He is a special education teacher and football coach.  She is a high school english teacher and knitting queen.  He thought she had a boyfriend.  But one Saturday night, they ran into each other on Facebook playing poker.  He realized Saturday night poker playing on the internet must mean no boyfriend after all… and so it began.  Then, true to their fun, spontaneous personalities, the two of them planned a surprise wedding — she showed up at her parents’ home full of family on Christmas Eve in a gorgeous wedding gown, ready for her brother to officially announce them as husband and wife!  Now he makes her laugh, and she makes him get that look in his eyes… Kim and Dana, even after 6 months of marriage, your newlywed glow is far from disappearing.

These two kept me laughing… even in the 106 degree heat…

Vavava-voom!

Kim, you are gorgeous. 

Dana & Kim got engaged at Ficklin Vineyards, so they thought it would be perfect to do their shoot there.  And they were right.

Thank you, Kim & Dana — you two are the best!  I still smile every time I think of our afternoon together… it was so wonderful to meet you!!

Seems like she was dancing around on my parents deck singing songs from “Beauty and the Beast” in her little Snow White costume just the other day… now she is getting ready to register for junior high… *sigh*… But she is still as sweet as ever and we couldn’t be any prouder of our Princess.  Happy Birthday, sweetheart!! 

My daughter and I saw this cake on Bobbi+Mike ’s blog and we knew we had to try it.  I used to make all sorts of crazy, amazing cakes for the kids’ birthdays, especially my daughter’s since she’s the oldest… But it had been awhile since I have done a fun cake, so we decided it was time for a fun one!  It really wasn’t very hard and the results were so worth the time it took to cook the 6 layers (3 shifts in the oven with my 2 cake pans)!  This one was vanilla, but next time, we thought it might be fun to flavor the cake with some kind of fruitiness…

I had some great help in getting our masterpiece underway…

Cutting into the cake was SO exciting!!

1st birthday to 12th birthday… passes so quickly… Love you much, birthday girl!!

My husband and I both grew up camping, but my husband is a camping pro.  Seriously.  He went to school to learn how to run a camp, because that is one of his great passions.  He really wanted to end up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming (his favorite — truly beautiful place) running a Christian camp with his close high school buddy, but plans changed, life happened, and he took a different career path.  But his love for camping and his talent for cooking awesome camp meals and planning itineraries for great stuff to do is still a huge part of him.  When we camp, I do not do a thing.  He cooks, cleans, puts up, tears down… everything.  I completely relax, and I love it!  And I love him for making it such a wonderful time for our family (among other reasons… ).  Now that we live in central California, there are a MILLION terrific places to camp!!  This past weekend we got to go to Dinkey Creek for the first time, and between the fishing for trout, bumping down the natural waterslides in the COLD creek, watching our kids explore, and enjoying s’mores with friends, we could not have had more fun!  If we only had more time to take in every great site… my husband could come up with a plan to visit each state park campground…

At I Heart Faces (a fabulous blog, btw) this week, the theme is “Over Your Head.”  I wanted to try a shoot with balloons since I had seen so many cute photos of kids running with bunch of balloons or people standing in a field with a single, colorful balloon.  So we gave one to my sweet neighbor girl, tied it on tight, and waited to see what she would do with it.  She came up with this pose all on her own, and I giggle everytime I look at it!  She did not want to part with the balloon either, so lesson learned — either save the balloon for the very last shots in a session, or have something even better to exchange for the balloon, like say a big, sticky, red lollipop .

There are always amazing weekly entries at I Heart Faces, so be sure to go check them out!

The word summer carries so many memories for people… swimming pools, vacations, days of doing whatever we want… Summer for me as a kid was spending hours in my room reading the pile of books I got to check out at the library, which is not the norm for most people, but my daughter seems to have taken on that trait as well…   And summer also means family vacation to me — my sisters and I were blessed with the fact that almost every summer we got to take a week or so and travel to whatever destination my parents dreamed up, and we still laugh about the stories and photos from those days in our orange VW van (with the huge rocks piled at our feet on the way home… that is a long story for later) and our pop-up camper, seeing so many things all over the US.  Whatever summer memories you cherish, I hope you are making many new ones this summer and savoring each moment… because summer is only a few short weeks and is disappearing fast…

Hot dogs, baked beans, fabulous dips and chips… cool dip in the pool, talking with friends in lounge chairs, watching kids laughing together with school friends they haven’t seen all summer… loud banging fireworks in the street, glowing sparklers, moms trying to make sure no one blows off their fingers… the joys of the 4th of July .  Too bad its only once a year.  Hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating!!

This couple seriously was loads of fun.  Continuous laughter, a gorgeous vineyard, and the love these newlyweds had for each other was just shining out of them… and I don’t mean from the perspiration in the 110 degree heat… I have so much more to say, but here is just one for now… and it speaks volumes, does it not?

She loved to chase squirrels with her big “sister,” Belle.  She swam after Belle in the lake, lagging just a little behind, but as fast as her three legs would take her.  She loved to bury her head under your leg if you sat next to her to pet her.  She hated baths.  With a passion.  She never bothered the cats when we lived on the farm, and she always stayed near the house.  She was sad when we had to leave for awhile to move to California (tore up my father-in-law’s garage — totally out of character for her), and then was an excellent passenger in the back of a stranger’s truck for over 1800 miles to join her family.  She let our children crawl all over her, pulling on her ears, “petting” her with toddler hands that were a little rough.  She occasionally was a good watch dog, but didn’t bark much.  She, in one word, was sweet.  She had the best personality… so loyal… so loving.  We miss you, Gretchen, and will always love you.

I was so excited to find this today… I have been drooling over Florabella Collection’s actions and textures for quite awhile… they are just so dreamy and add a gorgeous element to photos.   I especially like them with photos of children — you can see Shana Rae’s work at  Florabella Collection.  Shana is amazingly talented not only in creating her textures and actions, but also with her gorgeous photography.  Today through her blog, I was introduced to Skye Hardwick and I was immediately smitten.  She not only does incredible children’s photography, but offers help to other children’s photographers with her extremely informative Workshop Workbook!  How I would love to have that in my hands!!  And they are both working together on a giveaway!!  You can find out about both sets of out-of-this-world prizes at the Florabella Collection blog and the Soulographer blog.  Seriously.  If you are a children’s photographer, you DO NOT want to miss out.

Here is a shot from one of my favorite children sessions awhile back.  And speaking of photographing children, I need to get my children out for a shoot here pretty soon.  They probably think I have forgotten about them… no, really they are HOPING I forgot about them.  Forgot about photographing them, that is…

This is the other quite handsome brother from the post I made the other day about a family shoot I was able to do with my friend.  I’m sure he will be making up amazing lyrics like his older brother in the very near future.  His mom needs to write a book.  Not only because her kids are so cute and say hilarious things, but also because she is an amazing writer.  Check out her blog, Ostriches Look Funny.  You will be hooked.