No More Babies for Me :(

The baby of our house, Miss Mallory, turns two on friday, October 22.  It seems like just yesterday that I had that 9 pound, 9 ounce, chubby little girl.  She came into the world with a bang, quite literally.  My OB just said, "oh, wow, oh wow, oh wow!  Back up!" Mallory came out so fast, and was so large, that she was nearly dropped and following her was a tsunami of amniotic fluid that sent the whole team to their lockers for new pants and shoes. TMI?

The recent changes in her have been remarkable at the very least.  Miss Mal went from being a totally shy, horrifically moody, impossible-to-please infant, to a quiet, but inquisitive, one-year-old, to an outgoing, hilarious, imaginative, soon-to-be, two-year-old. I'm so proud of this little girl.  It's impossible to describe.

The other day we were out and about and I caught a glimpse in the mirror of the two of them, hand in hand. That was the moment I wanted to freeze and hang onto forever.  But, since we don't have the ability to freeze time, we have photos.  And I will always try my best to freeze moments with images.  There is nothing else I can do.

So happy birthday, Miss Mallory.  We're going to celebrate with costumes, cake, candy and presents.  It'll blow your little mind.

Autumn Love Workshop

Wow, what a weekend!  First, saturday was the 11th anniversary of my 23rd birthday and I celebrated it by attending Jennifer Alder Photography's Autumn Love Workshop from her Creative Minds workshop series.  Jennifer and I went to school together from kindergarten on up and it has been nothing short of awesome working with her while I have been on my photography journey.  She has been somewhat of a mentor to me, and now with her emailed lessons and workshops, I've had a great opportunity to take my images to the next level.  I highly recommend participating if you have even the slightest interest in photography!  The next workshop is in April in the Detroit area, and I will definitely be there.

The day started with child models.  Jennifer set up a tea party setting near the tree line so we could keep the kids occupied while we tried to capture some of those beautiful fall colors.  After the tea party we had two little boys (brothers) join us for some woods shots.   For the final segment of the kids' shoots we walked around the woods with Melanie (Jen's niece) for some solo shots of her. Here are some of my favorite shots of the kids.  Pardon my cheesy borders, but I did this for Facebook and I'm too lazy to redo them :) :

The second half of the day we worked with models.  Jen had hair and make-up artists on site to style them and then we spent the afternoon just kind of walking around and shooting the models in different fall settings.  Here are some of my favorites from the afternoon:

So how beautiful are those models???  It was such a treat to work with them.  Nobody cried for their mom or turned their backs to me, ran off to chase things with wings, pulled handfuls of grass out of the Earth, or got red popsicle all over their faces.  It was a great day!

And now for the creds:

Workshop Director:  Jennifer Alder

Adult Models:  Jennifer Dobransky, Maria Kesto, Mike Ohle and Kelsey Ohle

Hair:  Jacquie Pruder

Make Up: Maria Kesto and Marissa Najor