Hey lovely friends! I have MOVED locations! I had a redesign in mind for this blog, and decided to just move EVERYTHING on over. SO, if you’re still checking for updates here, you’re missing out. I am NOW blogging over at my new home spot on the web at a blog called Stellar Day Blog. You can find me talking about all the same things I did here and MORE at www.stellardayblog.com.
Come check it out and sign up for my emails so you don’t miss out on anything.
SEE YOU THERE.
Better than I imagined, our photo shoot today went SO well. This little dude was in such great spirits and even brought his boxing gloves because he’s confident he’s going to BEAT CANCER. What a trooper. And an incredible example of God’s strength. SO many laughs today, we can’t wait to share some more of the images. For now, here’s one I shot through Instagram.
What a great kid. What an amazing family.
I wish I could say that we are buying a house. BUT. We are not. If you would have asked me just a mere two weeks ago, I would have answered differently.
We have PLANS to buy a house and hopefully in Scottsdale. We LOVE it here. It’s just exactly where we want to be. But I think we are going to wait another year before we buy so we can save some more money. THAT said, we ARE most likely going to be moving soon into a rental home. We don’t have one lined up or anything yet. But it is a huge priority. With two kids, we are just really realizing how much we need a little more space. That, and I’m DYING to have an office. You guys. I work almost 60 hours a week in my BEDROOM. There’s been nothing wrong with this scenario until lately. It’s worked fine. But our business is STILL growing and Jason and I just really feel like we need a space of our own to work in. A place where we can be creative in. Not a place where the laundry piles up behind me.
I’ll be honest. Working in my room has been a little paralyzing. But it’s been a better option for our family that having our computers out in the living area. SO. We are house hunting! And so of course that means I’m Pinterest hunting as well! But I stumbled upon this BEAUTIFUL office that I just have to have. Jason and I have already begun dreaming about how we can go about decorating it so it feels like a boy works there AND like a girl works there. HA. It’s actually been fun. I sort of envision my half of the office looking something like this:
Be still my heart. I love it. I’m SO desiring a creative space to be…well, creative. HA. And I’m also excited to have my sleeping space back without my computer in the same room. It’s just a little cramped and we need to spread out. Here’s to hoping and praying we find a GREAT house!
* Image found on Pinterest.
I still feel like I’m recovering from Vegas. NO, not like THAT. I just mean, getting back into the routine of things and catching back up! BUT I’m still thinking about that week and how crazy and amazing it was all at the same time. It went by too fast if you ask me. We love traveling with the boys whenever we can. It always makes things a little bit harder. Kids are hard. And they are LOTS of work. But when I became a mom, I knew that I wasn’t going to sacrifice certain things that I loved JUST because it was harder with kids. Your life and business doesn’t have to stop once they enter your world.
But you do have to work harder.
In my experience though, it is always worth it. The sweat, the tears, the late nights, the planning, the preparation- the SACRIFICE. It’s all always worth it to make sure that you are bringing your kids along to experience something that you love to do so much. Traveling is that way for us. It’s a huge passion of ours and so whenever we can go experience something new, we bring them along! And it always takes more preparation. And there ARE certain things we might have to miss out on. But bringing our family with us while we work is something I hope we ALWAYS do.
We took Cruz and Rider onto the strip at night to see all the lights and the Bellagio fountains. Yes, we were THOSE people with a stroller on the strip. But they LOVED it. It was completely worth the efforts to take them to see the lights and the fountains and all the different fountains in Las Vegas. It was an experience that they might not have had otherwise.
And Cruz keeps talking about ‘BOSS BEGAS’ in his cute high pitched voice that just makes you want to die it’s so cute.
He LOVED every minute. I know that traveling with the kids is hard. I know that it would be easier for Jay and I to just have my mom stay home with the boys while we catch a flight there and back in the same weekend. I know we’d save a lot of money if we didn’t bring them. But it’s not about that for us. It’s about being together as a family, bringing them along with our lives, and giving them the opportunity to experience new things.
