Sometimes it's just so hard...

Yesterday a very sweet friend of mine lost her husband in a work accident. It's so horrible, and so sad...they have two children together (one of their boys is only three) and I just can't even imagine having to go through something like this.
So please, just hug your loved ones a little tighter and appreciate every day that you have together. Don't wait to do things that you want to together...give each other a million hugs a day and just let each other know that you *love* them.
And please remember my friend in your prayers, she needs God holding her hand through this.
Charin

Feeling a little tired :)

Aaron's wedding was absolutely beautiful, I have never seen him so happy :)
He and Traci are a beautiful couple! I am exhausted, I took about 500 pictures today and it was super hot outside :) But it was a beautiful day and I'm happy..I am off to get my baby girl to bed and get a shower :)

Nite! :)
Charin

Tommorow's a special day....

For a couple of reasons...the first being that one of my best friends is getting married!! :) Aaron has been a really close friend of mine for 8 years, when we all used to work together at the grocery store together and took way too many breaks :) I'm so happy that he met Traci...I could tell from the first time I met her that they were going to get married, and well I was right! :) :)

I'm so happy that he found such a sweet girl to share his life with!

And the second reason is because tomorrow just happens to be me and Kevin's 5 year anniversary....Aaron and Traci are going to share our anniversary, down the the hour! hehe

It's going to be so much fun, Kevin is one of his groomsmen and I'm their photographer. So I'll have lots of pictures to share! :)
Cheers to them and a beautiful life together! :)
Charin

Vintage fabric goodness :)

A new customer of mine at work brought me the sweetest gift this week! :) She came through with these cuties sewn onto a shirt and I asked her if she made them, and told them that I could just see them on a scrapbook project. :) (We scrapbookers see our art form everywhere we look, don't we?) Just a few days later and she brought me a whole bag full of these! I think they look adorable with a button in the center :)

Random acts of kindness bring so much joy, I need to remember to do this kind of thing for more people!

I hope your week is going well! :) I have my latest photo session up to share here, I took pictures of my sweet friend Valarie's son. He is a cutie!!

Oh, sorry for this random little bit, but Denise if you are reading this can you e-mail me? :) I don't know your e-mail address! :) Mine is charinkellie(at)yahoo.com.

Have a good night everyone!
Charin

For Kevin :)

Your little girl just wanted to say Happy Father's Day!! :)
(She added the hat herself, can you tell?) :)

Thank you so much for all that you do for her...going on 3 hours of sleep every day to keep her out of daycare especially! :)
She loves her Dada lots :)

*Road Trip!*

My sister Jessica and I went on a road trip to Branson Monday...it was so much fun even though it was so rainy and gross out! I love rainy days, but mostly when I can stay in with cozy clothes and read a book :)

We've been talking about taking a shopping trip together forever, but this time it happened because Katie really needed new clothes and I was having a really hard time finding any here. :)
So we packed up and went to a mall along the way to let the kids stretch their legs and play...for the first time ever Katie was *really* excited to play on the rides! Even on the train that she got strapped into and she drove it on a track away from me, smiling and laughing all the way :) The pictures of her smiley face make my heart melt! :)

So after an emergency stop to get Katie some french fries (she was getting a little cranky in the car! hehe) we made it to Branson, grabbed some yummy lunch at Ruby Tuesday's

and did some hard core shopping at Carters, The Children's Place and Bath & Body Works :) If the truth were known I had really spent my budget at Carters...but wouldn't it be silly to just go to one shop?? :) I thought so too :)

Katie picked out a hat that she *had* to get at The Children's Place, I don't have a picture of her wearing it yet but I will get one soon. It's a turquoise cowboy hat with a built in tiara! :)
She refused to let go of it even after we got home and slept with it on her chest :)

And the last picture is the stash of clothes I came home with, you can't tell but it's about 6 layers deep :) I think little Katie's definitely set for clothes for this Summer!

