Pictures

We recently had Avery's pictures made and it was quite the experience! We were fortunate to have not one, but two offers to take Avery's pictures as a gift. Our friends Jacob & Colleen gave us a free portrait session with Colleen's friend who did their wedding pictures, which were amazing. Me being the picture-obsessed person that I am was super excited but couldn't decide when to have them done. In the meantime, a lady who sings in my dad's choir also wanted to take Avery's pictures. We decided to go ahead and let her do them sort of as a "trial run," since I was a little unfamiliar with her work.

We went to her house in Junaluska Highlands, which isn't far from where my parents live, to have them made. We had seen an example of a "naked baby with roses" picture that she had done and really wanted to try it. This turned out to be slightly challenging...okay, very challenging. Lets just say that the ones that actually turned out good should be blown up and plastered all over our walls as a reminder of a victorious moment in our lives. Anyways, to do the naked baby pictures we had to take off Avery's diaper ahead of time to get rid of the diaper lines on her skin. This resulted in one wet outfit, wet pants for Shayne and roses that were watered in an unconventional kind of way. While actually taking the pictures, we had to strategically place one or two roses in order to cover her lady parts. As if trying to keep the roses in place wasn't enough of a challenge, we had the chewing of the hands to deal with. Avery, being your typical baby, loves to eat her hands. And at this particular moment in time, she found her hands to be especially delectable. So here we are...naked Avery, mommy the rose placer and daddy the hand remover. 3,479 pictures later (not really, but seemed that way) we decided we may possibly have gotten at least a few good ones. Needless to say, Avery's first picture session was a memorable experience...and we have some pretty good pictures as a reminder.