annie

Annabelle Marie "Annie" came to visit me in the studio today and was the perfect baby.  She slept nearly the entire time, she is absolutely gorgeous and she had the sweetest faces and coos!  I love babies, they give me the fix just when I need it.  Kristen and Casey, your daughter is beautiful, I am so happy for you and your new family!

extended family

I had the rare opportunity last weekend to take pictures of the extended family of Christelle and Jason.  Christelle is from France and her parents were visiting the US after the birth of Christelle and Jason's baby girl, Nora.  Christelle arranged for a large family photo session including great grandma Smith, and all of the grandparents while her parents were here visiting.  We met up at the UNC campus and had a great time.  What a great bunch!  It was so fun to meet sweet baby Nora and to catch a couple of candid photos of spunky Sophie!  I just love her!

beautiful girl

My daughter, Kyndal, had open heart surgery 5 weeks ago and since before surgery has been very worried about having a scar.  I never thought that it would impact a 4 year old so much to have a scar, but the first thing she asked me was how it would look with her swimsuit and with dresses.  It happens so young, self image and how girls feel about their bodies.  It tugged at my heart strings to think that she was worried about that at such a young age, so now that she is up and around and feeling better, I wanted to do some photos of her so that she could see just how beautiful she is despite the scar and to let her know that the scar is what makes her who she is and it is always her story to share and tell.  My little girl is so beautiful on the inside and out and these pictures bring a smile to my face whenever I look at them, especially after all we have been through in such a short amount of time.

my daughter's story

This blog has never been a personal blog, on occasion I have blogged photos of my kids, but I have not shared much of our personal life.  Many of you are aware and many are not that over the past month, my family has gone through fear, tears, love, and laughs.  My 4 year old daughter, Kyndal Grace, had open heart surgery on Valentine's Day to fix a congenital heart defect that we partly knew about right after birth and another one that we found just one year ago.  When she was born, she had a large hole in her heart that was fixed with a titanium device in the cath lab and Children's Hospital Colorado.  She grew and thrived after that procedure.  Despite her doing well, she always had issues with fatigue and leg pain with activity.  We found through cardiac MRI last year that she had an intramural coronary artery which is a defect that causes sudden death in athletes.  We were under the plan that she would have open heart surgery to fix the defect when she was 7 or 8 years old.  In December of last year, she had chest pain and fatigue at a birthday party at an inflatable bounce house.  It was determined at that time that she needed immediate surgery to fix the defect.  At the same time of her surgery they repaired a known leak at the site of the device.  When they went in for surgery, they found that she had the intramural coronary artery on both sides of her coronaries.  This basically told us that she was "a ticking time bomb" for cardiac arrest with the next activity involving exertion.  She has made a wonderful recovery and is doing quite well only four weeks after surgery.  She has a pericardial effusion (fluid on her heart) that we are closely monitoring with weekly trips to Children's, but despite that she is returning to her beautiful, spunky self, something we could not feel more blessed about.

I took several pictures with the plan to document her journey and in order to share it with those who care for us, I made a video.  I hope you enjoy watching how we went from one of the darkest days of our lives to days full of smiles and feeling so very blessed to have such wonderful doctors, family, friends and most of all such a strong little girl......ENJOY the link below.

http://youtu.be/mJksD3YHC_U

bush family

The Bush's met up with me at Carson Nature Center in Littleton for a family photo session last Saturday.  They brought sweet little Payton who just turned two a few months ago and reminds me so much of my little girl.  She is very verbal for a two year old and just cute as a button!  We battled the wind a bit, but all in all in was a beautiful Saturday morning in Colorado.

doll baby

Kenadie is 6 months old already and such a doll baby!  She has the most beautiful blue eyes and I love to photograph them!  We met up at the Poudre River Trail for a gorgeous day and she was all smiles and poses!  The pictures say it all!

clark family

I didn't get the chance to photograph the Clark family this fall, so we did a quick photo shoot last weekend and will do another in the spring.  We had originally planned for a different location, but the wind here in Colorado has been awful, so we ended up at the their home which was a beautiful backdrop for some great pictures!