My brand new niece!!

Meet Isabella.. my brand new niece. She was born in December, and was 2 weeks old when these were taken. Talk about chubby! She is a chunk...and has a head full of hair. I had to take a picture of just her head to show everyone! she is so precious..
I have another little secret.. I did this entire photo session in the back of my van! We couldn't set up studio lights in thier house, so I used the back of my mini-van as a studio. The lighting come through was beautiful. Although I wasnt' able to get all the usual shots, i got the ones his mom wanted.










Here are more pictures of Isabella that weren't taken in my van :)

Isabella with big brother Gionni
and yes.. she did take the opportunity for a bathroom break on her Daddy :)

Remember this..

Just something I want my kiddo's to know...

Psuedo urban photo shoot

Yesterday I met with my photographer friend Nicole to teach her soem photography stuff. She shadowed me while using Morgan and Joshua and a few other kids as models..

These are some of the pictures I took....Joshua and Morgan did a real good job of lisening and
posing so that Nicole could some pictures for her portfolio. When it finally got down the last picture, I had to promise to let Joshua play video games as a reward because he was getting pretty of tired of taking pictures.. but once the words video game were spoken, he gave me just a few more minutes of his time...

He was doing his super hero impersonation here. I love this picture because it 'screams' at

me every time I see it.

I love this picture of them together..


Another favorite group shot..

One of my favorites of Morgan

I love this action of them... it's so much how they really are..

I couldnt' decide between the Black and White or color....

These are the ones Nicole took of the kids on 2 seperate occassions



This should be in ad for some wheels...


I don't know how she caught them both looking up at the same time, but I love this picture..

Our trip home for the holidays

Trips home for the holidays involve what I call making the 'great circle route'. We leave Dallas and head to Shreveport, La. and from there we head to Baton Rouge. Only this time Marc wanted to see how the GPS system would bring us. Wouldn't you know it was set to AVOID main highways, so it brought us through all the little po-dunk towns LOL... And in one of those little towns at 3am we get stopped by a police officer. God has give us so much of His favor and grace because he could have given us a speeding ticket but didn't. He gave Marc a non-moving violation instead. You know how little towns are, you see the speed limit sign and slow down but you don't have quite enough time to slow down by the time you see it.. :)

So a 7 hour trip turned into 12 hours. The GPS directed us all the way to the ferry in Port Allen! We never had to get on the ferry to get to Gonzales, so we had a big laugh at 6am when we rolled up in front of that. We stayed at my dads a few days and I got see my new niece. From there we went to Osyka, Ms. to see my mom. The kids loved running around on 60 acres in the country. We also visited New Orleans and went to the aquarium of th Americas as well. From there, we went to Monroe, La. and stayed with Marc's parents for a few days. By the time we got home, I was so glad to sleep in my bed. It was great to be home..


Pictures with my twin sister Lon and her husband Milton along with Marc, Joshua and Morgan. Both Lon and I are professional photographers, so guess who took the picture??? We framed up the shot the way we wanted it , bribed the kiddos to smile, Lon set the timer and then ran into the shot. We did this 5 times to get the perfect one:)
Lon and Milton
Des and Lon
Morgan at Grandma's house with Sadee
Morgan and Joshua loved the haystacks and only wanted to play them the entire time at Grandma and Pee Paw's house.

New Orleans

We went to New Orleans during the Christmas holidays. Next time, Marc and I are going by ourselves and leaving the kiddos with there grandparents :) Once Joshua saw the sharks and the jelly fish and sea horses at the aquarium, that was all he cared about. He wanted to go home. They did not enjoy the historical significance of New Orleans or the culture, and all that walking.... well they didn't enjoy that at all! I wish I had a hov-a-round for each of the kids.. I just knew they would enjoy it, but not so. I suppose I should have realized that New Orleans was more interesting to me because I grew up in Louisiana with all it's culture, etc, but not so much for the little ones. Joshua was so afraid his mommy was gonna get left behind and get lost, that he didn't want me taking pictures :)

Taken on the River Walk next to the River Walk mall

The St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square

This was in the French Quarter right outside the River Walk, I just loved the colors of the

building against the blue clouded sky.

The kids are tired of walking by this point:)

Getting ready for Mardi Gras...

