Melanie + James . Boston engagement photos

New coverage region: Finger Lakes NY wedding photographer

I'm so very excited to announce that starting this year (2010), we are now expanding our local coverage region into the Finger Lakes NY area -- including Ithaca, Syracuse, Rochester, Watkins Glen, and all of the amazing locations in between and around these cities.  These locations have been added to our growing list of local regions, so as with our current local regions, there will be no travel fees for coverage in these areas.

We'll continue to shoot all of our other local regions while we add on this new presence in the finger lakes, so Philadelphia, New York, Boston, New Jersey, and Delaware area weddings and engagements are welcome as always. And, of course, we'll also continue traveling for our destination wedding bookings around the US and internationally as well.

Our family spends a lot of time out on the finger lakes in the summer, and it only makes sense that I should be shooting there! The area is chock full of beautiful old estates, amazing lakeside properties, outstanding colleges, and gorgeous state parks, and it's the perfect location for a wedding. I've gotten really familiar with this part of New York over the past several years and can't wait to start exploring all of the unique wedding spots on the vineyards, around the lakes, and in all of the great little towns and cities nearby. 

To celebrate our expansion into this region, we're currently offering a limited-time 15% discount on all weddings booked in the finger lakes area.

If you're getting married in or around the finger lakes and are looking for a wedding photographer, please shoot us a note or give us a call at 215.510.5817. We'd love to help you out!

p.s. Check out Michelle + Troy's engagement session to see the kind of photos we've created recently in the Ithaca area.

She's growing.

Have I mentioned yet that I'm a mom?

Okay, okay, I know I have.  But I just have to say it again, because most days I almost don't believe it.

Partly because I wake up before my baby.  Jed putters around the room getting ready for work, and once he's all put together, he comes over to my side of the bed to kiss me good morning, which is usually when I wake up. The first thing I do is inch my way over to the side of our bed, and peer down at our little girl. Seven times out of ten, she's all cozied up in her little moses basket with her head turned toward the windows, snoozing away.  The other three times she's cozied up, eyes wide open, looking out the windows at the morning... taking her first taste of the day.  On those days I can't resist saying good morning to her.  Which is when she turns her head, looks all around until she finds me, and then opens up her mouth in the biggest, happiest, gummiest grin I have ever seen.  

And my heart does its first little happy dance of the day.

And that's the way our morning begins.  Do you see now why I just don't believe it?  

The other part of why I sometimes don't believe it is because our sweet little family is still not 100% permanent.  We have one more post placement visit to make it through at the end of March, and once the paperwork from that is all done, our lawyer will go to court in Florida and ask a judge to finalize our adoption.  

And though there's very little reason to be, I'm still scared.  Because this beautiful little girl has been our family since the moment she was born.  

No, no, before that.  

She's been a part of us since that first phone call, where I dialed the number to her birth mom's home and she picked up and said hello.  

But really, it was even before that.

Since the moment I read her birth mom's story, before we ever spoke, or met, and way, WAY before Annika was born, I just had this gut reaction, this deep down sureness, that we all were about to become a family.

And of all of the luckiness in all of the world, and just....miraculously...I was right.

So now, we continue to wait. Adoption is so much about waiting and patience.  

I'm not great at patience.  

Or, well, I used to be not so great at it.  Now my days are so filled with the most immense thankfulness I have ever known, there's no room for impatience.

My mornings and afternoons and nights are swallowed up by the love and hope and respect I feel for her birthmom and that entire side of her family tree.  I will never stop wondering at this enormous blessing they have given us.  It is bigger than anything I could have imagined.  

We are happier than we could have ever imagined.

So for now, we wait.

We nap together. We sing goofy, made-up, terribly off key songs. We laugh. We make animal sounds. We read stories about mice and firemen and trees and moons. We look at pictures. We yell Where's the binky?!! more times than we can count in a day. We do bath time. We do bed time. We cross our fingers and hope for burps. We count weeks.  We marvel.  We take turns holding her and get upset when the other one hogs her for too long. We talk about our sweet girl's life, and how she's so loved, she has two families! We plan adventures.  We yell Where's the burp cloth?!! more times than we can count in a day. We get peed on. We laugh some more.  We fill our days with every possible moment of goodness.  

And we wait for it all to be really, truly, 100% official (even though it already has been for so so long in our hearts).

 

Michelle + Brian . engaged

I'm finally starting to catch up on blogging a bit, so we're kicking things off with one of my favorite shoots.

Michelle and Brian are both big outdoor people, and had the wonderful idea to do their engagement images out at one of their favorite hiking spots. The whole idea was right up my alley. I've never hiked and shot simultaneously (with clients anyway), and it was such a great time. Not only was it a gorgeous day, but it was so nice to be out shooting in the woods and sunshine, climbing up and down old wooden staircases and over rocks and roots, with waterfalls all around us.

Looking back over these images (combined with all of the beautiful weather we've been having over the past few days) is making me itchy for spring and summer. I can't wait to get outside again and get my boots dirty. They've been cooped up on a shelf in the garage, gathering dust and staying entirely too clean since I had my knee surgery. Never knew how much I'd miss my boots, but thankfully I should be all healed up by the time the nice weather rolls in for good. If anyone else is interested in doing some shots out on the trails, email me and we'll make some plans.

Snow day

Today was our little snowpea's first snow day. We bundled her up.
Hat.
Mittens.
Snowsuit.

We plopped her down in the snow for 30 seconds...
where she promptly fell asleep.

And we fell just a little bit more in love.