family pictures 2016.

our little family of 4 had some pictures taken a few weeks ago. we just got them back and i am in love. usually family pictures are stressful and chaotic and you feel rushed and not ready and sometimes kind of disappointed in the results after all that effort. or at least that's been my experience with them haha. not always! but with my girls it feels so much harder. take their newborn pictures, for example - you always see these perfect newborn photos with a sweet happy sleeping baby in these cute poses and cute settings. and then i did them for both my babies, and they were everything but! i mean, i guess we got a few good ones of both babies, but they were both just awake and unhappy and wouldn't cooperate and usually the pictures just didn't turn out how i imagined in my head. which is a bummer, especially when you spend a chunk of change on them.

this was the first set of family pictures that i think went so perfectly smooth. i wasn't stressed about it. i had a few weeks from when i booked it to the actual session so i had plenty of time to figure out outfits, etc (which i promised myself not to buy anything new for those, i just pulled stuff together from what we all already had, and i'm kind of proud of myself ;)). i didn't have to worry about finding a location (outside) or weather because we just did them in her studio. so easy! of course outside pictures in the fall in Utah are beautiful, but we've done a handful of outdoor sessions and i was actually excited to just do them indoors and not have the added stress of doing it elsewhere. we were on time (!!). we were only there about 45 minutes (it was a 'mini' session) and the girls did really well (although lola did have her fingers in her mouth a lot of the time, but whatever. i don't even care). it was just us and our photographer and it was quiet and easy and i just loved it. alright. onto the picture overload. (i did narrow it down so this isn't all of them)

photo credit: Jen Herem Photography