A big family is all I ever wanted to have. Tons of kids, lots of conversations and chaos, and all that goes with it, but mostly lots of love. I totally have that and feel very blessed. We have four kids and a creative mixture of step children, godchildren, grandchildren ... the works! There's 20 at Sunday night dinner when everyone can come. Our oldest son, Brent and his darling wife Megan are expecting their first baby, a boy, in June. His name will be Cohen. This week, they received some news from the doctor that little Cohen's heart is not quite right.  His little heart is broken, and with it, all of ours.  Apparently,  Cohen  has several heart defects (4)  that while the doctors have seen them before individually in infants, they haven't seen them all together before. (Already an over achiever)  Each one generally requires a surgical repair and some require multiple heart surgeries in the first year of life.  So, our big family is rallying for Brent, Megan and Cohen and we will all do what we can to help this little guy get his heart corrected. It is our Mission. Megan has a darling little BLOG - In this Wonderful Life,  and she will be posting updates once we have some.  They are searching for a pediatric cardiac surgeon who possibly has seen these all at once and has confidence in treating them. We will send them anywhere they choose to go. Because it will most likely be in another state, and could require months stays at a time, I want to be available to go with them, or to pick up the slack for them at home if need be.  It is for this reason, that I am no longer accepting wedding commissions for 2010. I can definitely refer you to another awesome photographer so please ask me.  All our existing wedding commissions for 2010 will be fulfilled according to contract.  I promise!   By fall, we should have a better grasp on what's happening and going to happen and I will decide at that time if we will start accepting them again for 2011. In the meantime, I want to thank you all for your kindness and prayers. Cohen needs Prayer Warriors. Start a Prayer Warrior group in your area and/or add him to your daily prayers. Throw his mom and dad on there too! God is good and always faithful.We believe in miracles. 

I keep this heart on the wall next to my desk. My little Kate made it for me in 2005.Since it's Valentine's Day, I thought I'd post it and maybe bring a little sweetness to the day about hearts - sweet hearts and broken hearts.  Many Blessings to you all!

Well the streets cleared just in time for me to trek to OKC the week after Christmas to spend a little time with Sarah and Chris Rhoads and pick their branding brains! They are both fantastic photographers and just such kind and sharing spirits. I am always trying to increase my knowledge of both photography - technical and artistic aspects - and more over, the business of photography.  I have trouble with that part. Sometimes the creative just runs amok and the biz part is so very important. The two parts have to balance to be successful.   I just knew I could learn some biz tips from these two and I was right.  They are a great team and are doing the right things for their business but more importantly for their life together.  It was a small group - just 3 of us. It was perfect. About midday, they had a newly engaged couple, Ryann and Jake,  come by for a short session and we all just went out and walked about. Sarah is really fun to watch and because she shoots so differently from the way I do, (I'm a way back and she's an up-close) I learned a bunch and hope to mix it in with my current style. It's so easy to get used to shooting a certain way with a couple of lenses that I forget how fun some of the other lenses can be. Gotta dig 'em out and play a bit more!   So, of course, I had my big, stand back, lens on, and it was colder than --- you know -- but we were students first,  just kind of in the background anyway - listening and watching. Personally, I find it a little difficult to have a portrait session with people I just met that aren't mine.  I feel a bit intrusive and AWKWARD. But when I can retreat behind my 70-200, I soon forget that and just shoot.   The shooting session was just a little gravy for me!   I really went because I wanted to hear all the biz side of things - particularly work flow tips and time management. But I learned some key shooting points so I'm thrilled.   I still don't know how she shoots, edits, creates albums, blogs every day, does yoga, eats sushi, tweets,  plays video games and still gets to play with her husband too. I don't think I'll ever master that. BUT I did get a few tips to incorporate and hopefully they'll help me find the balance I so desperately seek.  Well, here's a few shots of the afternoon - I'm free to blog them I think since she's officially blogged them before me - BIG SURPRISE THERE, HUH? There is actually a little blogging tip I learned from Sarah & Chris in this blog post!  AND... I just want to say that in the morning meetings, Sarah had her beautiful hair down and was fussing with this little feather thing in it, which was perfectly placed, and she's always so relaxed but put-together, if you know what I mean.  Well, when we get ready to shoot, her boots go on and her hair goes up in a ragged little tuft and it is game on!  I just LOVE that about her.  :)  If you get a chance to have a mentor session with Sarah & Chris, just do it!  It's a great day of fun and knowledge. See all her stellar images of this darling couple at SarahRhoads.com.

