Pretty Pictures of our girl (and our family)

We have a nice SLR camera, which we have had it for a few years, and it is starting to not work as well (boohoo :( ). The majority of the time, you have to take the battery out and put it back in for the camera to work. This does not work well when you are trying to capture a quick moment with the baby. But even if you have a perfectly functional camera, a lot of the time, because of convenience in a busy world with a busy baby, you end up taking the majority of your pictures with the iPhone. And while the picture quality is great, it's not quite as nice as the ones our Canon Rebel takes. And while the camera is awesome, I've got a bad habit of taking a lot of pictures with Gracie's eyes closed. Or her falling to the side. Or she starts crying. It's hard taking pictures of a baby. This is why I'm so grateful for professional photographers.

We have had the privilege of working with a few different very talented photographers over the course of the last twelve months. They have captured our family and our sweet girl so well and we feel so lucky to have these pictures to remember this special time. Here are some of our favorites from our last photo shoot with the talented Abby Glenn, which we did to celebrate the fact that our sweet biscuit is one year old!

 

Christmas Time was here

Grace's first Christmas was so incredibly special. I can't even describe how wonderful it was to watch her play with her new toys and open gifts and spend time with family. She is such a joyful little girl, but is at her most joy-filled when she is surrounded by loved ones.

Some of the highlights--

1) Christmas Eve candlelight service with the family. This is a tradition for our family and it was the first Christmas Eve service for Gracie (not counting the time she went with us while I was pregnant). She loves seeing all of the candles lit. She wore her precious Christmas dress and hat and loved hearing all of the songs.

2) Opening gifts - there were so many. Too many. We definitely went overboard. But who can resist buying things for a baby? We opened our stockings at our house on Christmas Eve Eve.

Then on Christmas Eve, after the church service, we came back to the house and changed Gracie into these snazzy pajamas and tore into the gifts. 

 It took us 3 hours to open all of them. Gracie really got into opening the gifts (she loves paper).

She wore a bow on her head for awhile (she couldn't take it off her head since she can't reach the top). And she played with a lot of her toys along the way and some of the toys the rest of us had gotten :)

She got way too many things to list individually, but some highlights include a stroller and baby doll, the DVD's of Cinderella and Lady & the Tramp, lots of pretty clothes, a vanity mirror that talks to her, a bear mat, and a little piano. As a family we received an iPad from my parents (!) and a nice printer, and several other very nice gifts. 

 3) On Christmas Morning, we went downstairs with Gracie and Santa had come! He left her a peekaboo bear, a play mat, several books, and a Radio Flyer Wagon!

   4) Grace ate our yummy Christmas dinner with all of us and she had her first taste of meat (Turkey). She loved it!

5) Seeing her play with all of her toys after the fact is so much fun. She loves to go for rides in her radio flyer wagon. It is seriously one of her favorite activities. And she loves all of her other toys.

We couldn't ask for a sweeter little girl to spend time with! It's hard not to want to shower her with gifts all the time.

Hope you had a great Christmas!

Love,

Elizabeth