Summer is winding down for Jill, Adam and Sophia and now they're gearing up for an eventful Fall. In late October they're welcoming a new addition to the family! I found out Jill was pregnant before she was telling people she was pregnant, so I've been waiting a long time for this maternity shoot. I'm sure it's felt a lot longer for Jill, who's growing this baby boy in her belly. :)
In my "life-before-Laken" I worked in local news. My last job was a morning reporter at News 10 here in Sac. Bill Hudson was one of my many bosses. He was and still is the 9 a.m. producer there and one of my husband's many bosses. Basically he got to tell me what to do, tell me if I did a good job or tell me if I sucked. The best part about Bill was that he never did the latter, even if I really did suck. Producers can be a real pain in the butt (producers probably think the same thing about reporters), but not Bill. He was always fair, level-headed, easy-going and nice, despite his extremely hard and sometimes frustrating job. It makes me very happy that he has such a great family to go home to every day.
This sweet baby boy was born into an awesome family! My husband's cousin, Ali, and her husband, Damien, are one of the coolest couples I know! They are so nice, easy-going, hard-working, smart and outdoorsy! They welcomed their little bundle of joy into their home on May 14, 2014! Hunter James was a total sweetheart for his photo shoot. I took his photos after the "prime time" for newborn photography and he was still one of the easiest babies I've worked with. He slept most of the time and didn't fuss when we put him on weird things, like a saddle, although he did pee almost every time we took off his diaper!
I could come up with so many more hashtags for Trey, but I won't do that to you. His mommy, Suzanne, gets full credit for #treytreyadorbs. She put it on Facebook once and it totally stuck! That's what we call him in the Carlmark household now. :)
It's a common theme for many moms, including myself, to take tons of photos of their kid(s) and husband, but never end up in them! That's how it is for Shelley Johnson. She has three ADORABLE kids and a handsome husband and I don't blame her for snapping away every chance she gets! But every mom needs some good photos with her family so that's what she got as a birthday and Mother's Day gift.
So there it was. That yellow, metal, Ikea bucket sitting on the table just waiting to be put away. It had been staring at me, I had been staring at it, for weeks. It would take me 15 seconds to put it away, but for some reason I just never got around to it. In the back of my mind I knew why. Yes, I bought the thing to hold ice and drinks during parties and actually used it for that reason on the 4th of July, but I knew it had a greater purpose. It was just so cute and round and yellow. The perfect photo prop for my cute, yellow-haired, round-faced baby!
Photo sessions make great gifts! Not only do you get amazing photos of your family to keep forever, but you get an experience and hopefully it's a really good one! I try to make my sessions low-key, fun and memorable, especially for the dads. It's important to make them happy because they're usually the ones who get talked into family photos by mom and sometimes they're not exactly thrilled to be there.
Every time I'm about to go home to Montana, I get really excited. Tomorrow I'm flying to Billings with Laken to celebrate a best friend's new marriage, see family members and friends, visit Red Lodge (where I got married) and maybe even boat on Yellowtail Dam. Fun, right? But before any of that can happen, I must pack. The thing I dread the most because it means I have to pick-up around the house and do a lot of laundry that I saved until the last minute to do. That's not fun, so instead I started to look through my photos and found some gems from my last trip home. It was entirely different. I brought a six month old to take part in our annual cattle branding in northeastern Montana.