Children are a source of constant fascination to me. I could really just watch them with each other for hours on end. It's rarely that easy though. I went to our daughter's house today to see about a few snaps of the new wee one.  Mr. Beaux Brumble is one week old today.  He was having NONE of it today I might add. But I did get to have such a time. Just watching. Tatum and Taylor were very entertaining even without knowing it, so I did have a little bit to keep me busy. While I was there, I realized one of the many things I love about digital that I didn't have with film - is the ability and freedom to just shoot whatever I want however many times I want to. The girls sometimes get into a Nana frenzy, each trying to out-shout the other - "take a picture of this! take a picture of this! take a picture of me doing this! And on and on. With film, I wouldn't have been able to just keep taking those silly pictures for NO REASON other than to make someone laugh. Today, we took a bunch of silly pictures and looked at them right away and laughed ouselves even sillier! It was a fun day with my little girls. I'll try Beaux again in a day or so for his "real" session. Today we just ended up playing. In between, I did get a few shots like this though.  :)  I am blessed!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009, a new little life came into the world. A wonderful family was just waiting to love him too. Mine. Our daughter Morgan and her husband, Curtis, welcomed their third child, and first boy, Beaux Ray Brumble, at a little before 1:00 p.m.  He weighed in at 7lbs. 8 oz. and was 18.5 inches long, and he was starving! Tatum was so gentle in holding him - she reminds me so much of her mother at that age. Taylor just wants her mommy all to herself still but did think Beaux was sort of cute and someone brought him balloons which he was too small to play with so she had all the honors! They are both going to be such great big sisters.  It's always amazing to me to meet a person that was just moments ago inside their mother, and now is here and, well, pretty perfect! God is good.  Here's a slideshow of the big event. The girls are big into The Wizard of Oz so this slideshow was created with that in mind. Nana loves you!

Very tiny and a little frail, Mimi - as my husband, her grandson, called her, and therefor, so did I - reached out and patted my hand and, in her VERY heavy French accent, said "Remember this because so many things in life can make you old if you let them". We were talking about this little dish she had in her house - hand painted pottery "Made in France" scrawled across the bottom - that had these words painted inside:  "On a toujours vingt ans Dans quelque coin du coeur."  Despite my ancestry, my french was poor to say the least.  One class in 7th grade just wasn't getting me by.  She saw me struggling to figure it out and she told me it said "May you always be Twenty in the corner of your heart."   And I smiled and said Aww, because after all, I was almost 28 at the time and didn't fully appreciate the full meaning.  I loved her though and I loved talking with her - listening to her mostly as she recounted the days when she was twenty in the 1920's. Fascinating. I could sit with her for hours and never grow tired of it. Sometimes I took notes even. :)   A few years later, our  Mimi had to leave her home and shortly after, she passed away.  We went to Lawton to help pack, ship or sell her belongings and Jay asked me if there was anything I wanted of hers. All I wanted was that little dish. Luckily for me, it had been broken and pasted back together and wasn't high on any of her heirs' lists, so when Jay said "Lisa's got her heart set on that little broken dish over there" or something to that effect, nobody cared.  That's how I got it!  It sits on my desk and holds my CF cards sometimes as they finish their uploads, a paperclip or an earring ends up in it occasionally.  But it doesn't need a function at all as far as I'm concerned because it's "function" is just to make me smile as I remember Mimi and her sweet spirit and kind heart, her love of martinis with 2 olives, her utter disdain for Victor Newman,  her love of tulips and mostly for reminding me to always be twenty in my heart. 

Today my Friday wish for all of you is the same. On a toujours vingt ans Dans quelque coin du coeur.