Jazz musicians playing at one of the resturants in the French Quarter on Bourbon Street

All swords go in the back of the shirt or the pants....must be a boy thing

Getting their ballons made..

Humoring me for one picture with their glasses on...Joshua picked out the red ones, no other color would good enough and Morgan loved the purple ones..

These guys were funny... painting themselves up and then being as still as they could. Once I took a picture of this guy he went PSST...and pointed towards his bucket for me to drop some change in... we obliged him, I mean after all...I did take a picture :)

The Saint Louis Cathedral from a different angle..

We found this lady in the Square that made head bands out of dried flowers, so Morgan bought some.

Tabasco....a Louisiana favorite

Ok..how cheesy can this get :)

The lion fish at the Aquriam

In the rain forest at the aquarium...and you see the extreme in the kids shirts?? Well it was over 76 degrees that December Day! It was literally warm enough for Morgan to wear a tank top.

Why HELLO there.... what big smile you have.... looks like he's sucking on his bottom lip, huh??

This was feeding time for the manta rays.. It was a frenzy, they were so cool to watch. I love to watch them, they always look like they are smiling, like nothing ever gets them down ;)

I just LOVE the clown fish. They are so adorably cute...

Making Aliens

Joshua wanted an alien maker for Christmas and Aunt Lon bought it for him. He was crazy about this toy and loved how you could cut the aliens in half and alien 'ooze' would come out :)

Be Glad of Life

I took these pictures of Morgan at the Dallas Arboretum, and thought it would be fun to scrapbook it...


Playing in the water fall was her reward after taking pictures in the patch that day :)

Morgan's Bible reading

I am so far behind on my blogging, but I will get back in the swing of things soon and post pictures and other fun stuff. I had to share my conversation with Morgan tonight. She was doing her daily Bible devotion and came to ask me about spending time with God. She said, 'I say 2 prayers every night, the Lord's prayer, and then I have my conversation with Him'. How do I spend time with Him?" So we talked about it for a minute, and she decided that she really just wanted to put on some praise and worship music and sing and dance. She loves to sing and dance especially when we are at church to praise and worship music. We have plenty here at the house and with the new radio system her Paw-Paw got her for Christmas, she listens to her music and can worship whenever she wants. I think the idea of sitting quietly for a few minutes waiting for God to talk to her made her a bit nervous, but that will change as her relationship grows and she matures. So I told her I loved that she knew the Lord's prayer by heart because I don't even know it by heart, and she says, 'Well, you can have my pillow. It will take you about a week to learn it reading it everyday." Her Mo'mie (Grandmother in french) made her a pillow with the Lord's prayer on one side, and it is her favorite pillow. She went to sleep every night reading the Lord's Prayer till she remembered it.

Pictures of Marc and I

We finally had pictures done of just us.. Marc and I hadn't had any pictures that were decent since we got married. So we called our very talented photographer friend Jennifer and told her what we wanted. We wanted her to treat us like we were engaged. The idea here is to show that we are still in love after all these years, and it's OK to take a picture without your children in it LOL. So the focus was meant to be on us, and we had family pics done a few weeks later. We had such a great time, and people were actually congratulating us while were doing our pictures. So we got the idea across. Between Jennifer's ideas and mine, I was so happy with my images, and I will treasure them always..

Dear God

At church Sunday it came time to pray. While we were all praying, Joshua decided to scribble out his own prayer to God. He said, Dear God, please bring me some Night Vision 'Gobbles' (night vision goggles), it's all I have ever wanted. Joshua doesn't believe in Santa Clause, so as far as he was concerned if he was gonna get those Night Vision Goggles, God was gonna have to bring it to him. Well that night, we celebrated Christmas in our home with the kids because we were leaving the next day for Baton Rouge. Joshua got those 'gobbles', and he was so excited. Morgan had asked for a pink guitar. We hid the guitar and wrapped up the pick and guitar strap. She was so excited when she opened them. I told her she would have to wait till next Christmas to get the guitar. She grinned real big knowing I was kidding. We told her to go find it, and she played her little heart out most of the evening. I will be posting pictures soon.

Here he is with his Night Vision 'Gobbles'
Morgan with her hot pink guitar. She was very specific in wanting an accoustic guitar.

Daddy reading the birth of Jesus as we do every year before we open our gifts. There would be no Christmas without Christ.