Day In The Life - March 2013

Often photographers end up neglecting the documentation of their own families. Sometimes it can be due to being too busy with client work, or a lack of inspiration, or just not being able to balance everything. This is my 'Day in the Life Project'. I choose one day each month to document, from morning to night, so that each month I am guaranteed photographs of my family and my life.

Today was the last day of the month, but a good one to document. Easter Sunday! We have a communal Easter breakfast at church and it was also my week to teach the preschoolers. Each year after church is the Easter Egg Hunt, a highlight of the kids' year. Then lunch with our pastor's family and some other friends, which lasted well into the afternoon, followed by heading home to start packing for our trip to Texas this week and get ready for bed.

These are not technically perfect (far from it), or portrait-worthy, this is just real life. If you are doing something similar leave me a comment with a link to where I can follow along with you, I would love that!

52 Weeks of 2013 - Week 12

Some weeks are just harder and longer than others...but there is always hope!

52 Weeks of 2013 - Week 11

I love this spring weather. I love the kids having an extra day off school and getting to meet with friends. Being outdoors. Exploring new places we have not seen before, bringing fresh inspiration. Children laughing and playing, as well as the quiet more focused moments.

Of course, had this photograph been planned, she would have been wearing a beautiful dress, instead of a t-shirt with a modern cartoon on it, but this is real life folks. Real, unscripted, not posed, just capturing a simple moment.

They grow up too quickly and there are so many of these moments worth capturing. Let's not forget.

First Baby on the Way - Reynolds Sneak Peek {Marin Maternity Photographer}

The anticipation of waiting for your first child to be born. You know, in theory, life is going to change, but the reality for most of us is that we have no idea how. It can be exciting and scary, full of hopes and dreams for the little one you have yet to meet.

What an exciting phase of life to document.

Steve and Laura are about to embark on the adventure of parenthood. These are their last days as just a couple and soon they will be a little family. They came to the Bay Area as a young married couple to attend Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. Laura has since graduated and now works at Gilead House, helping families in need while Steve, still a student (and will be for a while, as he plans to continue on to do his PhD) is also the Youth Pastor at Tiburon Baptist Church. They are a busy couple, but life is about to get way busier. I think they're looking forward to it.

Can't wait to meet your little one.

52 Weeks of 2013 - Week 10

They are true sisters, the best of friends, the worst of enemies. They play together and giggle together and plan and primp together. They still hold hands! I love watching their relationship blossom and I try hard to remember if it was like that for my sister and I. My memory fails me but I am sure it must have been.

They approach life so differently and have strengths and weaknesses uniquely their own and I love them all the more for it. I know they will always be there for each other, through thick and thin. They are and will be, a force to be reckoned with.

Love these two little mischief makers!

52 Weeks of 2013 - Week 9

I do not enjoy winter, the cold and the damp and the gloom. I know that I can no longer really complain, our winter here, compared to other states, or even countries, is incredibly mild. It is not the biting cold that I experienced with my English winters, when I would walk through the snow and come home, my eyelashes frozen and clumped together, my cheeks stinging. I no longer experience the agony of my poor frozen toes swollen and blistered from chilblains...yet I still look forward to spring. There is anticipation and longing.

I can often be found telling myself, reminding myself, yet again, this is just a season. A season of living on one income, a season of a husband in school, a home that feels too small....but I live in expectation that our spring will come. I will once again see the buds on the trees and the weights will be lifted. I would not trade these days and the challenges we at times face, for any other life. There is joy and beauty to be found each day, there are smiling and laughing children and hugs and "I love you"s and the security that comes from a best friend by my side.

Spring would not be so sweet without the preceding winter. That is how life is. We need to go through the trials and the darkness, to really appreciate when the sun breaks through. To feel the warmth on our faces, to see the flowers in bloom and feel the hope rise within us. Can we really appreciate what we have, unless we have had not?