Neither rain, nor hail, nor sleet, nor dark of night….well, no, not really.  But, we were almost thunderstormed out of today’s family session.  I thought the extreme heat & humidity was all we would have to contend with.  Not a freakin’ tornado watch!  Luckily it came & went quickly (but not without damage, unfortunately) & the Goldbeck family was still willing to brave the temperatures to get all eleven of them frozen in time.  I did sweat a ton, but these people were wonderful!  And major props go out to the little ones who lasted so so long & did so immensely well.  I only had to sing like a dozen times & bribe two with tootsie pops.  A great day in my book!  Here’s a sneak peek….

I have been checking the Weather.com app on my iPhone all week hoping and praying it wouldn’t rain this past Sunday.  The weather here in Maryland has been crazy unpredictable these past few weeks, and it was changing daily on my weather app.  Luckily, or by the grace of God, I was blessed with a mild, rain-free Sunday evening in Fells Point for Mark & Lindsey’s engagement photos.

I believe I met Mark when my family first moved to Maryland from Oklahoma and we began attending the same church as his family.  I’m reaching waaaaaay back in my memory here, but I believe I would have been about 8 years old then.  And I met Lindsey not too long after in the fourth grade at Belvedere Elementary School.  I remember that year well because I misspelled “chimney” in the class spelling bee and didn’t make it as far as I’d hoped.  Don’t worry though, I wasn’t crushed too badly.

Well, my point is, I’ve known Mark & Lindsey seperately for a number of years, but I always find it so neat when two people I know, who I didn’t know knew each other, find each other, fall in love, and begin a life together.  Isn’t it a small world?  They were such a great couple to photograph.  All I had to do was tell them tons of cheezy jokes and stories, and they just laughed it up!  Plus I think they were a little nervous being in Fells Point on a Sunday with tons of people watching them cuddle, kiss, and do engaged-people stuff.  But everything went great.

And what I loved was that Lindsey did some research on some ideas she had before we went out.  She’d found Max Wanger‘s site and loved the session he did of a couple with a huge balloon.  So, we tried some things with balloons and some without.  All the while, I felt like we could have been the pied piper and gotten little children everywhere to follow us with those balloons!  They were coming out of nowhere saying, “ball-oon, ball-oon!”

I had a smashing good time (like my new word) with you both, Mark & Lindsey, and can’t wait for your wedding this October.  I know it will rock!

My husband thinks this one would look appropriate with a pitch fork

Do you know what we spelled?

And I think this one has to be my absolute favorite!  Look at the way he looks at her.

(sorry for those of you who read our Family Blog…these photos repeat)

While there is about 6 or more inches of snow outside right now, we did have one semi-warm day last week.  The girlies and myself took advantage of it and went outside to play with some bubbles.  The last time Emma, my oldest, blew bubbles, she wasn’t very good.  In fact, she got super frustrated so we purched one of those automatic bubble blowers from Target that looked like a hippo.  It has since died, and Emma wanted to try blowing bubbles the real way this year.  She did a pretty good job.  Brooke, on the other hand, didn’t even try to blow and at times seemed afraid of the bubbles.  However, like in everything else, she began to copy her big sister and laugh & chase the bubbles after a while.  Here they are enjoying their day!  Now you can feel sorry for the three of us stuck inside, especially if you are reading from an area that has more spring-like weather!