Flowery Sunshine

When kids show you life through their eyes, suddenly the weeds are indeed lovely flowers. And when there's so much in the world going wrong, somehow the detailed little dandelion is like a token of hope and peace. That there is good and perfection still left. That if a Creator can take the time to fashion this flowery sunshine nobody appreciates, surely He's got a hand in this beautiful mess we call our lives.

{like father, like sons}

Aaliyah & Miyah | Princesses

"Daughters are often disguised as angels."

Nothing like a photoshoot with spunky little princesses to make me wish I had one of my own! How precious are these two?

Tyler James

"On the day you were born
The angels clapped their hands
And the moon danced with the stars."

Kyle & Samantha | Valentine's Wedding

Valentine's Day dawned so cold and crisp there was a 30 below windchill and icicle figments glittered in the face numbing air. But there was little this Winter Wisconsin weather could do to hinder the love and warmth that gathered everybody together in the small chapel nestled in fields just outside the 3,475 populace of Bloomer.

The bride, Samantha, was a sheer picture of beauty and grace. When wedding planning handed her some of the most gigantic lemons of the universe, she calmly stirred the sugar in to create lemonade because all she really cared about at the end of February 14, 2015 was the signed document that bound her lifetime to the Canadian boy who stole away her heart.

Her eyes sparkled the way they did last Fall when I sat across from her sipping coffee at a Caribou Coffee when she asked me to photograph her wedding. She told me about this Kyle. Someone she had known for some time, but never thought of him as husband potential. Until one day it clicked. It was so right. The gold and diamonds on her slender finger caught the sparkle in her eye. It hardly seemed a second thought for her to leave her life, her home, her family to go join his in Canada. Whatever it took to live side by side with the love of her life was hardly even a sacrifice.

And now here she was today. The day she had dreamed all her life about. Her dress had been a fiasco of a nightmare when it arrived. No returns, no money back. But she had full confidence in her mother and aunt's ingenuity to recreate it into a vintage style dream of a gown for her. It was perfect. She was so elegant in it. She covered herself in the veil her mother wore, in her hands she held a gorgeous bouquet she created with her sisters and friend. Her eyes danced, for today she would become the wife of Kyle and that was all that mattered. Yet selflessly she reached out to everybody joining her that day and loved and laughed with them.

Surrounded by their loved ones, we watched as Kyle and Samantha joined hands in matrimony. With earnestness they vowed their lives to each other til death. They laughed, they prayed, I saw a few tears, they kissed. She took his name and together they became husband and wife.

Boredom Buster Take Two

"Creativity is intelligence having fun." 

--Albert Einstein

 Wooden airplanes and acrylic paint. Best Valentine's Day gift from a Grandma to little grandsons. They loved this project!

See Crayon?

You have probably had a little too much of the Dick & Jane books when the only caption you can come up with for this shot is, "Oh look! Look and see! See crayon? See crayon roll? See crayon roll on the floor? Silly silly crayon."

Boredom Buster for 4 Year-Old Chefs

I have had it with Winter, I have had it with snow, I have had it with Windchillville, I have had it with Frozen, I have had it with February, I just want it to be June for the rest of the year.

The cold actually does bother me.

But no, that's not the way this game works. 

So with all this pent up energy pining away for Spring, some days we just gotta, you know, Let it go. (resorting to lane redundant cliches now.) 

So Jimmy. He's so easy going and relaxed, but cabin fever gets him too. And since there's not a vaccine for that, it has to run it's course and the best thing you can do is try and keep him stable. We were both kind of having an "off" day. Since playing in the sunshine (which we have vague memories of) wasn't an option, and since I had nearly a bushel of honey crisp apples going bad (which is a felony, right?), I thought well, why not let him have a little fun, miniature chef boy that he is? 

So I pulled out all the ingredients that would go good with apples and I let him take it away. 

He loved it. We all got to enjoy it. He's quite a chef.