Life lately.

Happy Friday, friends! I hope you've all had an awesome week. Ours has been a little crazy, and I wanted to apologize for my super sporadic posts lately. I can't promise things will ever be "normal" around here! ;) I figured with a really quiet page lately that I'd give everyone a quick life update!

Last weekend we celebrated our sweet friend, Greta, who graduated high school, and also just turned 18 yesterday! Talk about a big week for her! It was a great time eating delicious food, playing corn hole and hanging out with our church family!

Also the cutest puppy I think I've EVER seen made an appearance...

Monday, we took our own advice and FINALLY got some photos done! My new friend Alex and I swapped services by trading photo shoots for each other! She sent us a few sneak peeks that same night and I was basically in tears. She crushed it! :) these are super low resolution since they were texted to me.

Wednesday we went Downtown for a fun date night! He took me to dinner and then to watch our first FC Cincinnati game! They are a new soccer club as of last year and I don't think we could've picked a better game to go to if we tried. First of all, our seats were incredible, we scored some cheap new shirts, the atmosphere was amazing... OH and I met my favorite NFL player that night, Tyler Eifert (#nobigdeal)!! He was so friendly!

This weekend we'll spend a little time with family, but spend the majority of the time cleaning, doing laundry, and packing for CIY! Next week we'll be out of town with the high schoolers for a youth camp! We'll have a chance to worship, stay up way too late, and grow in our relationships with each other! Caleb and I are so excited to attend for our 3rd year in a row and can't wait to see how God changes the lives and hearts of these students! If you're a praying type of person, we'd love any extra you could send our group's way!

Have a great weekend, friends!

Free weekend!

I know, who blogs about their weekend on a Wednesday? *hands up*

Friday we had one of our last weddings for a while, and I have to say, we're thrilled. I've said it before and I'll say it again; we LOVE photographing these huge moments for people, but we are due for some time off to enjoy life!

Ashley and Brandon couldn't have asked for better weather, but it was definitely WARM!

Saturday we woke up and had an ADORABLE family session with some of Caleb's cousins. They have SEVEN kiddos and while you'd think it would've been a crazy hot mess, it was the polar opposite. Their children were amazing! We had a great time.

After that we headed to lunch at Five Guys, then went to the Star Wars Costume exhibit in our local museum. It's currently on tour in Cincy and it did not disappoint! Very cool to see some original costumes/drawings from the movies!

We spent the late afternoon at home, then had a spur of the moment hangout with Erin & Jared at their house! Lots of fun board games were played, and just catching up on life.

Sunday after church we took my Dad to Red Robin for Father's Day and it was great to spend some time with him and Amy!

I had such an amazing Senior Session on Monday after work with a gal who is basically family. Emilee is my Aunt's niece and so we've known each other for years! Isn't she stunning?? And can we talk about the SUNLIGHT!?

Last night we had another young adult hangout and I'm pretty sure I made the best s'more in the world. Seriously! A reese cup with TWO marshmallows! We all had a great time hanging out, playing backyard games, and catching up on life.

Hope you're all having a great week so far!! :)

Dear Friday...

Dear Friday, I am happy to see you. I've been waiting for you for a while!

Dear Sports Camp, you've made me so incredibly tired, but also so incredibly refreshed all at the same time. What a great week it was!

Dear Lauren & Brad, thanks for making our last Saturday so awesome! Your wedding was GORGEOUS and your golden hour portraits are basically my new faves. I'm so grateful when couples trust us to snag them from their reception for even 5 minutes to get more photos!

Dear today's wedding, I'm really excited or you! The bride and groom are SO SWEET and we're excited to end the night with fireworks (literally)!

Dear upcoming weekends, I am so excited to get to ENJOY YOU! We aren't used to not working and we plan on soaking in every. last. second.

Dear Maddie, thank you for being a dream to work with on Sunday. You were the most chill bride in the world, and I'm grateful you trusted us to tell your story!

Dear Nanny, I have sucked at blogging so I didn't get to write you a proper birthday post. Can we talk about how this lovely lady just turned 70?! I hope I have her genes. She is an incredible Grandmother, and if I turn out to be half the woman she is, I'll be lucky! I love you so much!

