I ♥ Faces: Beautiful Eyes

My beautiful baby girl's 3 month photo shoot last Sunday. 

I love her big alert eyes - I can't wait to see if they stay this dark or if they'll lighten up any more. 

Her Daddy and I both have blue eyes, but mine are pretty gray and his are pretty green, so who knows!

 

I ♥ Faces: Let's Hear it for the Girls

Unless I'm told not to, when we attend weddings, you know I'm going to have my camera. 

Some of the pictures we got from "bonus" cameras at our wedding are wonderful and I especially loved getting them so much sooner than our professional photos, which with MANY more pictures obviously and understandably took longer to process. Our first wedding of the year was Emily and Zach's in March. We were seated as far to the right as possible, so I wasn't able to get any shots of Zach during the ceremony, but had a wonderful view of Emily! 

I love this beautiful bride and was so excited to get to share in their happy day!

Check out more photo submissions of
the lovely ladies in our lives at iheartfaces.com

 

I ♥ Faces: Smile

Do it. It makes life better. Not to mention TED says it makes you a super hero.
Now, my beautiful friend Rachel here has an infectious smile, especially when it's brought on by these two sweethearts who were the flower girls at her wedding last summer.

Check out more entries at iheartfaces.com

I ♥ Faces: Best Face of 2013

I struggled to choose this year! I had a couple favorites, but I ultimately decided to go with the most expressive faces. This is my cousin Paige during her wedding ceremony. I have no idea what joke the pastor had just made, but luckily, the other person involved was sitting on my side! You can see more pictures from their wedding here.

If you're interested, the others I debated are this photo, also from their wedding; this one from Rachel and Nick's wedding; or this one of my husband and nephew on our family vacation. Thoughts? Did I choose well?

This is my submission to the I Heart Faces Photo Challenge. 

Join in the fun! Get more details at http://iheartfaces.com/

I ♥ Faces: From a Distance

This one was tough for me. I generally prefer up close and personal shots, so shots from a distance are few and far between. Luckily, I took some shots while we walked a golf tournament with the McCoys. Just days after their wedding, Nate started on the Canadian Pro Golf Tour and Ashley caddied for him all summer. He came back to Iowa for a tournament in Mike's home town, so we got to go hang out with them while he played. You can see more pictures from the day here.

For more distance pictures, click the link below!

I ♥ Faces: Play

Here it is folks, the May photo challenge, PLAY!

This picture is from when I worked at EIBC and I have been waiting for a chance to use it in a challenge. Honestly, it was one of those totally lucky action shots from my point and shoot that actually turned out not blurry and I love the movement to it. It is from a game we called "crud wars". Pretty much it was Revolutionary War style battle in three rounds: 1. cups of water 2. cups of flour (in the picture) then 3. Chicken feed or some form of nasty leftover food that couldn't be served. The team the least coated in gross won. 

We would then do games like mud volleyball etc before cleaning off in the lake.

If you want to see more Play entries, click the button below!

I ♥ Faces: Best Face of 2012

Here it is folks, my favorite face photo of 2012:

Meet Angel. He is 6 and he and his two older brothers were in Iowa this July with the Kidsave: Summer Miracles program. The program brings older orphans or sets of siblings (those much less likely to be adopted) to the US to meet potential forever families. Angel and his brothers were 3 of 10 kids in the Des Moines area when they stayed with my in-laws this summer. For more pictures and information about the program, click here for my original post. We loved getting to know the goof-ball that is Angel and I love how much this picture reminds me of that - especially with the Cheetos residue on his mouth!

Click the Button for the links to other entries for the best face of 2012!

PS- Coming soon here: our new nephew Ben!
On our personal blog: Halloween, our Honeymoon, Christmas and Ben - I'm a little behind :D

I ♥ Faces : Summer Fun

How much more fun can you have in summer than a good food fight at camp?

Here's the flour round during one of the junior high weeks.

To check out more summer fun photos click the camera below

I ♥ Faces: Pet Faces

This was a really hard choice for me because we went to the Omaha Zoo just this last Saturday! Here is my favorite, but I had to debate a lot. Please check out THIS POST for my top 15 favorites of the day. I'd love to know your opinions on if I chose the right one! I also appreciate comments; good, bad and ugly (okay, not ugly, but really, good and bad both!) so please let me know what you think! Thanks!

Click on the button below to see more entries at I ♥ Faces. 

I ♥ Faces - A Slice of Life

Here it is - a slice of Haitian life. I'll keep this short and simple: the river on Saturday morning. Laundry day, wash day, work day - just a piece of life in Pignon.

i ♥ Faces: Anything but Faces

I heart faces this week is "Anything but Faces" - so here's my entry:

This is from one of the ISU games this fall. Fingers crossed for the POT! :)

For more heads, shoulders knees and toes click the camera

I ♥ Faces: Red

This week's theme at iheartfaces is RED in honor of Go Red for Women.

