You might be wondering where we were.  Or maybe you didn’t notice we were gone…either way, we had a fabulous time on vacation. Like any vacation, it was long enough to appreciate the time away and long enough to be happy when we got home.  One of the fun things about being back is all of the storms that have been going on!  Last night Nate had the chance to play around a little bit and capture some of the amazing lightning strikes that were going on.

I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!

Nate has been asking me to get this post done for awhile.  With all of my brother’s wedding plans and the end of the school year, I just haven’t had time.

On April 28th Nate and I were married! This year marked six fabulous years together.  I really wanted to do something BIG this year for our anniversary and when I heard that U2 was coming to Salt Lake, I knew this would be the perfect gift for Nate.  He basically knows all the words to every song on the radio, or at least it seems that way.  He is a music freak!

The only problem with my plan to give him U2 tickets was the concert wasn’t until May.  I tried to play it off and tell him that I didn’t want to make a huge deal out of our anniversary this year since we are going on big family vacation in July.  Well, Nate is a tightwad money conscience so he totally followed through with the whole don’t-make-a-big-deal-of-it agreement. We even ended up photographing a wedding on our anniversary.  Then, that night I told him about the tickets.  He was pretty pumped about it.

The concert was AMAZING! U2 sounds amazing in person.  You know, sometimes you wonder how people made it big when you hear them live, but not U2! The Fray was the same — amazing! Our seats were in “the inner circle”.  It just sounds cool, right? Well, it was cool.  We were about fifteen feet away from the stage and at one point I could have thrown something at Bono and hit in square in the face.  Not that I would want to, I am just a really bad aim, so that is saying something.

U2 was a great way to celebrate our anniversary and sticking together for six years! I am looking forward to the rest of FOREVER with you Babe!

Love, Emily

WARNING: These were all taken with a Nikon Coolpix.  I haven’t used a point-and-shoot in such a long time. It was not cool.

Do you see all the other cameras and phones in this shot?

Nate keeps trying to convince me that we need to print this large and hang it somewhere in our home.  Since we don’t live in a dorm, I am not sure where I would hang it. Can you see us? It is like a Where’s Waldo, on a much smaller scale. I really wish I hadn’t been holding my mouth open so wide. I am sure that Nate will want a Part II to this post.  I didn’t post nearly enough pictures. More to come…

Six and a half years ago Nate and I were making out sitting in his big red Dodge Ram pick-up in front of my parent’s house.  We had not been dating long, but it had been an amazing few weeks.  I had never connected with anyone the way I did with Nate.  We were whispering in each others ears about who-knows-what when Nate asked, “How long do you see us being together?” Of course being the witty and sarcastic person I am responded, “Two months tops.” We laughed and then he asked again.  This time I leaned forward and whispered in his ear, ” How about forever?” Nate hugged me so tight and told me he loved me for the first time.

As cheesy as this story sounds every time I retell it, it is still one of my favorite memories.  Six years later I still get butterflies.

Today is our anniversary.  We were married on a Thursday, just like today.  As crazy as it is to think we have been married for six YEARS, it is still fun to plan out the next fifty together!

I am so glad I have my best friend to dream with; to share this crazy-fun job of capturing love stories while our own plays out before us.  I love you Nate! I love you FOREVER!

Emily

That’s just how we roll!

Wasn’t today the perfect day to fly a kite? We thought so…

Today was beautiful!  Well, as beautiful as it can get on a Spring day in Idaho with 15 mph winds.

Our little girls have been dying to get out in our backyard all winter.  Today, they finally had their chance!  They played outside pretty much all day. It was FABULOUS! I finished a book and watched them from the window.  Our youngest took a while to get her courage up to go down the big tube slide. It was fun to watch and listen to them giggle and play together.

As a little celebration for the beautiful day it was (and having all that mommy time to myself probably helped my mood ), we decided to have a family movie night.

Tangled was the fun surprise for the girls.  They have been talking about it all week. We love this movie. Maybe I am crazy but I think I like this Disney movie MORE than others because the heroine has BOTH parents.  Not that I have a problem with single parents (I think they all deserve a medal and a Spa day), but I feel as if having both parents has been overlooked by Disney. Anyway, that was a total tangent.

