CAPTURING JOY + LOVE.... {family of six photos}

Initially Little Miss's goodbye date was set to be in October.

But once we introduced Little Miss to her forever family and 

they started having her for the weekends, they didn't want to wait that long.

Oh that made my heart happy and sad at the same time.

It was so important that I knew she would be loved 

fully, completely and immediately by her new forever family. 

I knew it would be right if they felt they couldn't live another day without her.

Hearing them say...'they couldn't wait until October' was exactly what I needed to hear.

But that meant instead of having one more month with her....

we had ONE WEEK. 

I called my girlfriend Sarah Lane, from Sarah Lane Studios,

and frantically explained our situation.

We had a couple of wishes before Little Miss left.

One was to have family pictures taken with her.

She was part of our family for almost 2 years.

She would forever be a part of our family and I wanted it documented.

Mostly I wanted our relationship documented.

Her personality documented.

Our love for her and her love for us....documented.

But this week was going to be hard to pull off.

We were all a mess. 

We only had ONE WEEK left with her being ours.

Sarah texted back that she could take pictures the very next evening.

I told her I would be praying that we would be smiling

and would truly be able to capture joy and love in those photos.

I don't know how we managed

but we succeeded!

We captured HER with each one of us. 

Captured the love we had for each other.

And Sarah was able to capture the love I had for her as her mommy.

Not one tear was shed the evening of the photo shoot....

Well....except from Little Miss!

She did not like Sarah trying to take any pictures of her.

At one point, she was throwing a fit and crying and I said....

'Snap that picture. I need that. That is her tantrum I always want to remember!'

Oh how I LOVE that girl.

It was also important to me to have Sarah capture a few pictures

of Little Miss and Little Mister together so I could frame it 

and put it by Little Mister's bed!

I asked for prayers that day from everyone so that we could stop crying

for the evening and be able to Capture Love & Joy. 

Thank you. 

Those prayers were heard.

And thank you Sarah Lane Studios from the bottom of my heart.

These pictures are near and dear to our family's heart. 

* * * * * 

Here are some of the out-takes from trying to photograph a

family of six with two toddlers!

Now to figure out which one to print large for our wall....

because seriously.... the outtakes are just as frame worthy!