Meet Krista. She's gorgeous. Inside and out. I worked with her at camp multiple summers and love her. Lots. :)

To see more oh so lovely red pictures, click the camera

I ♥ Faces: Innocent Wonder

Only one of the reasons I love him:

This is Mike and one of the girls from his church at a wedding this summer. I just LOVE the look on her face. She is just the sweetest - I met her that night and she told me she was sad I had to leave at the end of the night because I danced the YMCA with her :D THEN we went to church the next day and they brought their new puppy to show the other kids after the service - major cute overload!! 

For more examples of innocent wonder click the camera 

I ♥ Faces: Smiles!

Happy Birthday to iheartfaces!! And we get to celebrate with SMILES!! 

This is Janelle and Theresa, my two favorite-est non-biological little sisters :D

Click the camera for more :D SMILES :D

I ♥ Faces: Best Face of 2010

This week at iheartfaces is a special contest of our absolute best face photo of 2010. I think this one is my favorite because of the emotion it captures. You can only imagine what those beautiful young eyes have seen. It is from my day at a refugee camp in Haiti this March.

Click here to see other's favorite 2010 portraits - Mine is #655 to vote :D

I ♥ Faces: Pets - my new pet rock :D

Ok, so this probably doesn't really count as an animal picture, but I can't have pets while I live in the dorms :( So here it is, my BRAND NEW PET ROCK(s) :D :D :D


!!!!!!!!!!!I'M ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!!

He does such good work! I was allowed no input on this one - all Mike's choosing :D

We went out to Cafe Milo for lunch (one of our favorites - the spicy italian is fabulous!) and a movie and then he made me promise to play along for something fun, blindfolded me and drove me out to a park and asked me. The best part is in the initial plan - I've gotten pretty used to him taking my purity ring off that finger and playing with it while we watch movies, TV, etc. so he was planning on being all sly and switching the rings during the movie and making me freak out quietly... but then the movie was AWFUL so he had to work on the fly. But he still had both rings and had jokingly faked a proposal earlier, so when I was "playing along" I was completely planning to open my eyes, see my old ring and beat him up a little bit for getting my hopes up. Apparently that was pretty obvious when I opened my eyes to ^^this guy^^ because he could tell by my reaction :)

Now on to planning (I'm not gonna lie, I'm super excited for that too)

To do list: 

Attempt to focus on finals this week : P

Get ring resized (it's like half a size too big- he was so close!)

Figure out a date

Continue to freak out that I'm ENGAGED!!

Click the camera to see some actual pets :D

I ♥ Faces: scenic b&w

I do! I do! Landscapes are my favorite! That could be because I'm still learning about capturing good shots of faces, but I think it's mostly that it sits still enough for my camera to keep up with. :(
BTW - I am always open for comments AND constructive criticism. Can't get better without knowing what I'm doing wrong :)

 Another from Haiti - I've been missing it a lot lately. Please continue praying for the people there. 

There is still lots of poverty, pain and illness there. 

Click the Camera for more black and whites!

I ♥ Faces: Pink

          Okay, to tell you the truth, I don't really heart the color pink. I don't really own anything pink, I don't wear it. I'm more of a blues and greens kinda girl. Or cardinal and gold (go Cyclones!)... or purple and gold (go Vikings!) but never really pink. Even as a kid. But I do love what pink stands for this month. Campus is covered in Breast Cancer Awareness stuff, which is fabulous. For this week's challenge I had to go with one of my sister, Melissa - I had some fun with this one, gimp-ing the two shots I got of her getting ready for a wedding this summer. I love the contrast of "fine I'll take a picture" with the oh-so-real "would you stop bothering me so I can get ready?!?"

 Love her so much :D

For more pink pictures click the camera

I ♥ Faces: Smirk

Who better to give me a great smirk photo than my 14 year old sister. This summer I had her do a mock shoot with me both for practice and because my mom really wanted pictures of her :)  This one may be my true favorite shot though, because it's SO Amanda. I said something along the lines of hey! I'm over here and this is what I got. :) I love her to death, she's such a joker but definitely has an attitude all her own sometimes!

To see more smirks click the camera:

I ♥ Faces: VROOM VROOM

Once again, a photo from Haiti. Please excuse the focus... this was taken from the back of a truck also driving down this road (if you can call it that) This is one of the most common forms of transportation in Pignon. The most I've seen is 6 people on one bike at a time- 3 adults, 2 toddlers and an infant. Can you say carpooling?

For more Vroom Vroom Entries, Click the camera