A few weekends ago, we headed up to the mountains to visit my parents and sister’s family.  We arrived with the expectation of taking Eva on her first sledding adventure. We imagined her begging us to sled over and over again, but this wasn’t the case. Granted, this is the same girl that tackled Pirate’s of the Caribbean, the Tea Cups and Rocket Ships at the ripe age of 1 1/2 years old.  She cried as we put her on the sled and cried all the way down.  I don’t think she was scared, but instead more curious about this white stuff she had never seen before and was discovering for the first time.  After torturing her for a few runs, we let her frolic alongside her cousins for a great 55 degree day in the snow. We were dressed way too warm, but what do we know!  We had a blast.

Here’s Samantha and Dominic. He wasn’t feeling it either.

Sam, Me and Noah…just missing Josh.

Here are some pictures of me and Emma along with our sweet little friend Stella.  She was born 2 weeks before Emma and is being adopted by our good friends.

Here’s Ms. Stella Rose….gorgeous eyes, don’t you think?

You may have been wondering where I’ve been.  I haven’t blogged for almost two months, I check facebook maybe once a week, and returning emails isn’t happening. I promise, it’s been for a really good reason.

I’d like to officially introduce you to our little foster daughter. She just turned 1 month old on Wednesday.  We met her on New Year’s Day in the NICU at USC, and brought her home 1 week later. Our hope and prayer is that we’ll get to adopt her, but realize that this is ultimately in God’s hands. For the meantime, while she is in our home, we will love her and take good care of her.

Jeff’s Aunt Patty bought Eva the cutest purple tutu, and I remembered that I had a little tutu for the baby.  It hardly fits her, as she was only 5 lbs in these pictures.  But, we made it work and had fun doing it. As you can see Eva loves her so much. She can’t say baby, so she calls her “Dee Dee”.

I leave you with a few fun pictures of Eva.  We gave the dog a bath today, and she was so dirty I had to strip her down to her diaper and boots. I couldn’t resist.

Jeff and I moved into our neighborhood 8 1/2 years ago.  The day we moved in we knew we had good neighbors when we stopped by to ask for a good pizza place to order pizza for our moving crew that day. They not only gave us a great referral but clipped a few coupons as well and let us use their telephone.  We’ve been blessed to know this precious family.  We look out for each other in many ways, the kind of neighbors that you can call up and ask for an egg or cup of flour if you’re in a bind.  I was so excited when Krissy asked me to photograph her precious daughter Nohea.  I had photographed her son when he was the same age back in the film days when I was just starting out in photography.  We decided to get the whole family involved.  

It’s fun to get the parents away for a few minutes for some intimate photos.  

I leave you with my favorite from the day.