Welcome to the new blog! This is going to be a combination of my personal and photography blogs from here on out! There are a few tabs at the top that you can click on to read more about me, my family and/or my photography.
Thank you for stopping by! And I hope you follow along!

Friday night, Thomas and I decided to take Lily for her first trip to the North Carolina zoo! We went three years ago and have talked a few times about taking Lily but have never really gotten around to it. There didn’t seem to be any excuses this time so we set our alarms and got up a little early to make sure we got there when it opened.
The weather was close to perfect. No rain, minimum humidity. Lily slept the whole two hours there and back. She was scared of a few things like the statues, the carousel and the penguins! But besides that she had a blast! She even sat through the 4-D Africa movie about poaching! They told us not to take her in because she would probably be scared but we wanted to see it so we took her in! She even wore the 3-D glasses the whole time! She loved it:)
She spent the rest of the day checking out all of the animals and walking beside her Daddy and the stroller. It was a perfect way to spend our Saturday afternoon together and out of the house!
I just bought the Jill-e messanger style bag from HSN and was so thankful for it on this trip. I was able to wear my camera around my neck and still carry three other lenses in the bag with almost no hassle at all! My only complaint was that the neck strap rubbed my neck a little but that didn’t start until after I had been wearing it for 5 hours straight! Even though I brought a bunch of gear, I was having too much fun and didn’t take many pictures. But here are some that I got while we were there:

I think she looks so much like my little sister, Haley in this one:)

My dear friend, Kassi was in North Carolina visiting her family while I was in town for Lily’s party. So we set up a shoot swap! Her husband had to stay back for work so she didn’t want family pictures and opted for a photo shoot for her parents with her son, Darin. Kassi is expecting her second child next spring. So, for right now Darin is the only grandchild on her side of the family. It was so special to get to work with The Miller’s and Darin at the beach! Here are a few of my favorites of them.

My sister, Haley and her boyfriend, Matt finallywelcomed a new member into their little family earlier this month! Mitzie has been dreamed about and wished for for a few years now! Matt finally found the perfect baby for my sister. And Haley is an amazing puppy mommy. It was a joy to see Mitzie bounce around my mom’s house playing with the cats and my daughter while we were all in town for Lily’s birthday party.
I asked them if I could do some “family” pictures while they were in town so I could take my new lens for a spin and they were nice enough to say yes!
No one got into town on time that day so it was too late for us to drive out to the beach like we had planned so we just went out into my mom’s backyard and snapped a few shots before the sun went down.

This funny one was taken the next day while we were setting everything up for Lily’s party! I had to buy 55 balloons and as soon as I walked in the door with them we all knew we had to try and float Ms. Mitzie!

Just wanted to see what these looked like all blown up and gorgeous:)