Thanksgiving happenings..

Whew this year's Thanksgiving was CRAZY busy!!! It was a short week at school which was nice and we made toilet paper roll turkey's, which actually turned out super cute. On to Wednesday, I had a HUGE family shoot for my friend April Wolanin. A total of 23 people!! 13 of which were children. I was seriously freaking out because I have never done such a huge family before. Thanks to Jaime for letting me pick her brain and it turned out really well for the most part. Here's some of those pictures.



{Swain Family}



On Thursday we left for St David Arizona, to spend that holiday with Robert's family. They live on about 500 acres and Rex (my father in law) ranches cattle. Well they have a few horses and the kids LOVE to ride them everytime we go, so Grandpa saddled up the horses and was walking the kiddos around the yard. So it was mine and Maddie's turn. Now mind you last year I had a "incident" with one of the horses' named Nutmeg. She was doing fine as I started riding her around the house when she all of a sudden darts off towards the barn up along side the barbed wire fence. I'm thinking that I'm going to tear my legs up (stupid city chick was wearing Capri's at the time) I was then ducking to avoid being clotheslined from one of the tree's. So sure enough she stops at the barn and I get off. So now speed up to this year. So I get on Nutmeg and Maddie is sitting in front of me and Rex says that she'll follow behind him and Lydia on Smokey. So we set off and in the back of my mind, I'm still a little worried that she's going to flip on me. Well she was actually doing very well and we were quite away from the house when all of a sudden she completely turned around and started darting this way and that at a full gallop. I'm hanging onto Maddie for dear life and trying to pull back on the reigns and she's yanking her head around. I'm yelling, "Whoa!!" over and over again and she finally slows down and my mother in law comes running. She yells across the yard, "Are you okay?" Then she realizes that I have a kid with me. She freaks!!! I'm freaking even more then ever and I ask her if I should drop Maddie over the side to get her off because Nutmeg was starting to freak out again. She told me to get her off and try to get the horse under control. So I drop her over the side into some soft sand, all the while praying that she won't get trampled!!! Then Nutmeg starts galloping AGAIN and Kay says, "pull back." I then look at her and say, "I want off!!" She tells me that it's ok and to go ahead and finish my ride and to lead her back over to where Rex and Lydia were watching my lack of horse riding skills. So I lead her over to them and my heart is POUNDING!!! She does fine for the remainder of the ride and I get off of her and walk over to my mother in law. She then tells me that Nutmeg does these kind of things all the time. So we're laughing about my brush with death (Ok not really, but I thought I was going to die LOL) and Barbara (my sis in law) gets on Nutmeg and started to ride her and within minutes come flying around the house screaming. She did the same thing that she did last year to me! The funniest part of this story was Maddie telling grandma Kay that mommy kept saying, "Whoa". That was hilarious!!! So here she is. Crazy horse! :) She's the one that Kim and Kyle are riding with the blue bridle.



Ok now one to my favorite part. They have a monastery near their ranch and it has a giant cross that you can see from the highway. I've always been really interested about checking the place out and so me Robert, Paul and Barbara drove over there. It was a photographer's dream!! It was amazing. They had a meditation pond area with giant Japanese Koi fish, rustic benches and a beautiful bridge. Here's some of the photo's I snapped. Unfortunately The sun was going down way to fast so I was only able to snap a handful of good photo's. We also took some family pictures of all the kids and I took some of my brother and sister in law's families and of course a TON of baby Carsyn... gotta love those chubby cheeks! I also added some photography that I took around the ranch..just because! :)







{One of the peacocks running around the monastery}



{ The in laws}



{This is Rob's younger bro Lee and his wife Hanna}



{Rachel Rob's sis and hubby Dave & baby Carsyn}







{Maddie waiting for her turn to ride the horse}



{ Paul, Rob's youngest Bro }



{ Flippin sweet door into the "rock house"}



{The Ranch}





{ Us :) }

Now onto Friday. I had another family shoot at Freestone park at 4:00 and after that I went to Deneigh's mom's wedding reception to also take pictures for some much needed practice . HAHAHA! It was so awesome to see Laurel be so happy and we couldn't be more happy for her. She deserves the best!



Well this was another wonderful Thanksgiving shared with family and friends. I'm so grateful for my family as well as good friends that might as well be family. I love the quote that says "Friends are God's way of apologizing for our relatives. - Unknown " Tee hee.. no I really do love and appreciate my family.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!!