birthday

Vegas! | Mikaela Joy: El Paso Portrait Photographer

Have I told you about my awesome Thanksgiving yet?  

As we are in the midst of our next little vacation to Washington for the holidays, I realize that I'm a little overdue to share the images from our last one.  Over Thanksgiving weekend, little man turned 3, so naturally we took him to Vegas.  That's what everyone does for their third birthday, right?

Just kidding- really Vegas worked out to be a great middle point for meeting up with my family.  My brother in law hooked us up with an Airbnb right by the strip and set everything up where we could spend the holiday and little man's bday together.  Plus he treated the grown ups to a night out on the town, so that was pretty dang cool.

When planning a trip for Vegas I spent a lot of time thinking about photo possibilities.  But when it came down to it I really didn't end up getting my camera out much.  I took some documentary style photos of the kids together, but mostly I just enjoyed the trip.  

My favorites ended up being the black and white photos of the kids playing in the house in their PJs.  I love the realness.  It made me want to shoot a lot more work like this- documentary style photos are fun!

Anyway, here are some photos from the trip. 

Side note-  Get ready for a MAJOR photo overload from this Washington trip.  There is snow here.  And horses.  It's a freaking winter wonderland here and I don't plan on putting my camera down at all!

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Birthday Riley!

Happy thanksgiving everyone!

We are in double duty here baking both pies and birthday cakes, because as we celebrate thanksgiving, we will be celebrating little man turning two as well! 

That's a little hard to wrap my mind around- two.  It seems like he was just a tiny little thing that couldn't do anything but eat and poop.  Now he's a full blown toddler with the attitude to go with it.

Since his birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year, it seemed only fitting to do his 2 year photos as a pumpkin pie smash.  In doing this, I learned that my kiddo absolutely does NOT like pumpkin pie.  Which doesn't seem right, considering it's both my and Robert's favorite part of thanksgiving.  Oh well.

We are off to celebrate so I better wrap this up with this message-  Happy thanksgiving! I hope you all have a wonderful day of food, family, and friends.  That's what we'll be doing!

Happy Birthday Riley!

Happy Birthday Riley!

This time last year I was probably sitting on the couch, cuddled up with a little human that somehow (and I still couldn't wrap my mind around this)- I created.  He was probably sleeping, his tiny body taking up barely any space on my chest.  Or he might have been trying to breastfeed, something that we were both learning and struggling with.  But one thing I know for sure I was doing at this time last year- staring at him in complete awe.