Happy Valentine's Day!

Growing up, Valentine's Day was something that we celebrated with little gifts and candy, cookies and of course 0- Valentine's cards for school.  I loved when my mom would take us to the store and let us pick out our favorite ones.  I would then go home and address all of the envelopes for the kids in my class and look forward to delivering them the next day. 

Talk about coming full circle - I had the pleasure of doing some Valentine's shoots for school aged kiddos this year and I got a text from the father of one of the seven year old boys who was using these pics for his tear apart school valentines that said - 

"Thanks for the picture... Aiden says thank you! (with a tear in his eye)."

The hidden part of the story (and true reason for the tear) is that this adorable boy is obsessed with flying. They visit the airport numerous times a week, he has a flight simulator on his ipad that he was playing the few minutes in between takes and wants to be a pilot when he grows up.  I managed to get a unique image of him jumping up in the air "flying" and photoshopped in a sky background.

Receiving that text not only melted my heart, but solidified that I am doing what I should be. I love taking photos and am having a lot of fun, but to get a little boy so happy that he teared up? Priceless.

Of course, our little ones don't get out of taking photos, especially now that there are props and backdrops and half of the basement has turned into my studio (thank you, Matt!).  

Abby always, ALWAYS, wants to take pictures and jumps at the chance. Jackson, well, he's a bit of a different story.  It usually takes the three of us to score a good shot of him, with crazy voices, singing, peek a boo-ing a duster and a hairbrush. 

If you think I'm kidding, please see below.

 

Our little nugget loves carrying around his toothbrush pretty much 24-7 these days because he is getting in his back molars, so that's pretty understandable.  What doesn't make so much sense is his fascination with a hairbrush

 (only when we are taking photos). Whatever works, right?

Here are a few of each of our babies in their Valentine's best:

Abby - future model

 

 

  

Check out her easy, breezy, beautiful - Covergirl hair flipping. 

Jax - future hearbreaker

 

 

 

  

Because we have a studio set up in the basement now, 

when the grandparents come over, it's picture time!

  

 And while most of the pictures above (except Jax & Grandpa) were taken before today, we got these precious shots of the kiddos this morning before Abby went to her daycare V-day party:

 

 

 

 We don't have a ton more to report from the Bishop household, except that last Sunday we had a minor catastrophe - Jackson was walking (running) in the basement on the tile in between the carpeted areas.  Both Matt and I were down there, and he does this all of the time, so we didn't think twice about it.  Roughly ten minutes before three kiddos were showing up with their dad for photos, Jackson lost his footing and fell... straight into a textured cement support beam... with his face.

I have only ever heard him cry like that a couple of times and that was when he was probably six months old.  I panicked because I didn't know the extent of his injuries and the sound that his poor little head made when colliding with the beam seemed ridiculously loud.  When he calmed down enough for us to take a look, he had a half dollar sized abrasion on his left cheek, where the skin came off, but that looked like about it.  The next afternoon we realized that he had a little shiner under his left eye, and although it's going away, you can still see it a bit in the photos we snapped this morning.  He will be just fine, but wow, that was quite a stressful afternoon.

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone and an early 

Happy Birthday to Momma B, Brad, Beth and Justin!