As a bonus I bought Root Beer Float supplies.  They were a HUGE hit with the girls.  Since I was worried our three and two year old would make a big old mess with them, I gave them straws.  Everything is cooler with straws! It was great with minimal damage done!

Spending these times together as a family reminds me how much I LOVE my family! By beautiful girls and my sexy husband really do make my life complete.  I am tangled in love with my family….(as Nate reads this he rolls his eyes due to the cheesiness)!

The winner of our BEST OF competition was Jaime and Owen with this lovely image!  I have to admit that this is probably one of my favorite images EVER.  Congratulations Jaime and Owen!

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.  We took a working vacation and have a lot of fun images to share with you over the next few days!

Hey!  This is Nate again.  I know, two times in less than a month.  Something must be wrong.  But I wanted to get the word out about a music group I was lucky enough to photograph during one of their recent concerts at a local high school.  The group is called Going Second and they performed as part of the Music Makes Music program.  What?  You have never heard of Music Makes Music?  Well you are in for a surprise.  Music Makes Music is a great organization that is committed to spreading the message of the positive effects that music has on teenagers.  In fact, their mission statement right off of their Facebook Fan page (yes you can go there and check them out and even “Like” them) states: “Music Makes Music is dedicated to educating teenagers on the importance of being involved with music, staying in school and living a drug free life.”  They are a great organization with a message that needs to get out.  I for one am a HUGE fan of music and I really don’t know what I would do without it (except for country music and a few other genres of music ) so I think the message these guys are trying to spread is well worth hearing.  They made a couple of stops here in the Idaho Falls, ID area the day I saw them and I checked on their events page and they are coming back in the first half of 2011 at least once if not more.  So go check them out, invite them to come to your school or community.  They put on an AWESOME concert and are very talented performers.

While they were performing I took advantage of the opportunity to snap some shots in a atmosphere that I haven’t been exposed to much yet (yes that was a play on a photography term…at least give me a courtesy laugh).  I guess you could say it was my very first rock concert to photograph so I was learning as I went.  I didn’t have a camera on me so when it all started I quickly called Emily and told her to bring me the camera ASAP.  Luckily for me she is an amazing wife and showed up a little while later with my camera.  So, I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.  The group could use your support.  Their message is great and needs to be spread to every young person in the world.  You can find them on Facebook, Twitter or at their website  www.musicmakesmusic.org.

ROCK ON!!!!

Busy doesn’t even begin to explain last week. I woke up Monday not feeling myself, but when you are a busy mom and photographer you can’t be sick sometimes.  So I muscled through the week.  Today I feel like I was hit by a small truck!  Now, maybe I will have time to get all of the sessions that have been piling up posted on the blog.   But right now I am off to make a big pot of chicken noodle soup.

Stay tuned…

Hello!  So this week I have been working on all of our sample albums for next year.  I am really excited to get them.  We are trying out a new supplier that we have been VERY impressed with!  Anyway, because I learned to design before I learned photography, I have wanted to use InDesign for all of our albums templates.  However, InDesign would not let me save my work as a high resolution jpg, which is so important as a photographer.  Anyway, I know most of you don’t care, but for those who do….the new InDesign CS5 Rocks my socks!

If you are a photographer on the fence about using InDesign for album design, jump on over!  It is amazing over here.  I designed three 30+ page albums in two days!  That’s right!  It was almost impossible to do with Photoshop since I custom design each album.  The time I will save!  Here are a two “sneak peek” pages from two of the albums I made this week.

I am so excited for their leathery-goodness to get here!  I will be sure to post pics of our new albums when they arrive.

“Cream colored packages tied with brown ribbon”

Okay that is not how the song goes, but that IS how I am singing it this morning!  I got a fun little package in the mail today.  Here is a little preview:

This is a pretty little accordion album full of the images from my Beautifully You Shoot!  I am pretty sure Nate will like it!