Happy First Birthday Grady!

Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays - they've been everywhere lately!


Grady is our latest birthday star - and what a cute one he is! You first saw Grady when he was six months old. Since then, his mom Amanda and I have become very good friends. You also saw Grady and Amanda the day I had lunch with them back in May. I don't get to see this family very much because they live a little ways away from us, so it was especially sweet for me to get to spend time with them during Grady's first birthday party. I also got to meet Amanda's mom whom I've heard so many wonderful things about!



My boys both went with me to the party (let me tell you how fun it was trying to shoot a party with my own two hanging on me!) This princess tiara belonged to Jenesis, another party goer, but my son decided he needed to try it on. Something to put in the senior yearbook?
The sweet Jenesis holding her Daddy's hand: Troy working hard, grilling up burgers and brats - they were wonderful Troy!
Blue red velvet for the little man...a family tradition.
As you can tell, he loved it!
Happy First Birthday Grady! We love you!

Happy Birthday CoriBabe!

Happy 15th to my wonderful step-daughter!

Saturday was Cori's birthday, and three of her friends came over. We had pizza, cookie cake, and a plastic phone. :-0

The girls all spent the night (amazingly enough, they weren't THAT loud) and then the next day we took a few pictures.

Ahhh - to be young and beautiful again!

Happy Sweet Sixteen Kayla!

Saturday was my niece Kayla's Sweet 16 Birthday Party. (Incidentally, Saturday was also my step-daughter's actual birthday, stay tuned for pictures from that coming next!) Her party was Black & White themed, and it was beautiful...just like her!

Both of my nieces, sisters Kayla and Whitney.

I had the hardest time trying to get Whitney to keep a straight face for me...everyone kept trying to make her laugh...and they were doing a good job of it!

Kayla's cake was made at the Publix on Taylor Road, it was gorgeous AND tasted amazing!

I hope the rest of your night was wonderful!

Christin & David - Engagement

I don't even know where to start with this one...first, my husband went with me to Opelika to meet up with Christin and David. It was so nice having some time in the car with him and not having to try and talk over the constant canyouchangethestation/luke'stouchingme/AAAUUUHHHHAAAAEEEE the whole way. :)

So we get to 8th & Rail in Downtown Opelika and get started. These two were awesome from the get-go!

So we were just moseying up the strip of shops stopping anywhere that caught our fancy when we came to a building that was being renovated. No one was around, so we thought we'd use the plywood on the door as a background. While doing this, the guy doing the renovating showed up, and invited us to come inside and get shots anywhere we wanted. We happily obliged.

As we left the building we saw the blue wall. Amazing. There are so many wonderful shots from the morning with this blue in it that it was hard to narrow it down to one. But this one...yeah... it's probably my favorite from the entire day.
To top off all the great buildings and brick and everything else...there was a railroad track! Gotta love railroad tracks!


After we finished shooting, David had to go to work, so Christin, Lee and I went with him. Well, we didn't work, we just ate at the restaurant where he's the Executive Chef.
David - the White Veggie Pizza was wonderful! I'm totally having it again the next time I'm in town!
Thanks for a wonderful day you two! See y'all soon!

Bride Mania!

Meet my new Couples!

Christie and Noah, Birmingham. All of my couples are special to me, but I must admit I'm especially excited about these two. They represent my two most favorite things in the world - wedding photography and the ballet.
Katie and Jason, Pinson. o6-o6-o9. I had the pleasure of meeting with Katie and her mom a few weeks back. I know that not only am I going to have a wonderful bride on their special day, I'm also going to have a wonderful Mother of the Bride, and let me tell ya - that's hugely important! Kristina and Brandon, Millbrook. I can not wait for this September wedding! It's going to be small...and by small, I mean, the couple, the minister and me! What a wonderful opportunity to get tons of tons of shots of this beautiful couple! It'll be wonderful being able to focus all of my attention on just the Bride & Groom!

Playing Tag...Blog Style!

I've seen this a handful of times on other blogs, but never been tagged myself. The fabulous Molly tagged me today, so here we go!

Where were you ten years ago?

I was living in apartment with Meagan, working part time at Gayfers (this was shortly before it became Dillards), and finishing up my degree at Huntingdon College. I was only taking two courses...dance pedigogy (my last required class for my dance major) and some sort of lit. course I'm sure since I had just found out I only needed a few more english courses to have a major in that as well. I was dating Ty (talk about Mr. Wrong, Molly!) but was convinced he was all about Mr. Right. Oh, and let's not forget, I was going to Pure Country and dancing my butt off every Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. This was around the time I learned all the western couple dances, and I couldn't get enough of them!

(l-r: Michelle, Jen, me and Ashley at a Coppellia performance)

Five Items on your To-Do list today:

Really, I only have to give you five?

1. Post Office (mail out two weddings, an engagement session, and Valerie's cooler/blanket/shirt.)
2. Finish Jessica & Michael's e-pics, and get a blog up on Christen & David's e-pics.
3. Get haircut (check!)
4. Call Cole's new sitter to check on availability for Luke. *fingers crossed*
5. Ask Dad to roll our garbage out to the street while we are gone.

Snacks I Enjoy

At the top of the list - cheese cubes and honey-mustard pretzels. Yes, together. Also, I adore Wickles (wickedly good pickles) which also go quite nicely with cheese.

What would you do if you were a billionaire?

Top of the list, pay off my parent's house. They have done so much for me, it would be wonderful to do something for them. Then I'd buy my mom a condo on the beach. She'd like that. :) Then I'd go buy some land and build four houses on it - one for my family, one for my parents, and one each for my sisters-in-law. Of course, we'd all have golf carts to ride us back and forth to each others' houses. Next: college funds for the kids. Next: invest the vast majority. Next: buy Lee a motorcycle. Bless his heart.

Places I would live:

I can't honestly say that I would ever live anywhere other than Alabama. But I'd love to have extended visits to lots of places! (Scotland, Hawaii, Michigan ;)

Bloggers I'm passing the challenge on to: Leda, Meagan and Meredith.

Jessica & Michael: Engagement Pictures

Jessica, Michael and I went to Downtown Prattville for their engagement pictures - it was awesome! We were under a thunderstorm warning the whole time we were there, but it didn't hamper things a bit!
Jessica and Michael got engaged over Christmas. Jessica has a large family, so instead of throwing all the wrapping paper into the trash, they toss it in the fireplace instead. Jessica opened her Christmas present from Michael - a really cute stuffed animal. She's about to throw the tissue paper from inside the box into the fire and Michael says, "THERE'S SOMETHING ELSE IN THERE!!!" thus saving her engagement ring from the fire. (How awful would THAT have been???) So Jessica digs down into the tissue paper, and there it was: The love this man has for Jessica is unreal...he couldn't keep his eyes off her the entire time we were shooting!