We had such a good time, I love spending time with my sweet sister and nephews! :)
Charin

P.S. I also uploaded some recent pictures of Katie here, come see! :)

Making changes...

Hi! :)
I have been working on getting some things started for my photography business and in the process I have decided to change the name of my photography blog. The web address was much too long to fit on business cards! :)
So just an FYI, I have changed the blog address to www.ablphoto.blogspot.com.
Thanks so much to those of you who have been supporting my photography business this far! I am really enjoying getting to work with all of you. :)
Charin

It's crazy that this makes me a little sad...

I can't believe (or can I?) :) that this video actually makes me feel a little sad! Poor sweet little ducky ;) I was looking at the first page of comments on the youtube page and quite a few people said it made them teary eyed! Yay for us emotional, sentimental people! :)
P.S. I posted pictures of my new little cutie in the post below this one today. :)
P.P.S. You can pause my music player on the right side of my blog to watch this video in peace :)

Here she is! :)

Here's a picture of my new little sweetie, Emma! :) I *love* having my dream dog to dress up in cute little dresses and cupcake collars :)

I've wanted a Maltese for the longest time, and we were really blessed by a sweet family that gave her to us when they paid $865 for her!!! She's 4 years old, which was the only hesitation on our part having a little one in our house, but she plays very well with Katie. :) Katie loves her lots and can be heard saying "PUPyyy! PUPyyy!" all the time :)

The craziest part for me is that her name is Emma...a long time ago I picked out Katie Shae and Emma as baby girl names. :) We definitely won't be naming our next girl Emma, that's for sure! haha but she's had her name for 4 years so there's no changing it now. :)

She's a sweet little soul and we're happy to have her as the newest addition to our life :)

What I did tonight...

I should have gone to bed because I'm fighting off being sick...or trying to anyway :) but instead I stayed up and made these! :) Just a simple card for a very sweet friend, and this little mini scrapbook page. Yes, I scrapped about gum :) Why not? :) Ever since I started using these albums by American Crafts I have been really loving throwing in some 6x6 pages every once in awhile for random things :) It's great to document the "everyday" things that make us *us*! :)

And I totally used the same supplies for both projects, less waste that way! hehe

Have a great day, the weekend's almost here!
Charin

*Senior session*

I had so much fun doing a senior session for Marianna! She's lovely :)
You can see more pictures from our shoot here
Have a great day! :)
Charin

I'm still here...

Hi :)
It's been awhile since I've updated!

I wanted to share my latest scrapbook projects, one of my cutie Katie Shae and my first ever clear mini album! :) It was fun to work with something completely different than normal. I've been wanting to get these pictures scrapped from my fun weekend at Elsie's. :)

I have news! :) I posted awhile back about us possibly getting a Maltese, and we did! She's adorable :) She's 4 years old and she only weighs 5 lbs, soooo tiny! She's getting along really well with Katie and *one* of my cats...the other one hides under my bed 24/7. ;)
The weird thing is her name....Emma! I have had that picked out for a baby girls name for about 5 or 6 years! Guess I won't be naming any girls that. :) She's too old to be changing her name now. The best part of all? Her previous owners paid $865 for her and *gave* her to us!! So happy about that! :) I've always wanted a Maltese or a Pug but couldn't really justify paying that much for one.

Other than that life's just been busy as always, I have been getting our house a lot more organized which feels wonderful! I've been re-purposing baskets and file cabinets, etc. to make good use of them and it makes me so happy. :) Lame, huh? :)

Katie's walking a lot more, she hardly crawls anymore. She's getting so big :)

She still has random hats on her head all the time and doesn't eat very well. Still calls me "MamaDee" and loves Charlie Brown cartoons :) Love that little girl! <3

I'll be back soon with some pictures to share very soon from a graduation photo shoot that I took, I've been working on getting those edited. I also need to get some pictures of little Emma to show you! :)
Charin