The Broyles Family: And Lucas, the new addition!

It's always so neat to watch our clients grow their families. We enjoyed spending some time with the Broyles Family back in August (check it out HERE). Little Lucas was yet to be born and we were so excited to see the belly and then meet the baby!! I've always felt that childbirth is a complete miracle but it still amazes me every time! Jocie had a belly and then all of a sudden Lucas was out!! He's a perfect, chubby, happy little man. He had such a great temperament. The entire time we were together he was content. Josiah and Emma are amazing older siblings and Lucas is the perfect youngest child. I can already tell he loves to be tossed around. The kids were playing with him on the bed, pulling at his limbs and kissing his face and he just giggled. A few days after our shoot the Broyles were headed back to China. We prayed for a safe journey and we look forward to their return to the states in 2012!!

ps. Charlotte is scooting backwards. It's her latest trick on the path to crawling. We sure hope she learns how to move forward :)

JuneBug at 4 Months + Natalie Norton is my Hero

We take photos of Charlotte all the time but we want to make sure we capture a real good set at each month to see how she progresses in her first year. It's amazing to us that she has already doubled in weight!! I love watching her learn new things. Matt and I are amazed that she will learn something one day and then it just sticks. She learned to grab her toes and now it seems that she can't stop doing it. She giggles and "chats" with us and her personality is coming out more and more with every passing moment.

Over the last few weeks I have been on an emotional roller coaster with this gal Natalie. I heard about her and her serious need for prayer via Twitter. I asked everyone I knew to pray for her and her precious son Gavin, I even recruited my Bible study ladies. He was fighting for his life in the hospital and Natalie was giving us the play by play and the details of exactly what Gavin specifically needed. I was praying for miracles and Natalie didn't get the one we were all praying for. She lost her precious son. I cried as my heart broke for this woman that lives across an ocean who I will probably never meet. I wanted to hug her, her husband, her other little boys. I wished that from far away I could find some way to comfort them. But thank the Lord, He is bigger than an ocean and tiny little me. And thank God for Natalie's persistent faith.

Natalie, if you ever read this please know that I think of you every. single. day.

Thank you for giving me a new perspective. Thank you for teaching me an incredible lesson.

I always thanked God for my daughter before I fell asleep at night. But it is because of you and because of Gavin's short yet powerful life that I fall asleep much differently. Every night I fall asleep praising Him for every single second I get with her. And then I beg and plead with God for at least one more morning that I can wake up and see her face, hear her coo and feel her warm cheek on mine.

I do believe I will think of you everyday for the rest of my life. Thank you for being so honest.

Merry Christmas! (a day late)

Hello loyal blog followers! We wanted to take a moment to wish you a Merry Christmas and joyful holiday fun with family and friends. We were so swept up in celebrating Charlotte's first Christmas that I forgot to press the go button on this blog post yesterday! (oops)

So, now I can update you! She had an amazing first Christmas!! We got a Flip video and I am so excited to document even more of Charlotte's life! We are so blessed. I wonder how many times I have said that on our blog? But really we have wonderful family and friends. We know so many people that have lost loved ones this year and people that are fighting cancer and just dealing with rough patches in life. Matt and I try to remember that we are not guaranteed anything and we just continue to thank God for blessing us with Charlotte. She's the greatest thing that happened to us this year. Our business is growing, we've made some rad new friends, we're trying to get into a house and we are still totally in love after 3 radical years of marriage. Blessed, blessed, blessed.

Well Merry Christmas everyone!! We can thank my mom for the ridiculous idea of taking pictures of Charlie in a Santa suit. She started off okay but then she got mad, really, really mad.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! :)

Charlotte is getting BIG!

It's SO weird... I look at Charlotte and I think, "you're getting so big!" And then I think she's only 2 months old! How will I feel when she's 1, 5, 10 YEARS old?! I am constantly reminded by my daughters presence that I need to live in the moment. I do not claim to have mastered the art of being present, I'm terrible at it. I worry, A LOT! But I'm working on appreciating all I have and spending quality time with the people I love.

I think Matt and I both struggle with documenting our lives because our job is to do this for other people. Our goal is to at least take a mini-session with Charlotte as a marker of each month of her precious life. Here is our first self-family portrait! Enjoy!

Luke Gregory

We met Erika and Matt in our Bradley class at Belly Sprout. We were all so excited to be first time parents and we loved getting to know all the families in our class as well as our amazing teacher Danielle!

Luke is so precious and we had such a great time catching his cute faces and I loved hearing all about his wonderful birth story :)

Matt & Erika we wish you a wonderful journey as parents (isn't this fun!?)

Isn't Erika beautiful?!

Blythe, Trace & Sky

They have a little bit of everything... a girl, two boys, a single birth and a set of twins! We were so blessed to share the morning with Janelle, Brian and their kiddos! They're all adorable and we loved spending time with them!!