... and happy 4th wedding anniversary to me and Adrian!

I hope everyone has a happy and healthy holiday weekend!

Many of our clients know already, but we wanted to announce it on the blog now that we know what we're having! Our little baby boy is due at the end of November!!!

I am feeling great, and will continue booking and shooting weddings through October. My husband Adrian, who is also a primary photographer within the company, will be shooting weddings with one of our talented Associate Photographers after I go on maternity leave, which will through January.

Here are some shots Adrian took of me to celebrate!

I'm still working on processing all of my lovely spring weddings & engagements, but I wanted to take a moment to post some photos from lunch with my parents today.

Here's a fantastic photo my dad took of me...

Here is a great photo that I took of my mom and dad...

Enjoy!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! I hope you spent the day doing something special with someone you love.

Today, Adrian and I spent the day together. We worked of course (couldn't forget our responsibilities!), but spent some time together playing with our little dog, Maya, and then watching La Vie en Rose, a movie about the French singer, Edith Piaf.

Here's a capture from today's outing in the backyard with Maya- she adores her tennis ball, so she she had a great V-day for sure getting to play outside so much! ;)

Don't forget, if you're interested in a boudoir session, they are on sale until March 20th for half off in honor of Valentine's Day! Click here for more information!

Yesterday, I took Maya to the dog park for her first time. We attended a meetup of the Fort Lauderdale Dachshund Meetup Group so we could play with other adorable doxies!

As you can see, Maya was a little shy in the beginning. She looks a little confused about why her mommy brought her to this place with so many other doggies!

But, she soon warmed up to things when we saw that someone had brought a tennis ball (she loves tennis balls), and decided to have fun, play, and get a little dirty!

Here are some of the friends we made:

Hopefully we will get to attend another meetup soon, and we definitely will be returning to the dog park. We both had a great time!

I decided to see how the new lens performed photographing my pup, so I took it out for a spin last night before heading out for dinner. Here are some adorable shots I took.

Two of Maya being super cute outside in the backyard (yes, we do have a pink house). The first was taken at ISO 1600 and the second at ISO 200. I love the first one with her wrinkled nose... soooo cute!

One from later on before bed - Maya loves to snuggle up under the covers! So cute! This one was taken at ISO 3200 on my 5D.

Oh, and since inquiring minds want to know, I purchased the Canon f/1.4 model of the 50mm lens. So far, I like it a lot!

The holiday season has officially started for our family, as tonight Adrian and I had my parents and my grandma over for dinner to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. We cooked a delicious dinner and finished up with some latkes, or potato pancakes, a traditional holiday treat. It was fun doing all the cooking this time - usually my parents are the ones who prepare all the holiday meals!

If you're looking for a little fun, holiday-related distraction, you should check out "Winterbells" which is a game that some friends of mine sent to me. Thanks guys. Now, since I am successfully, addicted, I am sharing it with all of you. The idea of the game is that you are a bunny.... an adorable little white bunny. You get to jump on bells and birdies and score lots of points. It's fun, I promise!

So, Happy Hanukkah to everyone! I hope your evening was as lovely as ours was!

Today is a special day! It's our little dog Maya's fourth birthday.

For her birthday, she got a new doggie bed for her crate, a new ball, some squeaky stuffed animals, and LOTS of treats, including a brand new rawhide bone (she loooooves those!).

Maya is a miniature long haired dapple dachshund. Isn't she adorable?

The trip up Highway 89 to Page was beautiful, though difficult to photograph. I saw this vista out the window and pulled over for some shots. I set the camera on a guard rail with the lens on a rock and took this timed photo.

 
I tried to frame the famous shot you see of Horseshoe Bend, but the evening sun was right in the lens and the 17mm focal length made it hard to avoid a bad lens flare. We're going back tomorrow after Antelope Slot Canyon as we head back down Highway 89 towards the scenic Highway 89A and the Vermillion Cliffs, as the lighting will be ideal and won't require HDR magic (at least not as much).

I forgot to post this yesterday, so here it is...

Karen Standin' on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona.

We were only a half hour away from Winslow while visiting Meteor Crater, so Karen insisted that we head there and visit the famous landmark from the Eagles' song "Take it Easy", even though it was pitch black outside. Don't miss my previous post or my Flickr photo set of our Western Vacation so far!

Here I am sitting on a ledge on the south rim of the Grand Canyon.

 
I got to introduce Karen to snow, which was a lot of fun. Karen absolutely loves the snow and still gets excited whenever she sees snow on the side of the road. Our "western vacation" was then paused for 5 days for my sister's wedding, which I'll post about when I get home.

 
Here you can see Karen chimping on the side of the road and our rental car (the horrible horrible horrible PT Cruiser, which was clearly designed by monkeys).

 
We climbed the "mountain" (yes, we're from Florida) a couple hundred feet and it qualified as Karen's first real rugged hike. These shots are wonderful and I look forward to posting them when I get back to Florida (and back to using Aperture on my Mac Pro and not a laptop!).

After a night in Prescott with my mom, we drove over Mingus Mountain to Jerome and then dinner at my old friend (and best man in our wedding) John's parents' place. We were delayed though because after helping Karen up from sitting in the snow, I helped pat the snow off and my wedding ring went flying! Unfortunately it wasn't virgin snow, so there was no way to tell where it went.

I kicked around the snow for a while and then as I was giving up, I kicked one last bit and Karen saw something... sure enough it was my ring! Lucky lucky!

Last night John came up and stayed with us at a hotel in Flagstaff and we went and played pool downtown until midnight, when the giant pinecone was lowered and everybody went wild. Today we tried to go to Snow Bowl but apparently they close the road when the ski resort is closed, which is rather annoying and disappointing (my tax dollars not at work). I wanted to show Karen more snow.

Afterwards we went to Meteor Crater. On the way we saw a sign for Walnut Canyon National Monument. Since we had time and we are going around looking at parks and what not, we checked it out and were quite amazed.

 
Still in love with snow after a week, Karen was tossing snowballs around and covering herself with snow.

 
I'll post photos from the monument after I get back to Arizona. It's an absolutely beautiful place that we just randomly decided to visit when we saw the sign on the way to Meteor Crater. We loved it. I don't know the last time I've been outside and really didn't hear anything at all.

Tomorrow we're going to Page, Arizona, and around the local monuments and parks. The next day we're taking 89A up to Zion National Park, with a stop at the Vermilion Cliffs National Park. I've taken Route 89 there before and that was amazing, so I can't wait to experience 89A past Page... the stretch of 89A near where I grew up through Sedona / Oak Creek is amazing and not to be missed, so I'm hoping for the same.

The next day we're going to Hoover Dam to drive on it before they close the road for security reasons, and then reaching our final destination at Paris, Las Vegas. I love that I get to do all this with Karen and be her guide to the west.