten it!
These just make me laugh for some reason - Claire at Chuckie Cheese w/ her plastic boyfriend. Thanks for following along Margie & Bethany! haha! :-)

All About Family Month - December 2009

My goal for December is to post at LEAST ONE family photo per day. I feel like so much of my blog is dedicated to my wonderful clients, but for this month, I want to dedicate it to my wonderful FAMILY!!


OK, yeah yeah, so I already missed a day! But I'm posting more to make up for it. Here's my self-imposed criteria:


1) Post at least ONE photo per day for the month of December.
2) Has to be a member of our family - immediate or extended
3) Has to be a photo I've never posted on this blog - or if it IS a photo I've posted, it has to be edited in a different way.
3) Doesn't have to be even 1/2 way good! I feel so much pressure sometimes to have "perfect" photos and believe me, they are far from it!


So, without further ado, here we are - Christmas 2004! haha! I was SO proud of this photo! Does anyone remember the scrapping glory days of 2003-2005ish? Heidi Swapp used to do a version of this every year (I *think* it was her??) and this is me trying to totally copy it!

This was actually a little biz card I made up w/ our address & phone, email, etc. but of course I cut that off for here. OK, and every year I obsess about what I'm going to do for our Christmas card photo and even as our card hits the mail, I'm thinking about what I want to do the next year!!!

This was actually taken shortly AFTER I had sent out all our 2004 cards! I was so in love with this (and wishing I had thought of it sooner!) and was proud as a peacock for putting this "cool" collage together! haha! That main photo even made it into a BHG Photography magazine! (thanks Heather!)
I'll try to scrounge out all our Christmas cards if I can....or at least the ones I have scanned/in digital form already.

OK, these next ones are totally random - they were also in the 2004 folder. Now to give you some history, 2004 is when I really discovered I had a love for photography. And keep in mind I knew NOTHING about photography! Hey, that didn't stop me! :-)

I got my first digi SLR in April 2004 and never looked back! This is Claire - taken on the playground at pre-school. She used to LOVE wearing those crazy hair pieces in her hair.

Jacob with his broken ankle! uggh - that was awful! He jumped off a slide at school and broke off his little knob that sticks out on the interior portion of the ankle. Needed surgery & all. :-(speaking of broken stuff - Claire w/ her broken leg at age 3. She broke it bouncing in one of those stupid birthday castles. :-( I'm sure I'll be posting a LOT more photos from 2004-2005 - when I first started out w/ the digi SLR...

But these next ones were taken w/ my point & shoot first digital camera - Olympus D-550 I believe.

The kids' first highlights! ("guylights" for Jacob of course!)

And this last one is TOTALLY random I know. My mom came to babysit Jacob one day and brought this "Where's Waldo" fun craft & play kit. I had left my 35mm camera (film) there and she took this photo. I had no idea until I developed the film! It still makes me laugh out loud to this day.


SO.......if you don't like looking at other people's old family photos.....you may want to skip this month! LOL!