Goodness, how we are already 14 days into the new year is beyond me! With a very busy December and start to January, I’m finally getting back into the swing of things and starting to get caught up. With Thanksgiving followed by Juno’s first birthday, then Christmas and New Years, other family member’s birthdays and photographing a winter wedding, we just have been busy over here. But now we are two weeks into the new year and are getting back into our routine. One of my goals for this year is to blog at least once or twice a month. We’ll see how it goes! To kick us off, I always like to take a quick look back on the previous year — it helps me to reflect and start the new year off with a mindset of gratitude. While I normally have this post ready to go by New Years Eve, I’ve learned that things just don’t quite happen like you think they will when you have a little one running around (and by running, I mean literally RUNNING around — right after Christmas June Bug decided she was ready to fully conquer this whole walking thing. Now she barely crawls at all anymore. See the walking video below. My baby is now a toddler — be still my heart!). This past year I’ve learned that work will wait and our to-do lists can grow but these are the moments we don’t want to miss.
Okay, here we go …
2019 was just full of our June Bug. Being that it was Juno’s very first trip around the sun, we experienced a whole lot of firsts, a whole lot of love and a whole lot of smiles. Simply put, this past year was hands down the very best. In 2019, I blogged every month about our growing girl. Here are all the links to look back at each month.
Phew! Now that she’s over a year old, I’ll blog every few months about that sweet girl of ours.
Here are some of our other favorite moments from this past year — I love sharing some of our “everyday” photos (mostly all taken with our iPhones because that’s the camera we have on us everyday). 2019 started with the birth of our sweet nephew, Raleigh, who came just after the New Year one year ago. The year was filled with baby snuggles, lots of cousin time for Juno (she’s so lucky to be surrounded by cousins on both sides) and lots of sister time for me (we both took a leave from teaching this school year), family, camping trips, swimming pools, all of the holidays and so much more. We are truly blessed.
This past year was also full of many, many sweet portrait sessions — new clients, past clients, clients that come back year after year. You guys made our year SO good. We are so grateful for each and every one of you. We hope that your photos were easy breezy and FUN. That’s always our goal. If there is anything we can do better for your next session, we are all ears! We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for letting us capture your memories.
This year we grew a lot as a photography business and it’s been amazing to see how far we’ve come over the past 8 years. This year we photographed families, kids, newborns, weddings, engagements, gender reveals, growing bellies, architecture, senior portraits and headshots. We loved it ALL. This Fall was extremely busy — so much so that blogging went by the wayside (as it seems to always do in the Fall) so my very next blog post will be all of our fun Fall session highlights — if you had photos done in the Fall, don’t worry, we didn’t forget about you! Hopefully this also gave you time to get your holiday cards out without me spoiling your photos beforehand! Here’s just a very quick glimpse of a handful of Fall faves … more to come very soon!
Lastly, in the Fall we broke ground on a photography studio! For those who maybe don’t follow along on social media, we are putting the finishing touches on our very own studio that we built in our backyard. And when I say “we” I really mean Brandon. Brandon built it. From the ground up. Isn’t he amazing? We’ve had a lot of help along the way — my mom who has helped from the start making our vision come to life, my dad who helped stand up the walls and did some heavy lifting, Brandon’s workers who helped with the roof and the drywall — thank you everyone! This has been a dream of mine for many years and I am so happy that’s happening! One day we took a look at our backyard, realized how big it actually is, and decided WHY NOT! We are hoping that we will be open for business come the beginning of the February — stay tuned and we will keep you posted! Our hope is to use our studio for everything from newborns and babies, maternity sessions, themed mini sessions, headshots, kids, and even families! Of course, we will still be booking sessions outside, but we also hope to do some major landscaping this spring and summer and that way clients can have the best of both worlds in one session — a little bit of outdoors and a little studio as well, if wanted! We recently got the floors put in the studio and Juno approves of them! She has so much fun running around the studio while Brandon works.
What a year 2019 was! We can’t wait to see how 2020 unfolds. My hope this year is to stay more present, work hard, live in the moment and cherish every day with our family. Wishing all our clients, family and friends a wonderful New Year!