Sacrifice it might be for me. But although this job as a mamma is the hardest work I’ve ever done, I’d work even harder and sacrifice even more to give them the entire world if I could. Having them come along for the ride has been the greatest thrill of this thing called motherhood. And discovering that we actually DON’T have to sacrifice our own lives to have a family.
It was a great week. I can’t wait until we travel again. It looks like this summer we are going to Dallas, North Carolina AND maybe NEW YORK CITY. NYC has been a life long dream of mine. So we’ll see what happens!
This is where I’m going for a couple of days this week!!
Woo hoo! Jason and I are heading to Las Vegas for WPPI which is a huge convention that happens annually for photographers. We are STOKED to be able to make it this year! So we packed up and headed out! And YES. The boys are going with us! We love traveling with them and bringing them with us whenever we can. And we are blessed this trip to have my mom on board to help watch them when we are at the convention. I’m so thrilled that she was willing to come. We rented an awesome house in Las Vegas from Home Away.com so we all have room to spread out. It’s SUCH a great alternative to renting a hotel. We’ve stayed in multiple homes from this site and we haven’t been disappointed yet.
The boys actually travel pretty well. So long as the snacks don’t run out and the DVD player doesn’t die. And I’m so grateful they do because I LOVE to travel. Traveling with kiddos might be hard sometimes, but it’s always worth the experience. We never wanted having the boys to slow us down too much. I think kids join your life and go where you go and do what you do. So while it DOES take a lot of planning to head out of town with kids, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
We’ll take lots of photos! Can’t wait to share them!
* Image found on Pinterest.
We photographed a wedding last night. And I SERIOUSLY don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder while working in my entire life. We had SUCH a great time and it was a huge celebration for these two.
I love what I do. So much so, that it’s all I can think about sometimes. Even in the moments when I feel deprived and devoid of creativity and inspiration, I am so in love with what I do. Getting to know our couples and making new close friends is the icing on the cake. And then the topper to ALL of that is actually being at their wedding and feeling like we’re apart of the family. And being able to dance at the reception WITH them. And watching two people who’ve gotten close to us step into wedded bliss.
We hope our relationships with all of our clients stretch way past their actual wedding day. There’s nothing more inspirational then fostering good relationships, turning friends into family, and photographing their lives.
Wow. I’d do all the hard work all day every day to be able to be apart of what we were apart of last night. Amazingly fun. Here’s one image from the day. More to come on our actual website soon.
That is what I say when something has been intense, overwhelming, exhausting or is unbelievable. To which, these past few months have been ALL of those things on EVERY level possible. I have been the worst blogger EVER lately. It’s because I have literally have had to PLAN OUT WHEN I SLEEP WE HAVE BEEN THAT BUSY.
I have nothing to complain about. But it has been a whirlwind and I am tired. And the first thing to fly out the window was blogging, unfortunately.
I have been busy with this:
And this:
And this:
OH. AND THIS:
And this:
This:
And this:
And this:
This:
More of this:
THE LIST GOES ON. Seriously. The list seriously goes on. I’m up to my nose hairs in edits.
(I don’t actually have nose hairs. That’s gross.)
You know how this feels, right?? It’s been a crazy season and while I am hoping that it will slow down a little bit, my inbox and calendar are telling me otherwise. BUT, now that the spring wedding season is almost over, I DO hope that I can catch my breath, clean my house and bake something.
Who am I kidding? I don’t bake.
But you know what I mean. RELAX a little bit. Even just take one nap. That would be awesome.
It’s been a fantastic couple of months. I am FOREVER grateful to all of the people who help us watch our boys so we can go work and do what we love. Gosh, I’m forever grateful. None of this would be possible without the help of many people. I’ve shed lots of stressed out tears this season, as I usually do when I’m under stress, pressure or intense deadlines. I’ve never laughed harder, slept less, and been more thankful in all my life.
So this Spring wedding season concludes our second year as Session Nine Photographers. We head into our third year, already with exciting news. Well, news I can’t share EXACTLY right now. But I CAN tell you that we have been asked to submit MANY images into a popular bridal magazine for publish!! We are stoked.
