Cake Smash for Baby "B"...

Today was a beautiful day for a cake smash! The baby girl of my dear friend, Heather, will be celebrating her very first birthday in a few days.

Not exactly sure where that year went! 

Baby "B" is now walking and cute as a button! Here's a peek from our shoot today...

We had such a great time and it wouldn't have been possible without the help of my other dear friend, Carlene! 

Wow, can you say worker bee!?  She rocked it!

BTW, this amazing cake was made by the talented Jennifer Eisner of Celebrations Cakes & Confections. It was absolutely beautiful!

A forgotten post...

It's hard to believe that so much time has passed since I photographed the beautiful dancers from Turning Pointe School of Ballet in May!  I'm just now realizing that I posted some of the photos to Facebook but forgot to post them here for those of you who do not frequent FB (Thanks for the reminder, Tina and Roni!).

We (yep, Bob was my assistant - that's just how we roll!) had a great day during this photo shoot! It was a lot of fun and amazing to see so many beautiful dancers.  A special thanks to Miss Jackie for hiring us and asking us to return for future photo shoots (guess we did something right!).  ;-)

This little girl has the most amazing blue eyes.  Seriously, they just screamed with blue!

 Miss Jackie is pictured below on the far left. She's a fantastic choreographer!

 LOVE the tutus!

 See, didn't I tell you how beautiful the dancers are!?

BTW, these are all poses that I use daily - YEAH RIGHT!  :-)

Happy Day to our Fathers!

Little did we know that last year would be the last Father's Day that we'd sit around our dining room table with both of our dads in celebration of them. Unfortunately, this year has been a year of some major life changes. Bob's dad is no longer able to live at home and lives permanently in a local nursing home due to his deteriorating battle with alzheimer's/dementia/parkinsons/lyme disease and whatever else he may have. And my dad is still recovering from his colon cancer - doing well but it has definitely taken a toll on him.  

If my memory serves me correctly, our families have always come together on Mother's Day and Father's Day. It sort of became a tradition so that we could all be together. 

Truth be told, I've been dreading this particular day and this particular meal because Bob who normally says the blessing before we eat, had previously informed me that there was no way he could get through the prayer - that I would have to say the blessing.  I prayed and prayed about it beforehand that I could make it through with NO tears!  

As we scurried around placing food on the table I continued to pray silently that I could do this - I HAD to do this! It's a simple thing to do.

Everyone sat down, joined hands and suddenly I was on a roll, feeling pretty confident after a couple of words.  I started so strong, feeling like I had this and then...

I crashed and burned.

And I mean badly. 

Several seconds went by (which felt more like minutes)...

There was dead silence as the lump in my throat grew larger and larger.

And then the stinkin' tears made their appearance.

I tried my hardest to recover but it was the most difficult prayer I've ever tried to utter aloud!  I blubbered through the words not even remembering what I said but hoping I said something reminiscent of thank you to our dads and that we're blessed that we still have our dads in our lives, even if one is in a nursing home.

It's not always about keeping the old traditions but being flexible and starting new ones. Our new tradition is simply a modification of the old one.

We'll come together around our table and then visit Big Bob around his table.  We'll make it work because that's what we do!

This is me and my family (my mom, my dad and my sister, Tammy - NO, she's not my twin) - photo taken in Wellsboro this past Friday, June 14, 2013...

Father's Day 2012 - I'm so glad I took these photos of Bob and his parents last year...

 I feel the need to end with a humorous photo since this post was pretty heavy!

Even though Big Bob was going through major changes last Father's Day, I was able to capture a glimpse of his sense of humor, even if it was just for a fleeting moment...

Photo shoot and deer sitings...

Last week, I had the opportunity to photograph some sweet southern kiddos.  Despite the warm temps and sweat dripping off me, we got some great shots.

Now on to the deer siting (really smooth transition, huh!?)...

Lately, we've seen increased deer activity in our backyard - something that we haven't seen in a couple of years.  I've posted several deer sitings on FB so I thought I'd share here as well.

I'm not really as obsessed with deer in our backyard as it may appear. It's just that this gal and I had a little "encounter" last night where I seriously thought she was going to mosey right on into the house and make herself at home. 

We even had a stare down...I won! I'm surprised at how close she came (15 yards) considering I was pointing my camera at her the entire time and Quincy was in the background practically leaping out of Bob's clutch to check her out.

This will really show you just how dark it was outside...

Ahhhh, the benefits of shooting in raw and applying the magic of Photoshop!  Gotta love it!

We never need to look for the deer in the yard because Quincy is usually on deer patrol and notifies us immediately when anything appears that is out of the ordinary.