This last week I was fortunate enough to escape this blazing heat and miserable drought for a trip to Yosemite National Park. Please excuse the insane amount of photos I’m posting from this trip, but I just can’t help myself. While we do have an abundance of kind, down-to-earth people in central Texas, we just don’t have these kinds of natural wonders. I was mesmerized. And I desperately needed to be mesmerized.

I had the added bonus of getting to visit my sister since she works at the park. Plus we had our own tour guide for the couple days we were there. And a big thanks to my husband’s parents for watching our 1.5 year old daughter for a couple days so we could thoroughly explore this incredible place without stopping every three feet to marvel at a pinecone, as cute as that can be.

Okay, here we go with the photos. I’ll be blabbing a lot throughout the post too.

That poor innocent soul at the bottom is my favorite.

Can I take a moment to say: un-freaking-believable. How is one place so naturally majestic?

Check out the tiny people at the bottom of these two shots.

This is my little sister. She is amazing to me. She’s completely fearless. I, on the other hand, am full of fears and paranoia. She’s the type of girl who hops trains around Europe alone and goes overnight camping by herself. I’m the type of girl who’s scared to live more than 15 minutes away from a hospital because everything is out to kill me. I’m much more Woody Allen-ish. She’s much more Amelia Earhart-ish. I wish I were more like her.

She fits right in here.

And thanks to her I have these awesome shots of my husband and I. We never took real engagement photos, so five years and one kid into our marriage I think we’re due for a few cutesy couple-ly shots.

No, that is not chewing tobacco in my back pocket. It’s just a lens cap, as usual.

Our humble abode the first night we were there. It was actually pretty comfy. Other than the snoring neighbor I slept pretty well.

Heaven. I can’t even believe I was actually there to take this shot. So unreal.

I adore these forest meadows.

When Lesley was asking me what I wanted to see while I was there I only had a couple answers for her, both very profound: “pretty stuff” and “big trees”. On our way to the sequoia groves, I asked, “So where are we headed next?” Her answer: “Big trees.” She knows how to talk to me.

This is where my husband proposed to me again, seriously. Yosemite will have that effect on you.

This next series were actually taken at an awesome mountain lake. I didn’t include any of those scenic shots though. I loved the portraits of my sister and I so much more. (Thanks to my husband who took the ones with me included.)

Yes, I’m wearing a hoodie and she’s wearing a tank top. I’ve been in 108 degree weather for months so I was taking every chance I could to wear warm comfy clothes. And I’m a way bigger wimp than her.

I love how the light is just hitting the background and the island. Check out the tiny white car in the corner too.

The second night we were there we stayed up in my sister’s tent cabin. Since it was at much, much higher altitude it was a lot colder and she has to light a fire every night to keep warm. It was really funny to me watching my little sister light her own fire. We’re city girls. We don’t go around lighting fires. But this is her daily life now.

And this is up at Tuolumne Meadows the last few hours we were at Yosemite. I wanted to stay and see more and more and more. But I also wanted to see my daughter.

This last shot is actually my husband’s. Love all the trees and the tiny deer at the bottom, so I had to include it.

This last weekend was my nephew’s 9th birthday, so my family and I headed up to Dallas to celebrate with him. While I was there, I pulled out my camera and made him come outside with me so I could get a few shots of him since it has been way too long since I photographed some of my favorite subjects. Well, as typically happens, the rest of the kids (and my brother) followed us out to play as well.

Love these photos and these people!

I love this girl’s smile. (In this case, this girl just happens to be my girl.)

She has a ton of spirit, which she uses for both good and evil (hello, public tantrums).

She’s 18 months old and just started really talking lately, and the sound of her little words coming out of her mouth is the most amazing sound I’ve ever heard. She’s so proud of herself, and it’s so fun hearing her practice talking, like when she was holding an old flip cell phone to her cheek this morning while pacing around the house and saying, “Hello! Hi!” and saying, “Buh bye!” before she closed the phone and smiled proudly at me.

She’s been saying new words everyday, and this evening she even surprised me by saying, “Hi Turkledog!” as our dog walked past the bathroom door after her bath. What?! Where did that come from? She still seems to have trouble with some single syllable words but then busted out that four syllable phrase! I guess she hears that a lot around here.

Oh yeah….she also has a new favorite storage facility for her index finger.

I love the wildflowers in Texas. Even though I’m from Dallas I lived away from Texas for a while, and when we moved back here, I was so in love with the wildflowers every year. I had totally forgotten how overwhelming they can be for those few weeks in spring when they’re really blooming. Most people love the traditional bluebonnet photos — and don’t get me wrong, I love them too — but I really love the way these flowers look when they’re in full bloom, so my husband and I took our daughter out for a few photos about a week and a half before they started to wither and were mowed. I’m just now getting to posting a few.

Don’t you just love this crazy hair? This girl will not keep anything in her hair (if I can even wrestle anything into it to begin with).

There are a lot more photos I’ll share from the little photo shoot my husband and I did with our one year old tonight, but I thought I’d start with this one for now. I absolutely love it and wish I could take credit for this photo, but I can’t. This one is all my husband.

Just a few, hanging out with my girl today.

Tomorrow completely officially totally 100% ends my holiday vacation so I can get back to work on everything I’m behind on. I hope you all had a great Christmas! I had so much fun with my family. I love when all my siblings are together. They are my best friends in the world and make me laugh harder than anyone I know.

Since the photos of my brother and sister on my mom’s kids’ wall were from roughly 12 years ago, I informed them that they were getting updated photos taken whether they liked it or not. They fought for a little while and then gave in, and we had so much fun. I’m still deciding what to do with the “outtakes” but something MUST be done with them. They’re too good.

Here are a few from our little session.

The one below with the Mercedes is quickly becoming one of my favorite shots ever. My brother was posing dramatically in this alley, making us laugh hysterically. The driver of the car couldn’t resist commenting on the scene so he rolled down his window and told Jared, “Work it! Work it!” Hahaha!

After I took their photos, I handed my beloved camera over to my sister to have her take some of me, just for fun. She has a great eye so I knew it’d be fun to see what she did (even though I bossed her around at first, as I’m known to do when I want a specific photo of myself). I loved what she took. She got some great future album covers for me. Now if only I had any musical talent whatsoever we’d be on our way!

My poor baby gets sorely neglected when it comes to having her photo taken because I get so busy with everyone else’s. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I take plenty of her sitting in my living room or in her high chair (when my hands are actually empty), but when it comes to getting dolled up and photographed, I’m embarrassed how little I’ve managed these last 9 months. It was a pretty dreary evening with some dark clouds looming above us, but while I was thinking about it, I decided to at least get a few of my sweet little girl tonight. I can already tell this kid is going to be way cooler than me.

Some of my favorite portraits I’ve ever taken I was never hired or asked to take, like the ones below and these ones where the dad had just gotten back from a 30-hour shift and his daughter was still in her pajamas. The subjects didn’t get dolled up, no one was dressed in nice clothes, kids weren’t told for days they were going to have photos taken, no one thought about what they’d look like on camera. They just went on doing what they were doing. I would love to be hired to “stealth shoot” a family’s daily activities or even take photos of a family wearing their normal jeans and t-shirts without any coordination or thought whatsoever as to how they would look.

I was on vacation in Ohio a few months ago and staying with one of my good friends. One morning, as she was just getting back from a run and sat down to read to her granddaughter, I ran and grabbed my camera. These are a few of the images I took, and I love them. They’re so sweet, so full of personality, and so real. Real life is artistic and worthy of printing on canvases and displaying. Slowly but surely I want to show the rest of the world that.