Growing Family - Quad Cities Family Photographer

It was my pleasure to photograph these gorgeous children and their parents yet again this year! They are a fun, laid back group...I love photographing them. :) This year was EASY! The older ones in the group were old enough to cooperate and the little ones were too little to know anything different than sitting there and being cute! And cute they are! Each and every one of these children are so stunning. I think that there are some seriously good looking genes in these blood lines.

 

From left to right...

Stella (3 mos young), Lillie (7 years), Carter (3 years), Kaalyn (10 years), Myla (4 years) and Wesley (8 mos).

 

Let's start with the baby.

Stella.

If she doesn't make your uterus flip, I don't know what will!

And she is so sweet!  I didn't hear her cry once...

Mommy Love.
Stephanie and Stella...love the yawn!

Carter...handsome brown eyed boy.

He was so good...3 year olds are difficult.  Parents seem to always think that their kids are not doing well, but I love the candid moments captured when they are just being themselves.  And Carter was one of the easiest 3 year olds I've photographed!

And he loves his sister.
These are 2 beautiful children to say the least!

And I am pretty much in love with this shot!

What a gorgeous family (inside and out!) they are!

Moving on to the Petersen Kids...
Wesley (I'm a bit partial to this little dude's name;))
I mean, he had me giggling the whole time.
Seriously, he is a HAM and had the hair to match...I will personally go kick some rear end if either of his parents cut his incredible hair!

Oh my, he was FULL of expressions!
Never got upset in the slightest...happy the entire time!

Myla is a beauty for sure!
She is all 4...and last year, she was all 3.
I feel like she changed the most since last year.

 

And Lillie knew JUST what to do in front of the camera!
She may have a modeling career in her future.
She was FUN to photograph!
Those eyes, that sweet smile.

That personality!

Kaalyn is the oldest of the bunch.
She was so mature and motherly with all of the kids.
Adorable.
And 10 can be an awkward age, but she just might be one of the most pretty 10 year olds I've seen...no awkwardness here!

And she is just too sweet.

The Petersen Kids...picture perfect.

And the whole family.

After 3 girls, they completed their family with their little boy and now I can hardly remember what their family looked like before him!

And I have a feeling the kids can hardly remember what their lives were like before he and the newest little Stella too.
They all truly love each other so much.
They were a complete JOY to photograph!

 

Thank you Gorsh and Petersen Families for allowing me to photograph your stunning families yet again this year.  I feel so blessed to have met each of you and it's an honor to capture your families in pictures!

Beautiful Family - Quad Cities Family Photographer

I was so excited to photography this adorable family last night. Samantha is someone who frequents our home as our baby's teacher. Her work with him has been so important in his developement and she is part of this "super team" he has surrounding him to help him grow and develope in the best way he can. We owe Samantha so much for loving and caring for our baby and I was thrilled to be able to meet and photograph her family. She and I hit it off from the start. She is fun and laid back and that's just how the photoshoot went!

 

Adam was a trooper as well...I've been blessed with a string of very cooperative and willing husbands as of late...he was one of them!

 

And Eden...oh Eden.  She was in love with my camera...like wanted to TAKE the pictures.  I loved her.  I totally would have taken her home and kept her forever...such a sweet little girl!

 

At 14 months old, this one is INTEPENDENT!  It was so fun chasing her around and snapping pictures of her.

 

 

 

Yet again, I left the shoot feeling like I NEED a daughter. ;)

So grateful to have Samantha in our lives and in our baby's life.  We look forward to working with her as he grows and developes and hopefully I can talk her into taking pictures of her adorable family again!

 

 Thank you Samantha, Adam and Eden for a fun hour downtown!  And thank you even more for not wearing your Penn State gear!
Go Hawks... ;) ;)

Supermodel Sisters - Quad Cities Children Photographer

Oh how I adore these 2 girls!

 

Delaney (now 10!) and Olivia (age 7) have been in our lives since Delaney was 18 mos old.  I can't believe how time has flown.  Their family is like my family.  We adore these girls and who wouldn't?!

They are as sweet and well behaved and they are adorable!

 

And let me tell you...they are a DREAM to photograph.  I could have walked downtown with them all day just taking their pictures and they would have been willing participants!

 

Olivia has the most adorable freckles!

 

How do you wake Lady GaGa up in the morning?
P-P-P-Poke her face, P-P-Poke her face!
That was the joke Delaney was telling Olivia in this one!
I love it because it created one of my favorite shots of the session...

