Enjoy a teaser to our final session of 2009 and boy did we go out with a bang! Happy Thanksgiving everyone, we will be back in the office on Monday. Have a blessed holiday weekend!

I know they were hard to look at, thanks for hanging in there. I mean FOR REAL!!!!! You know you want more of this shoot!

After we had sufficiently stuffed ourselves we walked around Old Town enjoying a glorious fall morning.

Amanda and Jason, you guys are the bomb dot com. We loved that our one session turned into two so that we could spend more time with you both. Happy, HAPPY anniversary. Hope these pictures always make you smile.

Amanda and Jason worked their mojo down the downtown mall strip in Charlottesville.

Smooshy hugs are the best.

We went back to the bed and breakfast Amanda and Jason were staying at, the beautiful Inn at Monticello.
They stepped their style game up a bit. Amanda rocked a fabulous Anthropologie dress and knit her shawl to match. How beautiful is her outfit? Love it.

I love the fact that Amanda is in “blissland” and Jason is laughing his butt off. Probably because she kept saying “MINE MINE MINE” while hugging him over and over.

Because someone literally hit a light switch once we got to the bed and breakfast, we barely got any shots off, even with off camera lighting. You can not imagine how pitch dark it was by this last shot. We are going to be in Maryland next weekend to shoot a wedding so we are going to meet up with Amanda and Jason for some breakfast and to finish off their session correctly. Stay tuned for a part two!

I went off to college right out of high school. You know what? I missed having my brother. I was really glad when he decided to come down to Virginia the next semester and attend the same college as me so we could be together again.

I stuck with him through his bleaching his hair white phase, when he was a lead singer in a band, when he went gallivanting off to different countries, through the bad times and through the triumphant times. I have seen some of Jamie’s worst moments and I have had the privilege to see some of his best. I have seen him become a husband and a father. I have seen him in prosperous times and in deep seasons of need. A man who loves the Lord with his whole heart and wants others to know Jesus’s undying love. He is an ordained minister now preaching in a local jail, he also goes to either Kenya or Nepal yearly to share the love of Jesus. He has grown into a man I admire and am proud of. I truly love my brother.

You just have to know Jamie in person. He’s larger than life. He is covered in tattoo’s, has the sense of humor of a 13 year old, is a consummate salesmen- he can totally sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves, never stops talking, has the most amazing array of voices and imitations. You can’t help but laugh when you are with him (both at and with him!) and be totally enraptured in his story telling. He is also a man who isn’t afraid to shed a tear when talking about people he has met in some of the countries he has traveled to. It is really quite something to see him go from telling a hilarious tale about pooping his brains out because of drinking bad water to crying about underage children forced to work in brick factories. My children LOVE Uncle Jamie. He has a very special way with little ones.

A couple Christmas’s back we gave a “gift certificate” for a free session to Jamie and Paula. Seeing as they have been busy starting a family the last few years they wanted to wait a little bit. We were really excited when the timing of everything came together so they could finally cash in their gift. We were all visiting our parents in Richmond over Labor Day so we left all our chitlins with the grandparents and headed into Carytown in downtown Richmond for a sassy molassy time! Jamie and Paula TURNED IT OUT…hot, hot, hot. Way to represent family! I am very proud of these photos and I am so glad they took the time to do this session so they have some great memories at this point in their marriage and family.

We love you Jamie and Paula. Thanks for the awesome night hanging out together!

We then moved the party over to Maymont Park and took down the sass a bit for a more relaxed session.

cute scoots!

Jamie trying to talk Paula into jumping into his arms.

Three important things to highlight. Kellan Studios being featured on the AMAZING Weddings Unveiled blog, today is our 4th anniversary as husband and wife…..AND….we drew four lucky winners last night for the blog launch giveaway! SHAZAM….HAPPY FRIDAY!

First up, Adam and Lauren’s feature in Weddings Unveiled!!! I never ever ever grow tired of looking at these pictures. Many of them happen to be framed around our house which may seem weird but they are just so magical, romantic and we happen to love Lauren and Adam so it is only “slightly” creepy having friends making out hanging in your house!

Secondly…but most importantly, it is our 4th Anniversary today!!!!! I have been married to this knucklehead for FOUR GLORIOUS YEARS!!!!

Oh wait…you can’t see him. We were tempted to take a similar picture when we got engaged to send out…but we stuck to a more traditional (gag) photo.

