Last Saturday we got to hang out with my awesome cousin Allison to shoot her senior portraits.  It was so much fun and I am so proud of her for turning into the beautiful person that she is both inside and out.

Just to show you how much she’s changed over the years we thought we would throw in this picture that was taken a long time ago.  Here’s on old school shot of my Aunt Linda and her kids (my cousins) Jeff, Steven and little tiny Allison.  Even back then, Allison kinda ran the show.  Good lookin’ family huh?  (Yeah, that’s right . . . we’re related.)  Over the years, we’ve had so much fun hangin’ with the cousins.  We did a lot of running around in their backyard swimming, fencing, and jumping on the trampoline while singing/yelling the theme song to friends at 11:00 at night. 

Now my little tiny cousin is all grown up.  On top of the good looks, she’s is so much fun  :-)

We love this little alley.  It’s so funny to shoot there because every time we come out from between the buildings we get the strangest looks from people.

Allison totally rocked the serious face.

Aunt Linda came along too for some photos of mom and daughter.  They are so cute together and have such a wonderful relationship.

The cousin’s have always been big into their extra curricular activities.  For Allison, it’s always been dance.  The things that she can do are incredible.  We saw her at a show one time and she stood on the very tips of her toes for like, a really long time.  We were amazed!

Showing off her hip-hop kicks :-)

Ok, ::laughing:: so I just googled “gangster names” and the first site that came up was The Original Gangsta Name Generator.  I typed in Allison to see what would come up . . .

everyone, I’d like you to meet “Head Monkey Smuggla”!  (I also tried our names and came up with “No Pants Indian” for me and “Old Killa” for Denise.  Awesome.)

Love her eyelashes in this next one.

We absolutely LOVE the contrast of taking someone gorgesous and putting them in front of something that is so not gorgeous.  In this case Allison and a dumpster.

Absolutely love this next shot.  One of my favorites for sure.

As we were walking around, we passed by this dirty, grungy alley.  Almost simultaneously, all four of us stopped and thought that it would be a great place to shoot.  Loved both of these – just couldn’t decide between them so I had to post them both.

Here’s the sassy side of Allison.

One of my favorites.  Love how the background really brings out her eyes.

I don’t know which of the next two I like better.  Both good.  Both favorites.

Loved the purple hat.  Adorable.

Now there’s the Allison I know.  Silly little “Head Monkey Smuggla”.

One more of Mom and Daughter.

Thanks Aunt Linda and Allison!  We had so much fun with you guys.  Hope we can do it again soon!  Lot’s of love!

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On Sunday, we met up with Carrie and her daughter Lindsay at Mesa Center for the Arts for some family photos.  Carrie & I worked together a long, long time ago, so it was so much fun to catch up with her.  And the last time I saw Lindsay, she was just a kid.  Now she’s a gorgeous (almost 17-year-old) woman!  It was so much fun observing their relationship during their time together.  You can tell just by looking at them that they’re much more than mother and daughter . . . their also best friends :-)  It’s all very “Gilmore Girls” if you ask me.  Ha ha ha!

(Please sign the guestbook if you’d like to be notifed when the rest of their photos are online.)

Here are some of our favorites from their session.

We discovered right away that making these two laugh was going to be pretty easy :-)

They had some very interesting posing ideas.  Both of these just make me laugh!

Adorable!

So many great laughs!  You just can’t help but laugh along with them!

And what mother/daughter combo doesn’t walk down the street together while skipping?

Love it!

Peak-a-boo!

They joked with us about how people always think they’re sad or mad when they’re not smiling because they both tend to stand with their arms crossed.  Of course, we had to test the theory.  Not quite as easy to be serious when you’ve got two cameras pointed at you, huh?

What a cute pair!  Love the colors in these next two.

Carrie said that the last time they had photos taken Lindsay was about 10 and this was their favorite pose.  You’re never too grown up for a piggy back ride, right?

So at the end of our session, we attempted to do one of our notorious jumping shots, but we quickly discovered that there was going to be a little wardrobe issue.  Every time they jumped the neck of their sweaters would fly up and totally cover their faces.  So we went with this instead.  Love it!

Thanks for the fun session you guys!  And happy almost birthday Lindsay :-)

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Mr. & Mrs. Smith came to Arizona!  Meet Christina & Matt and their kids McClellan and Varity!  They live in Kansas and were traveling through AZ to get to California on vacation last weekend.  Christina and I met way back in our high school years at Grace Community Church.  Later in college she used to come to our thousands of parties that we had over at the old “bachelor pad”.   We stayed friends ever since and through facebook she let me know that the whole family would be back here soon and wanted some portraits together.  HOW FUN!

They wanted the photo shoot to be at a nice little ice cream shop in Old Town Scottsdale called The Sugar Bowl.  They seated us in the arcade room so the kids had plenty of stuff to play with.  We started off by getting some ice cream.  At times it got kind of messy. :-)

It was so cute, every time McClellan took a bite of his ice cream he turned and posed for the cameras.

I love this one of Father and Son.

Matt gave McClellan some cash for the arcade.  He made him work for it!  Awesome!

Now time for some FUN at the arcade with the kiddos!

I don’t think they allow this but hey when your this cute you can do pretty much anything you want!

McClellan’s winnings! YAY!  He knows he’s good.

McClellan and Mom teamed up on Dad in air hockey.  Dad still won though.

SO CUTE!!!

We were able to get a few posed shots in there too.

But it’s usually what happens in between the posed shots that adds some comedy. . .

This girl loves her sugar!  Here’s a few of Verity.

What an adorable shot of Mother and Daughter.

We had some fun with this cool mirror.

While Denise was taking some portraits of Matt, Christina and Verity, I was able to snap this shot of McClellan playing some games. I love that they’re all in the background!

One last shot of the whole family.

Thank you guys so much! We had such a great time with you and your family! We hope you had a great trip and are now home safe!  Come back out and visit soon!!!