(no loves yet – be the first!)

Our niece Makena is six months old!  I can’t believe how fast time has flown by and how much she has changed since the day she was born.  On Sunday, we met my sister Amy, her husband Jim and Makena at Freestone Park in Gilbert to take some family photos for them.  My mom Nancy also came along to help us keep Makena entertained.  She was so funny making ducky noises and jumping up and down with us to get her to smile!  At one point she even did some reflector work for us – thanks for all your help Mom!  We know who to call next time we need an assistant :-)

Here are some of our favorites from their session:

(no loves yet – be the first!)

(no loves yet – be the first!)

LOVED Ryan’s perspective for this shot of them on the bridge :-)

(no loves yet – be the first!)

(no loves yet – be the first!)

Makena and her proud Mommy & Daddy . . .

(no loves yet – be the first!)

This one of them playing makes me smile and I super love the colors! So cute!

(no loves yet – be the first!)

At one point, I JOKINGLY suggested that Jim hold Makena upside down for a few shots – I should have known better!  Ha ha ha!  She looks a little confused, but seems to be having a pretty good time . . . .

(no loves yet – be the first!)

“Nana” got in on the action too :-)

(no loves yet – be the first!)

Some fun shots of little miss Makena :-)  What a cutie!!!

(no loves yet – be the first!)

(no loves yet – be the first!)

LOVE the colors in this detail shot Ryan grabbed while she was modeling her blue hawaiian dress :-)

(no loves yet – be the first!)

And this last one is just too cute for words!

(no loves yet – be the first!)

Love you guys!

If there’s one thing Ryan loves, it’s his hometown sports teams :-)   Anybody who knows my hubby knows that he tunes in (or at least Tivo’s) every Suns, Diamondbacks AND Cardinals game that comes across the airwaves.  And he’s no front runner people!  He’s a die-hard loyal fan even when a team is no good – and we all know that the Cardinals have spent A LOT of time being no good over the years.  At the beginning of every (and I literally mean EVERY) football season, he says to me, “This is gonna be the year baby!  The Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl!”  So this year, when his prediction ACTUALLY CAME TRUE, he was pretty psyched to watch the game.  After they beat the Eagles, we went right out to stock up on Cardinals apparel and other various goodies . . .

My favorite game day treat . . . CARDINALS CUPCAKES!  Yum.

Ryan even sent me some new wallpaper for my iPhone . . . Now, I admit that I’m what you’d call a “Fair Weather Fan”, but when somebody’s THAT excited about something, you get on board!

Here’s a shot of the whole silly gang before kick off . . .

It was tough to shoot and pay attention, but I did catch a couple fun game time reaction shots . . .

This one makes me laugh :-)  It was taken sometime during that awesome Larry Fitzgerald touchdown . . . check out Ryan’s face!  He looks so INTENSE – he was probably yelling “GOOOOOOOOO!” when I shot this.

Even though we didn’t walk away the winners, it was an AWESOME game full of fantastic memories.  Don’t worry Cards fans – according to Ryan, we’ll be back again next year.  GO CARDS!!!!

On September 4th, our adorable little niece Makena was born!  It’s been so crazy I haven’t had much time to look through the zillions of photos until now so I’ll try to keep it to a minimum, but I’m just going to warn you that it was really hard so there’s a lot :-)

Couldn’t resist including this one.  I shot this just after Jim came into the waiting room to tell us she had been born – the proud new Grandparents full of smiles! 

She was born at 6:54am – 8 lbs, 5 oz and 21 inches long

My beautiful sister and her brand new baby girl :-)

Here’s one with the new Daddy too!  They look just a little exhausted after being in the hospital with no sleep for more than 24 hours.

A Daddy-Daughter moment :-)  SO CUTE!

A few new baby details:

Nice and comfy all snug in her blanket . . .

Another shot of mommy and baby:

Makena decided she needed to open her eyes for just a little bit and check out her new family.  SO CUTE!

And of course, the proud new Uncle & Aunt!  We were seriously soooooo excited :-)  And we still are!

Amy and Makena went home from the hospital on Sunday and after giving them a week to relax, we decided to come by and visit.  Since I’m so behind in posting these, I figured I’d throw in a few new ones while I’m at it :-)  (Wow – I just realized I’m using A LOT of smiley faces in this post!  What can I say – I love being an Aunt! ;-)

Amy had her all dressed up in a purple dress for us . . .

Here’s a shot of her Daddy kissing her goodnight – so sweet :-)

Makena pretty much slept the whole time we were there, but she did wake up for a little bit to get changed.  I totally love both of these :-)

And then of course, she ate some dinner and returned to her “milk coma” as Amy called it.  Looks pretty relaxed, huh?  Love it!

Congratulations Amy and Jim!  We love you guys so much and are so excited you’ve brought such an adorable blessing into all of our lives.  To Makena: we are so proud to be your Aunt and Uncle!  Can’t wait for you to get bigger so we can all go out and play and do all kinds of fun things together!  Oh and try not to run away every time you see us with a camera – we’re going to be taking ZILLIONS of photos of you for a long, long time :-)