Introducing Miss Hadleigh

Remember the maternity pictures? Well, Miss Hadleigh is finally here and she is as gorgeous as her lovely parents. It was such a treat to get to shoot her newborn pics and I can't wait to do her 6 month portrait session in a few months!

Scotland, Part 1

I'm maybe 95 % Scottish (with the other 5 % being Irish)- on both sides of my family. I have plenty of friends who are Scottish, Irish, Italian, German, French, Swedish, and Native American, and all sorts of other delightful, varied mixtures- but my family, for some reason- we keep marrying our own kind. ;) Heck, even I did. I went off and married my own Scottish-Irish Texas boy as soon as I could.

In particular my family is very close to our Scottish cousins that hail from my mother's mother's side of the family. One of them is married to a dairy farmer and they live on an honest to goodness Scottish farm. With cows, like, in their backyard. They are always so sweet to let us stay with them and being there is like a little slice of heaven. In May we (Elizabeth & I) took a very special four generation trip with my mother and grandmother. It was my third time to go, and of course, Elizabeth's first.

Elizabeth and her great-grandmother check out the cows on our cousins' farm. Elizabeth was head-over-heels for those cows, y'all. She'd wave at them and yell "HI, MOOS!" Cutest thing ever.

My mama's done a ton of family research on ancestry.com this year and found even more information than we already had. This is the church that my great-great-great grandparents (on my grandpa's side) were married in, and of course there are several relatives buried in the churchyard. Please notice that it's May and we're all wearing jackets. And yes, I take my child's picture in front of the gravestones of her deceased ancestors, and no I don't think that's morbid at all. ;)

Another day, another cemetery- this time for Grandma's side of the fam. There's this one town in Scotland (Kilsyth) that mom's traced our ancestors there back to like, the 1600's. For hundreds of years- they all lived in this one town- until my grandma's dad decided to move to Pennsylvania, where he met his wife (who as it turns out, had moved from Scotland to Pennsylvania as well- and grew up practically right down the road from him). His parents are buried in this cemetery, & my grandmother got to visit her grandparents' grave for the first time. She never met them, but she remembers that her grandmother always sent little presents in the mail for birthday and Christmas when she was a little girl.

Also, E thinks her great-grandmother's walker is a sweet ride. ;)

Elizabeth tried haggis for the first time. She wasn't impressed. *hee hee* ;)

***Scotland, Part 2 will come later this week***

What a Difference a Year Makes!

Jennifer & Alan (& Elizabeth!)

Jodie, Tommy, Luke & Will...again

I just adore this sweet family. They are good friends of ours, and I LOVE getting to shoot their family portraits for them. Check out their first session with me last fall by clicking HERE.

11 months apart (just like my hubs and his brother)

Luke

Will