The Making of M.O.M.

Sometimes, I like to pretend that I'm a photographer. We have two great friends who are real photographers and for one of them the way we "pay them" for our own family photos is that I attempt to take photos of their family.

On Friday, I got to spend some time with my (one of two) BFF. Britt and Matt are expecting their second child, a baby girl, due mid-March. Their son "J" is a feisty, newly turned 2 year old and I was pleasantly surprised with some of the good shots we got.

Here are a few of my favorites. I love J's face in this one...

I've started loving shots like this one, where you only see from the shoulders down. It gives you just enough info about the people to sort of create your own story in your mind.

I think J began to wonder why baby girl was not in HIS belly. Such a sweet boy he is!

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. - James 1:17 (NIV)

For some reason I have this thing about taking pictures of feet. Don't ask me why, but something about kid feet next to adult feet makes me shutter happy. Maybe it's a comparison thing because kid feet are constantly changing. I don't know. And notice I said I just like to photograph them, not touch them.

Pregnancy does Britt well. She just glows throughout her entire pregnancy. And even though Britt is several years younger than me, I look up to her in so many ways. She takes her role as a wife and mother so seriously and I truly believe that she exemplifies everything that a Proverbs 31 woman should.

And her baby bump is just precious.

I just love this awesome family and I can't wait to meet that sweet baby girl in a few short weeks!

As I said in my last post, Britt has been staying with us while Matt's doing missions in Romania (I can understand how you might not have caught that, in the hillarity of my last post).

Anyway, last night we went over to my Mom's house to eat, then we went out to Britt's family's land. It is absolutely beautiful. Almost her entire family on her mom's side lives on the same land, her grandparents, parents and aunts and uncles. Out there, you can just feel the sense of family. It was awesome. Mr. Yates (or Gates, as my kids said) took us for a ride on the Gator. Afterwards, it was down to the real reason we went to the Hill Estate...APPLE PICKING! Her uncle runs an orchard on the land, but her family also has personal apple trees that they eat from. These apples are all natural...organic! I'm not totally into the whole organic thing, but I do know that anything that hasn't been sprayed or altered is better for my family. These apples are delicious!

Basically, the kids (and Luke and I) had a blast. It was so cool to watch my kids pick apples straight from the tree. As we sorted through the ones that had already fallen, we also found some good ones. Lucas likes the rotten ones too (yuck), but all in all I'd say my kids ate about 6-7 apples a piece. We came home with 3 Wal-mart sacks full of tastiness and I'm fearfully anticipating the aftermath of last night's "snack" in the twins' diapers.

Here are some pics of our time pickin' apples! Bon Appetite!