Happy Thanksgiving to you all!  I encourage you all to say out-loud what you are thankful for.  At church this morning, our pastor encouraged us to talk about this with our family.  He said it was easy for kids, but hard for adults.  I did not relate to that statement, because I think it is easy for me to say what I am thankful for. I encourage you to think of what you are thankful for. In fact, post them here in the comments section.  Even if it is past Thanksgiving (those of you who will not read this today), I think we should still post them!  Ok, here are 5 of the things I am most thankful for this year….

We Play!  I went to see my friend Synthia B. a few weeks ago on the east side of the state.  Synthia is one of the co-founders of Heartworks.  We spent the day just hanging out, talking photoshop, and then we had some shooting fun.  You should have seen us driving around at sunset looking for a field to pull into to practice some off camera lighting!  We were really zipping around in her mini cooper!  

I got my “dream machine” today! No, you are not seeing double…. I got TWO displays for my new Mac Pro computer. OK, I have to get busy setting it up!

Brayden came over for some Christmas portraits, and we did some fun ones too! Here are two of my favorites!

I won our monthly print competition at Professional Photographers of West Michigan again this month!  The theme was “Night”.  So, I used this image that I took of the Chicago city sky line last Spring Break.  It is fun to think about when I took this image.  My husband was so generous!  We were on a little Spring Break trip to Chicago, and he patiently waited while I was out in the cold at night taking pictures for competition!  My kids were in the van watching a movie on the DVD player.  My family is so good to me.  So, I was excited that I won the competition with this image!

Well, it is time to spill the beans.  I am not good at keeping secrets anyway!  I can keep secrets on my blog, that is easy.  But when everyone asks me in person, I can’t keep a secret!  So, maybe it is no secret anymore.  

Mike and Jessie were married in South Dakota this summer. And…. they had every bride’s worst nightmare. (…and photographer’s worst nightmare for that matter….) Their wedding photographer’s computer crashed, and she didn’t have the images backed up. Most of their wedding images were gone. Yup… gone. (FYI, I ALWAYS back up my images in two places before I even erase my cards.) So, Jessie decided they better get some new pictures taken. She got her hair done, put her dress back on, and Mike rented a tux again.

Well, I had a BALL! No time constraints, no pressure of a wedding, and Grand Rapids as our playground! It was the LAST nice day of the year… last Friday. Here are some favorites from the session!

Mike LOVES his Jeep, so of course we had to do a couple with the jeep!

Thanks Mike and Jessie!

I have to admit, when we scheduled Nate and Cara’s beach session for the month of November, I was a little leery of what it would be like. Cara really wanted a beach engagement session, and November was the first thing I had open. I was envisioning cold…. wind… maybe even snow….
Who would have guessed it would have been 70 degrees? It was the most perfect November evening that you could ask for!

We even had a beautiful sunset!

Thanks Cara and Nate! I can’t wait until your June wedding!

Michael came for his 6 month portraits last week. He had a few more smiles than when we did his 3 month portraits! We kept him busy and smiling for a while!

But, I always love the serious ones too…..

Then, we got out the blocks! Michael was sooooo cute with the blocks! He would hardly look at us, because he was so busy playing with them! We did manage to get him to peak at us a couple times. I think I know what Michael is getting for Christmas!

I LOVE hats, so I was excited when I saw that CJ and Abby came to see me with some hats! Thanks for making my day fun!