We want to wish you all a Happy Valentine’s Day! Here are our kids sporting their new spectacles. They had been begging for glasses for awhile because they wanted to look like grandpa and grandma. They aren’t real, so don’t let them fool you.  ♥ Enjoy the day with your loved ones!!! ♥

to you! From us…

Here are other Christmas cards that we created for our clients… enjoy!

It was a year ago our baby little girl was born.

Here are some images from her birthday photo shoot. The poor little thing woke up from a nap on her birthday with a 102 temp, so she wasn’t quite herself… but was definitely a trooper and loved her cake when it was set in front of her.

Despite her not feeling quite right, we kept her party scheduled. (Thanks to all the family who came and braved the sick zone - She is doing great). Her party  ideas came from Hostess {with a mostess}. We love this site. You can download your own papers here (we tweaked ours a bit). Her cake was made by Janet’s Cakes, and it was SO yummy.

This little girl has brought us so much joy, snuggles, and love… Happy Birthday Briana Skye, we love you baby girl!

Yep, you read it right. We are expecting our 4th little baby! It seems so unreal. We are early in telling, but we are very excited. I also didn’t want to fake feeling great all the time. We told our family on Halloween by putting what you see above in their trick or treat bags.  

Here are the kids all dressed up…

To see what we *all* looked like this Halloween click here…

Right after waking up, this little girl came down to the studio just as we were checking our lighting before a photo shoot. With all stuffed animals in hand, she was a willing assistant and gave us a hand with our light check. Here is Miss Ragamuffin herself…

Speaking of sleep… We apologize that our blog has been in sleep mode. We are in the busy, crazy photography Christmas season. We are finishing up our Christmas sessions and putting Christmas card orders in. We will get back to posting real soon! (hopefully)

Thank you for all the kind comments on our photo session below. We love hearing from you! 

We were looking back at our family pictures from last year. It is crazy how much your family can change within one year. Here we are last year at this time.

Or in other words… Woo hoo! We have done our Christmas card photo shoot! 

These past few weeks we have been busy taking pictures of clients and family for Christmas cards. We decided to do our own family photo shoot for Christmas pictures this past weekend while we still had a summer tan and good weather. 

We first tried doing it ourselves with a tripod and timer. NOT a good idea with three little kids… I’m sure we would have been hysterical to watch. We got one somewhat good pic out of the bunch. Check out Briana’s face. haha

Thankfully, Mom and Dad Kruse came to save the day. Wanting a more grungy look, we headed outdoors. Mom ran the camera (got settings ready for her, taught her how to focus, and then explained our vision we had with each pose), and Dad helped get the kids attention. They were an awesome team!!! We were so glad to have them help us on the ones we couldn’t take on our own. We love them!

During our first attempts (trying to do it by ourselves), we were thinking, “Why are we doing this?” but truly when we had someone doing it for us, it was a special treat. We loved being on the other side of the camera! It was so much fun! I think we are going to hire them every year. Here are a few that didn’t make the card…

A few others we took that day…

Here is a slideshow of the rest of the session:

If you want to book a Christmas session with us, please contact us. The last date to hold a Christmas session (in order to have items in time for Christmas) is October 31st. We can’t believe that it already is September!

Hey Tater here:

This may seem like a weird post, but allow me to explain.  I have been priviledged to work with the Acute Rehab staff at BroMenn for the past several months and have truly enjoyed myself.  They have all been such a joy to work with.  They surprised me the other day with this potato as an honor to my name.  This is truly one potato that happened to look like Mickey Mouse.  Their artistic ability really did turn this tater into Mickey.

Now for the story behind the name…

Why the name you ask?  Well I get this question a lot, so I thought I would let everyone in on how my nickname (name) came to be.  When I was a baby, I did not crawl as my siblings did.  I would crawl using my head and feet.  I really did not use my knees a whole lot.  I really liked the static electricity that it created.  I would crawl for hours in this position.  When I would run into something, I would just back up and go a different direction.  However, my nickname used to be Taterbug.  Yes, Taterbug!  Mom told me that there was a bug that used to like the potato plants in our garden.  They were kind of hunched over looking, and I must have resembled that because this is how my amazing mom first coined my name.  Now that I am so much more mature, (right), it has been shortened to Tater.  As a child I did not like the name at all and many in the family would tease me about my name.  It really was easier to call me Tater because if you used my birth name, David, then it was hard to distinguish between my dad and me. There are a lot of benefits to having the same name as your dad, but it does have its draw backs and so “Tater” it is.  Many of my friends and colleagues call me Tater, but there are a few that just cannot bring themselves to using that name.  I am really OK with any name. I just am so used to responding to Tater that if you call me David, I may not answer right away.  Again thank you to my parents for a rockin’ name and for a lifetime of explaining myself, really I do love it.

Acute Rehab - Thank you so much for this and for putting up with me.

Tater

Tater surprised us and ordered Elle and me matching Matilda Jane dresses. Here we are in our matching getup on Elle’s 2nd birthday. 

We got these Jones Sodas for the kids’ birthdays. They thought it was so cool that it had their very own picture on the front. They begged to drink their special pop on the new patio. 

For those of you who participated in our Summer Mini Sessions ~ If you receive the Master Blaster Package, you will get a free 6 pack of Jones Soda with your image on the front! A personal message can be placed on the bottle like you see above. Be thinking of what message you would like on yours.

At the beginning of the summer, I had asked Tater to help fix our deck. With 3 little kids at home, I knew I probably wouldn’t be getting out much, so I wanted a little area that I could take the kids out to play. Our old deck was a splintery mess, so we really never used it. The front yard was also a problem. I would get the kids all situated with their toys… before I knew it, I had to run in quick for a kleenex, run in to help somebody go potty, run in to grab a burp rag, run in to… you get the picture. Well, when I needed one little thing, we ALL would come in (so no one would wonder off or go in the street). As you can imagine, we were in and out a lot.

Well, our summer project is now complete! What you see below is the finished product of our new outdoor space. I love it! Tater not only built me a new deck (splinter free!), but we also added on a patio by Concrete Evolutions and window well screens (so the kids don’t fall in) with a stone wall. We also decided at the end to add a bamboo fence for privacy and wind control. 

The kids are enjoying our new outdoor living space too. We put up baby gates on the deck for the times that I do need to go in and out, in and out, and in and out… But this time I don’t have to take everyone in and out with me - AAH!

The party lights that hang above add a special mood to our area in the evenings. We are so thankful, and truly have been enjoying these beautiful summer nights. God is so good!

In fact, we aren’t the only ones enjoying this new space… We got some little feathered friends who are also taking advantage of it. Notice our new little friend “Mr. Owl” (whom I’m bound to get rid of one of these days). He is out there to scare the birds away.