These photos are 1.5 years old but I am too lazy to search around for more recent stuff. Thanks Amy Martin for these babies!

In the last four years we have bought two homes (separate occasions), gone through three job changes, started Kellan and made these amazing specimens!

Chloe Grace

Bennett Wade

You can see a full photo montage from last year’s anniversary post.

I love this man with my whole heart. There is no one I would rather go through the highs and lows of life with than Ryan. He makes me laugh harder than anyone, puts up with my serious type A ways, prays me through the hard times, and is a constant nurturer of my giftings. “Sticks” you will always be the man of my dreams!

Last but not least! The winners of our blog launch giveaway! Thank you all for participating so we didn’t feel like losers being picked lasat for dodgeball.

The winners are:

$15.00 Itunes Card - Katie Corbett
$25.00 Starbucks Card- Alaina Ivey
$40.00 Visa Card- Amanda Brown
16 X 20 Enlargement- Loren Truschel

Kindly send us your mailing address and we will get on that as soon as possible. info@kellanstudios.com

We are off to the Chesapeake Bay, MD to shoot a wedding tomorrow….happy anniversary to us as we sit in a car for hours tonight. Lot’s of time to play “Would You Rather.” Dustin is the MASTER of this game, we will have to channel his inner chi.

and were back!

Lemons, NYC and Anniversary….come again? Sit back and let me explain.

True, not so subtle observation…we are still playing catch up from June, haven’t even touched July…sigh. We came back from NY and things drastically changed within our household. In the last four weeks we experienced a job loss for Ryan only to be blessed off our rockers three weeks later with a dream job! God is SOOOO ridiculously good to us. It was a beautiful experience to go through as a married couple. To completely and utterly entrust your family, finances, and insurance to the Lord and watch Him dazzle us with blessing after blessing…..AMAZING! We have literally gotten to spend every day together since June 3rd….PAID!!! I am seriously going to go through withdrawal when Ryan starts working on Monday. Needless to say, we have been working our butts off on our “fixer upper” house, spending great time with the kids, and enjoying this unexpected vacation together. What we haven’t done much of is blog!

So let me get my defibrillator out and shock this little blog’s heart and get it beating with some photo loveliness. You like that word picture?

So back to NYC. Not only was that weekend dedicated to shooting Chrissy and Jay’s wedding but we were also meeting up with my cousin Julie and Steve for a surprise anniversary shoot around the city. Steve is the genius behind our ever impending blog redesign. I am not even joking when I say the new site is off the CHAIN (that saying is out no??? Starting to show my age) I have been watching Ryan put the finishing touches on taking Steve’s design and putting it into WordPress so that you may all enjoy its splendor. A little birdie told me it should be live in the next few days in which when you click on kellanstudios.com confetti will fly out of the screen and smack you in the face. We are going to have a little launch party give away and generally just celebrate the monkey finally being off our backs!!! Can I get a whoop whoop (still not cool to say?)

So as luck would have it during the 2.5 days we were in NYC the ONLY morning we had free to shoot Julie and Steve it was torrential down pouring and FREEZING!!! June peeps….JUNE!!!! What in the world….WHYYYYYYY…you are NYC….you are suppose to be amazing all year round!!! I am being dramatic because it was just that disappointing. The other little wrench in our gears was the fact that NYC is not as friendly as they portray. The 911 attitude was not present to us. We got kicked out of EVERYWHERE….even sidewalks!!! The whole day was pretty much a big giant FAIL!!! Steve and Julie were great sports about it but had a hard time getting into the shoot too. We took a few shots but basically decided to scrap everything and try again while we were staying with them in Albany the next week.

I will show you some of the NYC shots…..but I must say, they only make me sad. I love Julie and Steve SOOOO much and Steve has BRILLIANTLY designed our new site and we wanted to give them the most amazing pictures….but alas….cursed rain and unfriendly New York business owners. Sniff….tear…..

At least there was a lot of laughter about our lemons we were handed.

Fast forward about 4 days, warm it up about 30 degrees, take us out of the city and plunk us out in a field and WAHHHHLAAAAAA!

We brought along a special 3rd shooter to lug our equipment.

Let’s check in with our 3rd shooter. I give him a D- on attitude. Bennett, look just to your left….salvation awaits you in the form of a paci. REACH FOR IT!!!!

One for the road.

We will get some pictures of their gorgeous kids in a few days. They did really well on the procreating front (wink)!