Gosh it’s been a lot of work. I KNOW you know what I’m saying. If you are a working mom (or even if you aren’t!), you know what I’m saying when I say that working full time and trying to be a good, present mom is HARD. It’s exhausting.
It’s worth it. I love it. The good, bad, stressful and exciting. I love all of it.
Here’s to June! May the Summer be as exciting as this past Spring was! With hopefully a lot more sleep in my future. HA!
Ok FINALLY. Here it is! A quick glimpse into our time in Austin! We went to Austin to photograph a wedding but we also decided to turn it into a mini vaca while we were there.
But let me start by saying, the wedding we photographed was INCREDIBLE. Holy moly was it such a great time!! Jen and Steven were fabulous and their day was nothing short of amazing. It was such a special time and a huge celebration! People from ALL over the country came to Austin to watch them tie the knot. And that’s pretty special, if you ask me!
My sister Danielle was born in Austin, TX and hasn’t been back there since we moved away when she was a baby. So we brought the kids and Danielle and her husband Cameron came along to help us with them and to be able to see Austin too! It was SO FUN having them with us! If you travel with more than one kid, I definitely recommend a 2:1 ratio.
Spoiled, I know.
But it really made a huge difference having them there through all the travels. Plus, it allowed us to work and not worry about the boys but to still be able to bring them so we could be together as a family. I am SO grateful!
SO, we landed in Austin without TOO much craziness on the plane. We had one huge meltdown by Rider, but other than that the airplane ride was great! SO we landed and got settled in the place we stayed. We have some good friends who live in Austin who graciously opened up their home to us without hesitation and provided so much more than we could have asked for! They were awesome hosts and again, we were SO grateful that they allowed us to stay with them. They don’t live too far from downtown, which was OOBER convenient and made it a fabulous time for us to be able to see the city some!
After we got settled, we decided to go grab something to eat downtown. Austin’s downtown is LEGIT. Have you ever been there? Oh man. It’s a photographers dream. So many cool spots, awesome people and lots and lots and lots of character!
We ate at STUBBS. It’s famous in Austin. And we understand why. It was FABULOUS food. We wanted to eat BBQ because well, we were in Texas. Duh. (Notice the milk bottle in the top lefthand corner and the beer bottle in the top righthand corner haha!)
Cruz was very fascinated with this bike.
And then THIS GUY walked up. Please check out his shirt, specifically right above Cruz’s head. Innappropriate? Ya, I know. I HONESTLY DIDN’T NOTICE until I was uploading these pictures to this blog. I was just thinking the picture of Cruz talking to random strangers (with Jay) was super cute. I never even saw his shirt. WOW. The kicker? I’m 98% sure that this bike did not belong to this man.
The people in Austin were so friendly. At least to us. And we had fun with so many random strangers that would jump in shots or talk with us. I loved it!
Austin is a fun city.
I love this face.
Some other fun shots.
I love this picture. I love him.
This is where the bats were supposed to fly out. We literally stood there for over 30 minutes, past 8:30 pm and they hadn’t flown out. When it was just about dark, Jason noticed that they were flying away on the distant horizon. So we totally missed it and so did everyone else on the bridge. SO WEIRD. So we went back a couple nights later and we were able to watch them fly out. They didn’t leave until it was pretty much dark so we weren’t able to see them in the sky. BUT, we did see them flying out from under the bridge. And it was kinda loud and smelly!! And there literally was 1.5 MILLION bats. It was crazy.
We ONLY ate at places that were local to Austin. It’s one of my favorite things ever to try new places and one of those that we tried while we were in Austin was called Mighty Fine Burgers. OMG. YUM. If you’re in Austin it’s a ‘must-go’!
Aw. My sweet picky eater. He loved the fries though!
This is Jackson. Rachel and Tim’s little boy. We stayed at their house. Cruz and Jack were BEST FRIENDS the whole time we were there. He still asks about Jack. I wish we lived closer to them because they’d be such great little buddies.
After dinner on this night we went to a store called Whole Earth. They had some REALLY cool stuff inside and we all had fun shopping. Then we all goofed off on the hammocks that they had hanging outside their store.
