All three of these little cousins have sweet faces - they are so cute!  We made a quick trip to Forest Park for some portraits of the three girls and their families, and the weather was perfect.  The girls were playing in the leaves a bit when Carter found a giant stick bug - you can see it on her hand in one of the photos.  They were having a great time with that bug while all of us adults made faces about not wanting to touch it!  I'm so glad that these families came out for their first family portraits.  Hopefully they'll make it a yearly tradition!

We all know the economy is a little....wonky....right now (I’m an optimist, that’s as negative as I’ll get.)  As a result, some of my clients have started wondering if they should be saving their money rather than spending it on “luxury” items such as portraits. 

But photography isn’t about vanity and luxury - it’s about celebration.  Even in tough times it’s still important to celebrate your life by documenting your family, photographing kids before they grow up, and capturing those newborn moments you can never get back.  It makes me sad to see people struggling between saving money and having good photos.  So in the interest of spreading some love around (and slightly increasing my own good karma) I’m holding a special one day marathon of mini-sessions at a special price.

Here’s the deal.  On Sunday May 3rd I’ll be dedicating my day to doing mini-sessions for family/kid/baby portraits.  Each session will be 45 minutes long, and everyone will get a DVD of all their high resolution files from the session (with copyright consent to make prints.)  Morning sessions will be held at Forest Park for the nature lovers, and afternoon sessions will be in the Lafayette Square neighborhood and park for the urban dwellers.  The fee for the session and the DVD is only $100 - less than half of the normal full session price.

This is a one time thing, so if you’re interested, call or email me ASAP to get the time you want.  I’m looking forward to it!

How pretty are Colin's blue eyes?  He's such a cutie - even when he's being a total boy with his mouth wide open or his tongue sticking out!  His mom, Shannon, wanted to get some photos of the two of them together at Faust Park yesterday, and a few of him alone.  At 4 years old he already has a "fake camera smile" just like the rest of us.  Fortunately at 4 he's still susceptible to laughing at the word monkey, so we managed get a laugh out of him for some of the shots.  I just love this first one - I hope Shannon does too!

I've been really behind on blogging because I've been sick - I'm still getting to everything!  So my apologies for the delays :)

The Stufflebeams came out for my Last Chance Marathon this past weekend.  Since Thatcher loves playing football now (and not so much getting his photos taken), I took a bunch of shots of him playing with his family.  I love the shot of Stacey and Patrick watching him play - so cute.  This was probably my last photo shoot with the Stufflebeam family, which is sad.  Maybe they'll come out to Colorado - I hope so :) 

Heather and Jason are starting to plan a wedding for next year, and Heather must have found my site in the process.  I'm glad she did, because they joined in on my portrait marathon and were really fun to wander the park with.  I love the one where they are making odd faces - they're so goofy it just works for them.  Too bad I won't be around to take more photos of them in the future!

The perfect, sunny fall day and an adorable family - what a perfect way to finish out in St. Louis.  We started bright and early in Faust Park this morning, and I'm glad we did.  We managed to just miss the throngs of photographers and families out getting portraits taken in the beautiful fall colors.  I love so many portraits from this session today, but the ones with the leaves have to be my favorites.  That's one thing I'll miss in Colorado - St. Louis has Denver beat hands down for fall color.  Thank you so much for coming out to play today, Adkins family!

I'm off to pack up my life.  I head out to Denver next Friday, so if you're trying to contact me, I appreciate your patience over the next week :)