twenty o eight.

Just a day past Christmas and I'm already looking forward to our next holiday where the ball will drop and welcome in the new year. I'm starting the year off with a bang with 3 fabulous weddings in January and so many more to come that I'm so excited about! I have so many changes coming in the next 4 or 5 months that thrill me and I can't wait to show them to all of you! It's been one amazing year and I'm just thankful to have met and worked and laughed and cried with so so so many wonderful brides and grooms and their families and friends. So many of my couples have made such an impact and a lasting impression on me and I'm more than grateful to be able to carry these memories with me into the new year. I can't wait to invite new adventures in 2009 and I'm excited for the photos that will be made with so many new couples! If you were one of the people in front of my camera this past year, I thank you for your emotion, your expression, your heart and soul. Thank you to all of my fantastic couples for allowing me and my assistants to hang out in the sidelines at your weddings and to capture the essence of your days. It has been one heck of a ride and it's exciting to think about the new year!

Here are just some of my most favorite photos and moments and details of the year. Of course there are so so so many more that I couldn't possibly fit them all into this tiny little space, so these will have to do for now! I'm closing this chapter for now, or at least sliding a bookmark in for easy retreaval of the memories, and I'm welcoming the next sequal in 2009!

merry christmas.

Chase and I wanted to wish everyone the most merry Christmas ever! We've been up to all kinds of holiday mischief and yet we still found some time to do a couple photos...Santa is bringing her some new lovely festive jammies that she can't wait to unwrap and wear all day on Christmas! She was really hoping for a new Christmas baby like the one she has now. It's all ragged and could use an update! So we'll have to get up early in the morning to see what Santa Paws brings her! She has her stocking hung over the fireplace, and some of her best beggin strips out for Santa too! As for me, I would LOVE to wake up to a new camera...we'll have to wait to see who gets their Christmas wish!

Merry Christmas to everyone! Enjoy the day with your family and friends and eat lots of tasty treats and laugh and have a fabulous day!

greg & amanda: engaged.

Meet Greg and Amanda! These two will be getting married in just a few short weeks in January and it's going to be a wonderful day complete with our groom in full Scottish attire...kilt and all! I can't wait! This will be a first experience for me as a wedding photographer and I'm so excited to take the photos for these two! Amanda is also in the family...we'll just call her a cousin because my dad and her mom are cousins, that makes us cousins at least right?! And I couldn't write this withought mention of one of our Christmas traditions from my childhood, where the entire family, extended and then some, would gather on Christmas Eve at my Aunt Chig and Uncle Earl's house. We LOVE Aunt Chig and Uncle Earl and they were everyone's favorite! When I was a kid, it felt like the drive to their house was FOREVER and we just knew Santa wouldn't stop at our house if no one was home, so we always begged our parents to leave early. Now that I'm older, the drive is literally a mere 25 minutes from my house and I know Santa will still make the stop to my house, regardless if I'm home or not! I remember Amanda and her older brother, Richard, who we all called (don't kill me Richard!) little Richie! They were so cute, and both younger than me, but I totally remember them as these two little giggly smiley kids! And to top it off, one of my most horrific Christmas mornings ever, came from little Richie! Hey you guys may not remember this, but Richard had the chicken pox one of those Christmas Eve's at Aunt Chig's house, and the next morning, I was greeted with big bright rosy cheeks, and later that day, I came down with the same spots and spent the next good week trying to keep my hands off of them! See, such strong ties we have to the Brown family and you guys probably didn't even know it! I'll never forget that Christmas either, and we actually have a little photo of all of us kids, and there's little Richard, and myself, both with the big bright red cheeks! We don't do those Christmas Eve's anymore, but I promise not one passes by where we didn't wish we were sitting in the middle of Aunt Chig's living room, with the entire dinner table full of food, fudge and divinity and that cheese dip in the kitchen, getting ready to do the gift exchange, and listening to my Grandma, aunt Chig and Aunt Mim cackling with laughter, and my dad and Papaw's lovely dirty jokes. Those were serisously the days!

So that's the little Amanda I remember, all cute and running circles around us as a toddler and little girl. And now she's all grow up and beautiful with her dad's eyes and her mom's smile. And now I'm lucky enough to be able to photograph her and Greg and can I just say that these two had me in tears cracking up the entire time of the photo shoot! It was nice and cold, Amanda in her heels, and Greg, oh Greg! You crack me up! That's all I'm saying! You are entirely too funny for words! I can't wait for the wedding!

christmas coma.

Well, Sarah & Thomas, I guess we all should move on from Jamaica and resume the reality that it's just not getting any warmer in Indiana...and it's nearly Christmas and I'm behind on a few posts here! I have so much I still want to cram into my blog before we hit the big O nine! So be sure to check back in the coming days for a bunch of posts about me and my Christmas habits...I'm stressing the word 'habits' here...once you realize you are a Christmas-a-holic like my sister and me, you just bipass "tradition" and go straight for Christmas Coma and you soon find yourself so deep in presents up to your lovely Christmas sweater and you find yourself in a Christmas punch sort of drunkeness, with Christmas song overload going round and round on that Christmas train round the treeskirt mood! (taking a deep breath here...hang on...) I'm in love with all things Christmas. You might call it Winter Wonderland like. I'm going with Christmas Coma.

Here are the kids (my nieces and nephews...Cyli, Charis, and Ashton) with the fall shoot. I know I'm seriously slacking here! We took these one day after school just at the last of the pretty colors in the trees sometime in early November. Though it was a rather absolutely freezing day, you would have never known it! They are simply gorgeous kids! I love them and we're doing the Christmas card photos this week...(stoked!) so they'll be back again sometime for next week with the Christmas photos. **side note to Christmas Coma...it was somewhere around this fall shoot that I was really gearing up for Christmas with my Christmas CD's on repeat throughout the house and I had began the yearly shopping!