SO about five years ago my best female friend met a guy in the army who she married shortly thereafter. Right away she moved miles and miles away. Over the last few years we have only seen each other once and I have felt incomplete not having any photos of her beautiful daughter. Well, she recently came home to visit and has stopped by a few times. Today we finally got a few photos of her daughter done. I'm so excited.

My step brother's son Jacob came over to play today, so we did some photos. He wasn't too happy about it, but I got some of him.

I haven't been doing a lot of photos lately, with the baby coming soon and all. I have been trying to get things ready for him and actually making props for his first photo shoot.
But I did find time today to take some pics of my handsome nephew. It was way to hot to spend too much time outside so the shoot lasted a whole 4 minutes! but at least I have a recent photo to hang on my wall.

A couple years ago, I attempted to shoot raw images with my canon, but quickly discovered I had no way to open and edit them, so I pretty much gave up on raw. Then a friend gave me step by step instructions on how to open raw images with adobe, so now I am addicted to raw shooting. I took a few of my kids just to get used to editing in raw... here is what I came up with.

On Monday my Aunt Shirley past away. My kids and I were very close to her. We would go see her usually once a week. We would sit on her front porch and talk for hours, while the kids played in her yard. Being around her was always just so... comfortable. She was so full of love and hope that it was hard not to feel loved and hoped for around her. Without effort, she made everyone's life a better life.
Yesterday was her funeral. I didn't think it was a good idea to take my kids to the funeral. They are still so young and don't really understand what is going on, but I still wanted to be there for my cousins, David and Steve, so we went to my Aunt's house while they were at the funeral. We sat outside and played while we waited for everyone to come back to the house. To help keep me from crying, I took pictures of my toddlers. The day was bright and the photos were taking when the sun was high, but oh well. I still like them. Although, she wasn't with us yesterday in person, I could still see her smiling from the porch watching my kids play and I have yet to lose that feeling of being loved and hoped for that I always felt around her.