Return of the Dinos!

I ran into some dinosaurs sometime ago. I was scared!

Luckily, they left me alone and started terrorizing others...

Have a wonderful Monday!!!!!

A Personal Post

Well, I haven't posted many images of my kids on here lately. Jenny keeps stealing them for her family blog (Running in Circles), but tonight, I decided I wanted to change that :)

As a wedding photographer, Jenny & I get to attend a lot of weddings (obviously). But, rarely do we get to attend as guests....or with our kids. So, one of my buddies from all the way back in middle school was getting married in Branson this past Sunday. Jenny and I didn't have anything planned, so we decided to head down there for a few days, attend the wedding and relax for a few more days. Maybe we'd hit up Silver Dollar City, drive some go-karts, go to the water park, who knows. Well, the wedding was awesome.....and everything else, kind of blew.

Silver Dollar City - Do not, I repeat, DO NOT go there if you have 2 adults, and 3 kids (only 1 of them being tall enough to ride anything). Poor Ava missed out on all the rides by about 1 inch, and no one would budge. Which turned out to be a good thing, because for them to ride any rides, Max would have to wait with me for a ride, then we'd have to get in line again so Ava could go. Well, we got our money back from there and decided to head to The Track to ride some go-karts. Turns out Ava is too short to ride those too, but we promised Max he could go. One turn on the go-karts and we split from Branson. On the way home, we did go to Wild Animal Safari outside of Springfield that was cool and you could feed the animals when they came up to your car. Ok, enough writing, here are a few pictures...

Ava is a serious bubble blower.

Lia was pretty tired and grumpy the whole trip, probably due to the fact that she has 3 teeth coming in at the same time.

I did not take many pictures at the wedding. I refuse to be that photographer, but when the fire dancer came out, I had to snap some shots. It was so cool. I shot all these only with my 24 2.8 lens, so I didn't get many close ups. Either way, I like how they turned out.

Max & Ava had fun dancing.

Here's a shot of Ava dancing by herself :)

The Wild Animal Safari was pretty cool. And, no, this camel did not eat Lia's hand.

"I want to feed the chocolate horses, mommy!"

This buffalo tongue was gross...at least, I think it was a buffalo tongue.

Ok, funny story about this. We were feeding some zebras when this one zebra comes sprinting down the hill and ramming another zebra into our car. I pull up a little to get out of the way. We thought they were playing, so I watched from the side mirror when one of the zebras just mounted the other zebra. I had to take a pic :)

Lia says, bye-bye for now :)

Holly & Luke

I had the wonderful opportunity to go out and have some fun with Holly & Luke last week. My whole goal was to just get them to smile, which turned out to be pretty easy considering they make each other laugh quite often. So, basically, I got to sit back and enjoy 2 amazing people in love...oh, yeah, and take some pictures of them :)

They tried to tell me they were nervous...but I don't believe them.

I couldn't decide between the next 2, so you get 'em both :)

I love love.

I'm just going to throw it out there. You two are amazing.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you both for being so awesome!

Just for Fun: Layna & Joel

Sometimes in your life you meet some people that are just so amazing that it makes you glad to call them friends. Layna & Joel are 2 of those people for me. Her Deal or No Deal watch party was quite a fun experience. When Jenny was sick while pregnant with Lia, she chipped in with some other girls and got us a cleaning lady. But it goes even farther back, we had an awesome time shooting their extremely emotional wedding all the way back in September of 2007 (yeah, it was so long ago you get small pics on the blog).

In fact, I still love the story of how Jenny met Layna. Ava was a month old, and Max was sick. It was a Sunday morning and I still had a job at that time (boo), so Layna shows up, and Jenny had to hold Max because he was sick, so it was up to Layna to comfort a 1 month old baby who was crying like crazy. Does that sound like a good environment for a wedding consult to go on? I don't know, but Layna & Joel booked us anyway, and I'm so glad that she did. Just go back and look at all those times they've impacted our lives in so many great ways. It's really beautiful, isn't it?

So, with all that story, there has to be a point, right? Here it is, I've really been enjoying my couples sessions lately. They have been so emotionally moving for me I'm addicted. I just wanted to take a couple out for a good time, and just shoot. Shoot just for fun, shoot to capture that love that only they share with each other. I'm not gonna lie, it was beautiful. What do you think?

Joel loves his Colt 45.

Just take a minute and notice how they are looking at each other. That is love right there.

I love the mystery in this one...and the smile on Layna's face :)

And, I had to drop in a few with Joel's Wolverine claws that his brother made for him :)

Joel's only request.