30 Years!

My parents are celebrating 30 wonderful years of marriage this summer. My sisters and I became the "party planning committee" for a couple months and put together a great family get-together this week. We had over 40 family members and celebrated on a gorgeous summer evening. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. We love you!

What's a party without a little Cafe Latte dessert?! YUM!

Father's Day!

A couple days ago, I took some headshots of my dad. As many of you know, he's an author/speaker guy and wanted some better pictures to put on his future books, current website and other new publicity stuff he's doing. So... he asked his daughter to do them! Cool! The mosquitoes were horrible in my parents' yard, so we managed to get through pictures fast!

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Love you!

Cabin Fun!

What a great weekend getaway! Here are a couple pics from being on the lake. Having my new camera is wonderful when taking pictures of Brian waterskiing! If you can click on this first picture so it fills your screen, you can see so many of the little water beads. Hopefully a better lens is in my future so the pics are even better! My old camera will never be taking waterskiing pics ever again!

The water on the lake is so clear and clean! Gotta love northern MN.

Hey!

One more!

I forgot about this image. I thought it was so cute!

The Wasserman Wedding

A few posts back I mentioned that I would be posting some wedding pics! That weekend finally arrived! My high school friend, Katie, had an 18-month engagement to Ben. Despite many wedding planning bumps in the road (you Minnesotans all heard that news story about the bridal shop closing... yep, Katie's dress was from there, but she somehow managed to get her dress despite the shop closing unexpectedly ONE month before her wedding!), the wedding was wonderful and perfect in every way! The weather couldn't have been better and both bride and groom looked stunning!

Luckily (for my sake), there was only one photographer, so I got to play "second shooter" for the entire day! 400-500 images later, I was exhausted, but pleased! It was SO fun to follow everyone around and just snap away at all the candid opportunities. I even got to use my 4G memory card for the first time (not sure why that excites me so much...)!! The pictures seem to be in reverse order! Oops!

Best wishes to the very happy couple... vacationing in Jamaica... lucky ducks!

A couple of the groomsmen goofing around while the real photographer wasn't looking!

The photographer suddenly forgot something, handed his big camera off to Abbey, one of the bridesmaids, and then ran off for a while. So... what to do, what to do... she turned it on and started snapping! It was hilarious and the photographer will have quite a surprise when he looks at his images! :)

Ben's niece, Eden. She was sooo sweet.

Katie requested this shot, so I gave it my best attempt! Her bouquet is unusually similar to mine :)

Long story, but a funny one. If you know Katie, ask her.

Getting ready...

This event was a blast! Let's see... I've done their engagements and lots of wedding photos... so what is next? Baby?? ;) Love you guys!

Graduation and Grandpa Gil

This weekend has been really fun, but also very exhausting. I think I saw just about every single member of my family and Brian's.

Brian's brother, David, graduated from Bethel University on Saturday. It was a great ceremony and we're so proud of him! The recessional at the ceremony was mine and Brian's wedding recessional! It was fun to hear it again :)

Then, on Sunday afternoon, my parents, sister and I headed down to Mt. Lake (my dad's hometown) for a Memorial Day celebration in "the park" (gotta love small towns). Memorial Day is very important to my Grandpa as he served in WWII, participated in the legislature in his younger years and has been involved in Memorial Day services for many years. We are proud of him and what he did for our country all those years ago. The Esau family is quite large in number, so we all gathered at my aunt and uncle's turkey farm for a big bbq on Monday. There is always too much food, but its always good and we have a great time as a family. Here are a couple pics from the weekend.

Flying as high as the sky

My friend and co-worker, Erin, asked me to come take some shots at her track meet. She is the pole vaulting coach at Concordia Academy. I was really nervous about going to the meet because I had no idea what to expect! I arrived a bit late and missed her only girl vaulter, but I did get to see 3 of the guys. Wow, they were good! I'm not so sure how the pics turned out, but I had fun and it was a gorgeous afternoon to be outside (yes, I did have on 30 spf).

This little girl was so funny! She showed up behind the fence (as in... in the neighborhood, not on the school grounds) with her dad. She took his camera (with a bigger lens than I had) and starting taking pictures beside me of the vaulters through the fence. It was too precious not to capture. I asked her if she got the shot and she replied "Yes!" with a big smile.

First Love Shoot!

I've been excited to do this love shoot for about a month now! Katie is one of my best friends from high school. Us, along with a couple other girls, were inseperable and we even played in the band together (Katie and I both played flute and spent most of our time goofing around and eating candy during practice... so bad, I know... we were not the rebellious group if you can imagine). We sort of lost touch during college, but have reconnected since and its been nothing but fantastic! We are truly life-long friends. She met this wonderful man, Ben, and they are getting married VERY soon (you may even see some wedding pics within the month...). So, on Saturday evening, we went out to Centennial Lakes in Edina... gorgeous! Despite the WIND and random rain shower, it couldn't have been better! I hope you both enjoy the pics. I had a wonderful time doing my FIRST love shoot with you two, so thanks for asking and being so patient with me!

Rugby = Pain and Madness

Brian and I went to watch his brother's last rugby game. He's a senior at Bethel and has done a great job on the team the last few years. But wow, what a rough sport! Here are just a couple shots from today's cold and rainy game against St. Olaf (which ended in a tie).

This guy running got totally destroyed by the Bethel guys. They were running right at us!

And Brian... he held all my crap :)