Here’s a little-known fact about my family: my stepdad and mom raise chickens so they don’t have to buy eggs.

Actually that isn’t a little-known fact if you know me at all because I think it is so fun and I tell everyone the first chance I get. (Even though I actually do not like birds at all. I appreciate the process from afar.)

Over dinner one night my stepdad dropped the bombshell on me that he buys his chickens from a nearby Amish community. Talk about taking interesting and multiplying it by fascinating! I was hooked, and made him promise to take me along the next time he ventured out there.

We picked a date and I wrote it in big block letters in my planner. I was eagerly awaiting my visit with the Amish. Finally the date arrived! Did you guys know that there is an Amish community in Mississippi? I did not.

It was a little tricky to find (translation: there is no way I would have ever found it, or my way home, were it not for my stepdad.) I clutched my camera (though I was careful not to actually photograph any of the people so as not to offend) as we approached the ten or twelve houses sprawled across a large plot of land.

This windmill is used to draw their water up from the well below:

Each “house” has several buildings associated with it.  The house below had a barn, a greenhouse, a shed used as a shop to sell vegetables, and several other storage buildings for keeping their horse-drawn buggies, woodpile, etc. Oh and we can’t forget the outhouse.  (and we have just landed on the biggest hurdle in my surviving as a member of the Amish community. Well, that and the lack of wifi…)

By the mailboxes were signs indicating which goods that family has to sell. They add or remove signs based on the season and the crops. There was a wide range from vegetables to leather goods to soaps and candles, and so on. I loved the handlettered signs:

All of the families had these gourds hanging near their homes. My stepdad told me they are to attract birds that protect the crops from insects and other threats.

The people were very quiet and friendly, though they seemed shy. Everyone wears handmade clothes, the guys in pants/suspenders and straw hats, the girls in dresses and bonnets. I would have loved to sit and ask them questions about their life for hours, but everyone seemed very busy, doing chores or tending the little sheds that served as shops, even the smaller children, so I did my best to stay out of their way and not distract them. The children seemed to have a hard time keeping their eyes off of us though, I am sure they are curious about the strangers who visit.

This is their schoolhouse:

I noticed the hats hanging out on the porch of this family’s house, and we figured they must be getting ready for the next day’s Sunday service, which takes place in different house each week.

The whole experience was so interesting to me, I can’t wait to go back when they get their corn crop in. On this trip we bought: eggplants, onions, tomatoes, homemade bread, peanut brittle, and a blueberry pie.

Earlier this summer, I headed out with Haley and Matthew for their engagement session, and we had a blast!  (hey, I just noticed that their outfits are totally color-coordinated with my website :D )

I think Matthew was a little skeptical of this whole photo session thing at first, lol:

But pretty soon they loosened up :)

This next one is my favorite from the whole day, I think:

Trains make great props :)

Love the summery colors in this one:

I had a little fun with these next two:

You never know what’s going to happen in a phone booth:

Big thanks to Haley and Matthew for being such great sports, can’t wait for your wedding later this summer!

A quick post to share some photos from a recent session with some friends and their super cute kid:

Haaave you met Jack?

I was so excited when I saw this next photo, because it reminded me of a shot from the very first time I met Jack, when he was about two months old:

What a difference, huh?

Whenever I see Jack, the first thing he usually says to me is “BAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!”  So I wasn’t surprised to find that he was never far from his beloved soccer ball:

See it?

Oh, my.  Those lashes.

Jack was completely transfixed by the train display in this window.  Made for an unusual family portrait, huh?

Trains make Jack do a happy dance:

Those EYES just kill me dead.

What’s that Dad?  You said don’t touch THIS?

And finally, want to know how to tell when your subject is DONE with his photoshoot?

Coming soon:  Awesome shots from Haley and Matthew’s engagement session!

Oh, Twitter. You have turned me into a lazy blogger. If I can’t say it in 140 characters or less, it doesn’t seem worth the effort.

But wait, here’s a subject that’s worthy of 140 or more character devotion: my friend Jen. She’s been on my mind lately, maybe because she packed up and moved all the way across the country (not okay!) or possibly because she just got engaged (that part is okay.) Maybe because in the near future I am flying to Arizona to take her engagement photos (totally, super okay.)