And seriously, I DID NOT pose them this way, they just did it.
Like I said, dream subjects...

And then I took a slew of photographs of them just telling them to pose like the super models they are.
That's when their personalities came out for reals.
Olivia's "pose" was so fitting!

And Delaney...much more mature and subdued...fitting as well.
Love it...

We were all thrilled to find this lovely painting to have them pose by.
Sunflowers are their momma's favorite! :)

Okay girlies...now let's work on talking your parents into moving here.
Okay?  Okay!
:)

 

13 Years Later - Quad Cities Children Photographer

I was so excited when the mommy of these 2 cuties asked me to photograph her children. You see, we went to highschool together, we attended our junior prom together in the same group, my memories of her are from when we were 16, 17 and 18 yeas old! We never spoke after highschool for no other reason than that life just grabbed us and we went our own ways, but thankfully Facebook reconnected us. It was so much fun to see her again and meet her adorable children!

 

It's true that every time I have a photoshoot I think, "how do I manage to get to photograph the cutest kids?!?!"  I am so lucky!
 

Madi and Aidan were so much fun to hang out with...such sweet kiddos.

 

Little Madi has already been through a lot in her 3 months of life so far, but she is a strong girl and amazingly gorgeous to boot!

 

Aidan is such a curious kid.  He is SOCIAL!  He is all 3!  This makes my job easy peasy!  We just ran around and played for a few while, I let him take some pictures with my camera and we were buds!

 

He was vigorously blowing on this dandelion...this picture cracks me up!

 

The shoot was just for the kids, but I couldn't resist my token "mommy love" shot.

 

And there is not just love coming from mommy...there's LOTS of love to go around in this family!

 

Thank you thank you, Corrine for allowing me the pleasure of photographing your beauties.  It was great getting to catch up after 13 years!  Let's not go that long again. :)

hard to find the words - Quad Cities Family Photographer

When you have a child with special needs, many times they come with an entourage of therapists and doctors.  Sometimes these doctors and therapists are so specialized that you don't have many options to choose from and you may be "stuck" with someone who you just don't mesh well with.  However, your child needs this person and so you deal with it.  I know this feeling.  I will say that we have been unbelievably blessed with incredible people to care for our baby.

Andrea tops the list.  It's hard to find the words to describe our gratitude for her.  She is amazing and has done unfathomable things for our son's developement.  It's something we will never be able to repay her for, nor will we ever be able to thank her enough.  We are all blessed to have her as part of our lives and not only is she incredibly amazing with our little man, but I actually really LIKE her! :)  I look forward to her coming into our home each week...and without fail, we have seen her once a week since the week we met our baby.  The day that he no longer needs her will be bitter sweet because as weird as this may sound, I will miss her and I KNOW our baby boy will miss her too.  He adores her and has known her longer than even I have!  She has worked with him weekly since he was only a few months old...she knows a part of his life that we will never know.  To say we are grateful for her would be a gigantic understatement.

Meet our baby's incredible Physical Therapist Andrea and her absolutely adorable family!

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Her family was super fun to photograph and with 2 boys ages 1 and 2 1/2, I got my workout for the night just by chasing them around! :)

And her husband Chris was pretty fantastic.  I've said this before, but it's not rare that the husband is harder to work with than the kids!  Chris was a trooper and never complained or batted an eye.

These brothers were virtually impossible to get in a picture together...they were busy, but they were fun and as you can plainly see, incredibly gorgeous boys!

I kinda wanted to sweep Bryce up and just take his little spunky self right home with me.  I mean, he would have freaked out because he wasn't terribly fond of my big, black contraption I kept pointing at him while chasing him around, but he would have fit RIGHT in with our crazy brood of boys!

 

What a gorgeous child...

 

And Blake...well he took about .35 seconds to warm up and then you could find him jumping right into my frame every chance he got.  He LOVED being in front of my camera, but I will say he may have liked being behind it just a bit more.  He loved snapping pictures of his mommy and daddy with my camera...he actually got some good ones too!

If you ask me, he belongs IN FRONT of the camera though...look at those dimples!!!

 

 

 

And the token "REAL LIFE" image.  I got several of these and I must say, they are my favorites of the bunch.  Maybe it's the fact that I have busy boys myself, but I love me a photo that captures what life was really like at that point in time.
I think this one captures it...

Thank you Krueger Family for spending a little bit of time running around the park with me!
And thank you, Andrea for making such an impact on our baby's life!