He’s always picking his nose. I have more pictures of him picking his nose than I know what to do with it. How do kids learn how to do this?? I can assure you, we did not teach him this.
We did a photo shoot with The Allen’s while we were there. We had a blast walking all around downtown snapping pictures of them and of all kinds of things too! One thing is, it was FREAKIN HOT. I mean, humid HOT. I’m used to the dry heat! But it was NOT dry. And it was HOT.
We were able to snap a family picture while we were at it. I love this picture.
Some other shots of us roaming around downtown.
Other cool stuff I saw. I know this post is long. It’s almost over, I swear.
He loved checking out the planes as we left. We didn’t want to leave.
So you guys. PLEASE go check out Steven + Jen Stamps wedding. Their wedding post is up on our site and you’ve got to check it out! They got married at The Driskill Hotel and it was SUCH an amazing day and celebration!! We were so honored to have been asked to be a part of their day! And we loved traveling to another location for a wedding. With our kids.
We totally have the bug.
I can’t wait for the day when we can travel on a regular basis, nationally AND internationally. With our kids. It’s pretty rad.
We loved Austin. I would totally move there if the right opportunity arised. Humidity and all! Ok wow. This post is SO long. Thanks for reading it. And thanks for waiting for me to post it. These past several weeks have been some of the craziest of my life.
But I feel like I’m ALWAYS saying that. God keeps opening doors for us. Including us getting a few of our weddings published in a pretty well known magazine to be out later this summer. SO STOKED. I am so grateful for this job. I am so grateful that God told me to ‘wait’ for all the years that I desired to do this but never did. Because it definitely wouldn’t be what it is today if I had relied solely on MY timing. It’s rad.
Can we please travel somewhere else to shoot a wedding? I want to ASAP.
It’s been a relatively bad week for me over here in my neck of the woods. Well, I guess not bad. Just very stressful. I don’t really want to rehash the details of what’s been going on for me, although I would in person. It’s just too much to type and frankly, I’m exhausted. But it’s been enough to make me doubt a little bit about who I am and what I am doing as an artist and photographer.
Kind of a scary place to be. And stretching.
So I’d like to look at this week as a week of growth.
Growth is hard, huh? Usually it makes you take a GOOD LOOK at yourself and all the things you don’t like. Or all the things you hate or wish you could change. It’s never fun to go through, but in the end it’s always much needed. Mistakes are inevitable in this life. They are a solid guarantee. But the greater tragedy would be to make mistakes and to never learn from them. Or to keep making the same mistakes and to fall into a pattern. It’s necessary to make mistakes and to be stretched.
But it sucks in the midst of it, doesn’t it?
So this week has been stressful for me. But it’s all ok. I’ve actually learned some huge things that I can only hope will make my art and business even better. Can you believe that we are going into our third year as photographers?? I can’t. It’s gone by fast. And we have some very cool things on the horizon.
So I’m glad this week is over. Here’s to learning from mistakes and hoping that we don’t repeat them. And being grateful that God keeps opening doors in a profession that has never been more clear for me to be in.
And here’s to actually getting my post up about our time in Austin. Good grief. I swear to you it’s coming. I PROMISE. Not that anyone’s dying over it. But I’m anxious to post it! And life has been NUTS since we got back. But you already know that.
Ok wow.
Tomorrow, we are heading here:
Yes, we are going to Austin, Texas!! We are photographing a wedding out there for a very sweet couple and we are so excited! They have been on our calendar for a year now so we have been anticipating this for awhile now! So stoked that it’s here!
We decided to stay a few extra days while we are there AND we are bringing the boys with us! Little mini-vaca while we work. We’ve landed some other Lifestyle Sessions and the wedding is on Friday! So while we are there, we are going to try to see this:
Did you know that a million bats fly out from under a famous bridge EVERY NIGHT in the downtown area at dusk??? CRAZY and I can’t wait to see it!
Pray for us as we fly with the boys. Cruz is SO excited to go in an airplane! And my sister and her husband are coming with us to help us with the crazy monkeys.
So fun!