Sidebar: Have I mentioned that she now lives a mere 30 minutes away from Tombstone, Arizona? Which is the setting of one of my favorite movies ever? Oh, yes. We will be stopping by old Tombstone during my visit.  There is no getting out of it!

Just be prepared for a lot of photos entitled “I’m Your Huckleberry” upon my return. Or a multitude of other caption possibilities, as my friend Katie handily supplied: “Allow me to present a pair of fellow sophisticates”, “I don’t think I’m gonna let you arrest me today”, “If I thought you weren’t my friend, I just don’t think I could bear it”, “I know! Let’s have a spelling contest”, and of course: “well, BYE.”

What was I talking about? Oh right, Jen! (Sorry, I get sidetracked whenever the occasion to quote movie lines presents itself.) Jen and I have known each other since the 7th grade. Our friendship has lasted through 14-year-old awkwardness, learning to drive, cashiering together at the grocery store, countless groundings, a short stint as roommates, (where we learned that best friends don’t always equal good roommates, sheesh), graduating high school and going our separate ways for college. It even survived the time I thought I nearly killed her.

Before I dive into that story, I first need to introduce you to my high school ride. Prepare to get jealous.   Meet the 1987 Volvo Station Wagon.  (Mine was missing the gas cap door for an extra touch of class.)

That car and I did some serious damage (literally) in the two-ish years I owned it. I backed into a tree, drove it into (and out of) a ditch, nearly took off a high school classmate’s passenger door (though I still blame his passenger for flinging the door open right as I was pulling into the parking spot,) and of course, possibly gave poor Jen a concussion.

And you know what? That car barely had a scratch on it–it was a TANK. I’m telling you this because it is important to understand how heavy, unyielding, and very METAL this car was. You didn’t dent it, it dented YOU.

Now on that fateful day, I picked Jen up on my way to school in the midst of a torrential downpour. I am talking, can’t-see-the-road-even-with-your-wipers-on-full-blast, yards-and-gutters-flooded-within-minutes kind of rain. We pulled into the parking lot and sat, pondering whether we should wait to see if the rain would let up, or make a run for it. (Obviously we weren’t the kind of kids who planned ahead and actually carried an umbrella.) We finally concluded that the rain wasn’t going anywhere and decided to go for broke. Hands on the door handles, we counted down, flung our doors open, and bolted to the back of the car, where our bookbags were waiting in the hatch.

I opened the hatch and we reached in to grab our bags. Backpack over my shoulder, I slammed the hatch down, ready to take off running toward the school. But for some reason, the door didn’t latch. Once again, I slammed the hatch down, and as I was doing so, I saw Jen out of the corner of my eye, sprawled on the ground in the middle of a giant puddle.

I bent down to to see what happened, and she said, “I don’t know! I was grabbing my backpack and then I blacked out and next thing I knew I was in a puddle on the ground!”

Now, our details are a little bit fuzzy here, but after many MANY discussions of this fateful event, (yeah, this is a topic we like to revisit from time to time) we have come to the conclusion that Jen must have been a little bit slower getting her bag out of the car, and in my haste, I…slammed the hatch down on her head. ON HER HEAD. I know. I KNOW.

I guess that explains why the door didn’t latch. Poor Jen had to go the rest of the day completely soaked from head to toe (though by the time it was all said and done, I too, was completely drenched–but I’m not the one who got my head smashed in a Volvo, so no complaints here,) and with a massive headache (probably a concussion–we were dumb kids and didn’t even get her checked out.)

And you know what? Despite my nearly killing her with my tank of a car, Jen still wants me to be in her wedding. And that’s good, because you know, Jen, if I thought you weren’t my friend, I just don’t think I could bear it.

Today was a sweet day.  I slept in, whiled away the morning/early afternoon at the bookstore, came home with some new reads, and then had a late lunch with my dad and my brother.

A quick snap–I’m trying to train myself that when it comes to photographing my life, I don’t always have to wait for perfect lighting and pretty backdrops. Sometimes you have to just TAKE the picture! It’s more about capturing the moment you’re sharing with people you care about. :)

Then I wandered around town and enjoyed the fact that SPRING!  has arrived!  Yay!  Sorry Winter, but I am not sorry to see you go!  Spring makes me feel like a kid again–who needs to grow up, right?  :)

Of course I had to round the evening off with sweet Holly: