Mariana and Shawn before Julian was living on the outside {maternity photography}

So, posts like this aren't nearly as exciting when the real thing is already among us, and especially when your partner has shown you up and already posted pictures of the real deal! But oh well, here we have some of my favorites from the session I did with Mariana and Shawn back in the beginning of May when Julian was still hanging out on the inside.
We started at their favorite cupcake spot, and then we went and spent the evening with the Red Dragon, the Vespa Mariana rode around town before she got knocked up :) Anyway, I found the prop choice to be absolutely perfect- a little icon for their life pre-baby.































Thank you so much for letting me do these pictures of you guys at this moment in your life. Complete honor.

Melissa and Oggie {Engagement Session}

In case you haven't yet seen them on our Verité blog, here are a few from Melissa and Oggie's Engagement Session, and I have to say, theirs was one of my most favorite engagement sessions ever- everything was just so pretty!
Be sure to check out the whole post here. Maria and I were pretty pleased with ourselves over this one :)

Mira and Sydney's 2nd Birthday

So the other week right after Betsy's baby shower, Shawn and I sped down to the South Bay for my 2nd celebration of the day, Mira and Sydney's 2nd Birthday Party, and I did actually remember to bring my camera to this one! (although we missed the first half of it).
They had a Taco and Dinosaur-themed Party, which I think Shawn found quite comforting, as I'm pretty sure half the reason he's excited to have this kid is because of TOYS. He loves toys, but I think is concerned that as we are having a girl, she won't like the "right" toys, so I think seeing these two little girls so into dinosaurs gives him hope.



Sydney seemed to be having some trouble getting started with her cake, but luckily mom was there to show her how it's done.

(don't hate me for sharing this pic, Candice- it's cute!!)





Cameron and Conner, who you may recognize from their recent photo shoot, are good friends of these guys'. Anyway, Conner somehow "won" the prized frosting-volcano topping as his piece of cake and could not have been more pleased! It was pretty darn cute to watch his face.






It turns out I'm a lot less stealthy with my camera than I thought I was. I really wanted a picture of Maddie with all the green frosting all over her face but she wouldn't let me take it, so finally I convinced her to let me "just take a picture of the dinosaur", to which she agreed. So I pretended like that's what I was doing, but actually took a picture of her. I thought my little plan had worked until she then said, "I want to see". Crap! Kids, and digital cameras! So then I had to pretend like it hadn't worked and take one of the dinosaur really quick.


Mira and Sydney were lucky enough to get a surprise visit from a "real" dinosaur ( . . . and spiderman- not really in keeping with the theme, but I suppose you can't really tell one kid they can wear their costume, and not the other). Anyway, the girls were a little unsure about the guest appearance, but the boys were pretty excited about it!








So anyway, the rest of the afternoon was just spent in the warm backyard, relaxing and "swimming" in the water cooler, and hanging out.

Betsy's baby shower

My good friend Betsy and I are scheduled to have babies on pretty much the same day; we're totally hoping to be hospital roomies! Last weekend was her shower and it was so cute! Liz and the girls did an adorable "wagon" theme.
I forgot to bring my camera (as I do for pretty much any personal event) but I grabbed Steve and Betsy's camera for a bit. Even though it's like an embarrassingly 1/4 of the weight of mine, I swallowed my pride, and snapped some shots :)
(When they got their new camera a while back I was apparently totally rude and held it up with like 2 fingers like a toy camera and exclaimed how light it was. Only after the look on their faces did I realize that was maybe one of my more embarrassingly snobbish moves)







This one doesn't really belong amongst the shower photos, but I couldn't resist throwing this one of Finn getting fed before the shower in here.


Papa-to-be leaving the all-girl premises.


Liz had us play this GREAT game where we took different pictures of Betsy and Steve, and cut and pasted to create an image of what their baby would look like.