I’ll tease you a bit, before I introduce you…

And here we have Mr. D:

He even had a smile or two for us…

As well as some pretty fantastic scowls:

I love how different he is in each picture…

More smiles for his mama:

Aaaand then the yawns came.  Try not to yawn yourself, looking at this. :)

Wonderful to meet you, little D!

And I had to show you a few color ones, since it’s that festive red holiday time of year :)  And I can’t forget to welcome these guys into my elite club of families with two under two!

Ho ho ho!

And now, at six, all she wants for Christmas is her two front teeth :)

Wonderful to see you guys, as always.  Thanks for hitting the big #10 with me!

The fun thing here is if you click this “dog licking baby” link and get to a bunch of shoots where I’ve had dogs licking babies (yes, it’ll look at first like it’s not going anywhere, because you’ll see this post again – but scroll down, that link shows all the posts I’ve ever tagged with dog lick), the next post down after this one will be of this same pup: Harry, with his beloved little sister E. Our first shoot was back when she was just three weeks old, and now she’s three months old.

We did these pictures just an hour before her baptism this weekend, and she was just a perfect angel for the photoshoot.

Even with very little sleep the night before, she giggled and played…

And showed us how big she is on her mom’s pretty chaise – much bigger than last time, already!

Reading Christmas books with mama:

Love that she’s peeking at her “1st Christmas” ornament here!

Mama and daughter in their pretty Christening dresses:

She did catch a wink before the big event…

Grandma’s pretty hands with baby E:

With her Godmother and Godfather, in her Christening gown and bonnet that her mom, uncle and grandma all wore…

Big cousin, with her fantastic hairdo and dimple:

And last of all, grandma with her three pretty girls:

Loved seeing all you guys!  Hope the big event was a huge success :)

I volunteered with our local group (find yours by clicking around on the community site here) and met some wonderful people, both in front of and behind cameras.  The Hyde Square Task Force hosted the event at their facility, and we (25+ photographers and volunteers) provided over 100 families who live or have roots within a mile of Jackson Square with portraits over the course of the day.

Attendees were welcomed…

Primped, by volunteers from Empire Beauty Schools:

And then they got to show off their pearly whites… here are just a few of the fantastic people I met:

Then they came downstairs to the spot where another group of fabulous volunteers were printing them an 8×10 and two 4×6′s, as well as burning them a CD of all their pictures to take home.  It was so well organized!  So many team members made it happen, but the most visible on our end were Howard and Jessica – thank you guys for doing TONS of legwork before the event (and I’m sure, late into the night!).  All our team members, send me your websites and I’ll link to you! :)

And our wall of love got bigger and bigger throughout the day.  This picture shows only about half of the families we saw.  Go team! Wonderful to work with you all, so fun to get to see all these smiles.

P.S. This was the first year we got releases from the subjects to show their beautiful faces on our websites – to help get the word out about this event so it can spread to more than the fifty countries it already spread to.  Of course, if any of my gorgeous subjects would prefer I not post their picture here – send me an email and of course I’ll take it down.

P.P.S. For historical perspective, I do have a blog post from the first event I took part in here (I slacked and didn’t do one last year, sorry).

So I’ll get you situated with the big group shot first.  Here’s our handsome crew.

And one of all the grandkids with their grandparents:

And now, so you don’t get confused, I’ll go big brother’s family first:

And then I’ll do little brother’s family next:

And I have to include this “outtake” one — it cracks me up — with bow off kilter and tongue out :)

All thanks to these two.  Celebrating a big anniversary this year!  Congrats, guys.

P.S. These kind of shoots are what I call “a bunch of families together” in my pricing calculator, in case you’re curious. They can run a bit longer than my usual 45 minutes-1 hour.  I think I stayed with these guys for about 90 minutes.  But it’s nice because each individual family in the group ends up with photos for holiday cards, etc.

You guys make me happy every time – thanks for a great shoot!

to more sweetness…

to crisis. So real and fun.

And then we got to go to the roofdeck and get some giggling pictures while this cool flock of birds flew overhead.

And now I have a problem – I can’t decide if I love this one of the four of them, or the one at the very bottom of this post.  I guess it’s a good problem to have :)

But just a quick one of little miss S:

And one with mama:

And big sister A with Dad:

Great to see you guys!  Funny thing to notice, but I love that you can see the house address in this one.  Oh, and A looks like she’s having fun on Dad’s shoulders up there :)

With mom and dad:

And with his grandparents:

And the whole team:

Wonderful to see you guys!  It’s exhausting being the star of the show.