The best – BEST – part of my work as a photographer is documenting how families are formed and how they grow. From engagement session to wedding to dogs, babies, homes, neighborhoods – the places, spaces and people that fill the world of my couple’s lives, these are the things that make excited to go to work every day. I photographed Kim & Justin’s wedding some 10 years ago (gah!) and have been blessed to be a little artsy part of their family story ever since. So I guess you could say the day I walked back up their walkway and stoop this fall was my perfect sort of work day. Their almost 6 year old daughter Mira was one of my first newborns and seeing her at home on a still-warm fall morning this year, her front teeth missing but with the tooth of a Mosasauras one of her prized possessions made me over-the-top happy. I was there to photograph her newest baby brother Finn, but spent a good half of my time having tea and learning about Mamenchisaurus (look it up, you won’t be sorry), discussing geodes and teaching her to finger weave, reading library books she just had to show me and of course, as one always does at her house, listening to music. Sometimes it was Mira who played the piano or her dad, sometimes it was dad on the guitar and sometimes it was all of them singing to Finn to remind him that everything is wonderfully, blessedly, really, really ok. Their pup Elani who so patiently guarded and love don Mira the last time I was at their home was no longer with them, but lucky for Finn he has Mira. Mira has carved out a little bit of her world for Finn’s space-themed blanket and crib, the one she used to sleep in, and she seems all together content to accept him as part of her life. And what a sweet life awaits him once he’s passed the babe in arms stage – a home filled with love, a family excited to teach him about….everything, and most of all, a mom and dad thrilled to call him theirs.