2010 Favourites

Well, what a year 2010 has been. Here are my highlights:

finding out we were pregnant on January 11 after trying for 13 months
giving birth to my beautiful daughter after a (approximately) 24 hour labour
traveling to French Polynesia with my husband in April
having my dad move to Redding in July
seeing the birth of my niece, Isabelle, and seeing my other niece, Sylvie, at 2 weeks old (our family is expanding!)

Here are my favourite photos of 2010:

Family Shoot

The fun thing about this whole photography malarkey business is that we can have our own family shoots any time we want! I recently purchased a remote for my camera (an idea I copied of my brother-in-law and his wife!) and we set out for our first remote-controlled family photo shoot last week. And it was so fun. It was great to be able to set up the tripod and then take as many pix as we wanted in that one spot, instead of having to run back and forth to set the timer. We were able to walk away from the shoot with 60 pictures instead of 8! What a difference. The only thing we didn't have was somebody standing behind the camera smiling at Sophie so she would grin back.

Speaking of Sophie, I am just loving having her in my life. And I'm loving being this little family. I love John time and I love Sophie time, but my favourite time ever it John & Sophie time. I didn't realise how much I would enjoy having to take care of this gorgeous little person. She's quite the cutie and I am amazed at how much love I feel when I watch her sleep, see her smile, watch her under her playmat smiling at the little helicopter dangling above her or when she does just about anything. And then I'm amazed too at how she came from John and I, that we made her, that she is part-him, and part-me. We see bits of him and we see bits of me, and all those bits together make up this unique, brand-new, never before seen or made, little person. Parenthood truly is quite amazing!

Anyway, here are my favourites from the shoot:

Celebrating Four Years...

Today, I want to celebrate my husband, John Burtness. Fours years ago, today, we were married in Kona, HI. It was an amazing day, beyond my wildest dreams and expectations. We have had four wonderful years together since then and I have felt so often how lucky I am to have such an amazing husband.

He is a wonderful and involved father and I love how much he loves Sophie. He is so excited to spend time with her and is willing to give her the world. He loves being involved in parenting her and is so happy to be working from home so that he can be with her throughout the day.

He is such a caring and loving husband to me. I appreciate how much he has grown while we have worked on our relationship together and how much he loves and honours me as his wife. He was an amazing support to me during labour and I honestly couldn't imagine life without him. He is my best friend, is a great listener and he champions me so much!

I love his engineer mind, how he can fix almost anything, how much of a hard worker he is, and how entrepreneurial he has become lately. I've been impressed with his self-discipline to sit down and get work done at home when there are so many distractions.

All that to say... I LOVE my husband! Here are some wonderful pix of him and the wonderful memories I have of us together since we first got married.

Our beautiful wedding day:



Hanging out at the MOMA on our New York City vacation in May 2009:



Helping me prep for a photo shoot by posing for some shots for me back in Fort Collins, CO:



Testing a satellite for his college on the vomit-comet - anti-gravity flight!



Snowboarding together at Copper Mountain, CO:



Being gorgeous as ever while visiting friends, in Victoria, Canada:



Isn't he handsome?



So excited for baby Sophie's arrival!



Such a lovely and caring daddy to Sophie.

Recent Family Shoot

I had the pleasure recently of shooting this wonderful family; Angie, James & Chazz. They wanted a photo for their holiday card. It was absolutely freezing the day of the shoot so we did just a quick walk-around and took just a few photos. We connected over the fact that we both have babies just two months apart and are stay at home mums. They have just moved to the area and she was all excited to hang out with another mum and have a playdate. We have just hang out once since the shoot but it was a really fun time and I'm excited to get to know her more and hang out some more! So fun to have a new friend from a photo shoot.

Here are some pix from the shoot (my favourite is the one where they're kissing their son on each cheek!):

Venice...

I married my wonderful husband almost 4 years ago, on December 16, 2006. We spent our first week of honeymoon in Hawaii and then flew to Europe. We spent two days in London, three weeks in Venice, and one week in Switzerland. I had a one last professional black and white film in my old Konica-Minolta SLR and I had tons of fun taking photos of one of the most amazing cities, Venice. We loved the canals, the narrow, windy alleyways, the fact that there were no roads, and therefore no cars in the city. We got a three week "bus" pass and spent days on the boat-buses touring and viewing the city from the canals and surrounding water. We loved all the churches, cathedrals and old palazzi, as well as all the mainstream tourist spots, such as the Ponte di Rialto and the Piazza San Marco. We loved eating salami and brie sandwiches for lunch and pizza for dinner, and finding those hole-in-the-wall restaurants with amazing lasagne and spaghetti. I think our favourite night, for both of us, was New Year's Eve, which started with following a Cuban drumming band from one piazza to Piazza San Marco, where they served free champagne and had amazing fireworks at midnight. Beautiful!

Anyway, it took me a while to develop the photos as I had to take them to a special photography store, but when I did, man was I happy with the results! What an amazing film of photos, if I may say so myself. Here are my favourites that we have on our walls (these are scans of my photos, so not the best quality, but you get the idea!):