Dear Golden State Warriors, you did it!! You're the champs!!!! I was never into the NBA until about 3 years ago when Caleb really started getting into it more. I naturally picked up the team he chose and have actually come to really like a lot of the players (I'm looking at you Thompson & Green)!

via

Dear energy drinks, I freaking love you.Thank you for helping me survive this week of little sleep.

Dear Caleb, it's been a blast to watch you love on these kiddos this week. I'm thankful you're my husband, and that you're still a kid at heart, too!

I'm excited to enjoy a free weekend after the night is over. Looking forward to some fun plans with my man (and hopefully a really long nap)! Have a good one, friends!

The exhaustion is worth it!

So I've been totally MIA this week (and lets be honest, I've kinda sucked at blogging this year in general), but it's for good reason. If you read this post last week, you know we've just had a lot going on! Last weekend we photographed two out of town weddings back to back, and every night after work this week consists of our church's annual Sports Camp. Then tomorrow, we have a half day from work to go shoot our last wedding for a while (we actually get somewhat of a "summer break", woo!)!

I haven't hit the bed before 12:30 any night this week. I've had the same thing for dinner every night. I've consumed more coffee this week than probably all of last month. I've got weird tan lines, a ton of bug bites, and my eyes are hardly staying open.

But you know what? It's been totally worth it.

It's worth it because I see these kiddos learning who Jesus is, some for the first time. It's worth it because of the absolute JOY I see on each of their faces all night long. It's worth it because I get to witness 100+ volunteers work together to pull this event off. It's worth it when you hear some of the kids talk about what's going on in their lives, and we realized we can truly make a difference.

Another perk? Getting to see my adorable husband head coaching basketball. You guys, he has such a way with kids. He's always making them laugh, but he's also tough when he needs to be. It's very cool to watch!

Here are just a few of my favorite moments I've been able to capture this week!

I'm so thankful to be surrounded with people who want to serve others! It's such an encouragement.

I hope you have a great rest of your week friends. Maybe I'll get my act together with regular blogging again someday, or maybe not. For now? It's what works. Happy Thursday!

Vacation {Nags Head, NC}

Well friends, I'm back! Last week was honestly a whirlwind and this past weekend was even more so. I haven't been this tired in a long time, but I somehow peeled myself out from under the covers this morning and to work on time. This is about the time I wish coffee came in IV form! ;)

I decided to (mostly) unplug while we were on vacation to really unwind and it was seriously refreshing. Vacation blog posts are always difficult to write because I can't really break it down by day; every single day was a good mix of the beach, pool, sight seeing, swimming, laying out and eating LOTS of food! So I'll just recap the highlights for ya!

We arrived Saturday a bit before dinner and luckily everyone was more than okay with ordering pizza, so we did just that! But not before taking a quick dip in the ocean! I hadn't seen the beach in YEARS so I was more than ready!

Our first day was a solid day. Lots of sunshine, pool time, and good food. That night Caleb and I tried out a gourmet seafood buffet and OH MY WORD. The crab legs. So good!

 Most nights ended with a walk on the beach, good conversation in the hot tub, or night fishing off the shore.

Tuesday was pretty gloomy so we used that day to explore a little. Caleb and I parted ways for a little day-date and headed to a fun OBX restaurant! After that, I hiked down to the beach to watch the guys boogy board and totally get eaten by waves. It was awesome.

The rest of our evening was filled with dinner at home, more hot tub time, and some ladder ball!

Wednesday was another beautiful day at the beach! I finished "Love Does" on our trip and I HIGHLY recommend it! We got so fortunate that the beach was NEVER busy or crowded. We truly had it to ourselves most days!

One of my favorite nights of the trip is when a few of us went to Sooey's BBQ in Kill Devil Hills. Guys, BEST RIBS OF MY LIFE. The entire experience was so fun! I mean, we even took a picture with the whole staff!

We went for a quick trip to the sand dunes and they did not disappoint. So gorgeous!

Other highlights worth mentioning: spending so much time w/ my nephew and best friends...that we had the coolest pool floats in the city... DUCK DONUTS...finding a giant yellow beach "chair"...and getting a good base tan!

Also waking up for sunrise at Jennette's Pier!

One of our last evenings there we made it a point to take some family pictures! I'm so glad we did because I think this might be my new favorite picture of Caleb and I! Thanks for the capture, Erin!

We had a great vacation with Caleb's family! Thankful for the time we got to spend together!