Nothin' Much

Well not a ton is happening, but I have been trying to put a small collage together of my hubby & son together but I haven't been able to picture it. I was looking at my friend Jenna's myspace page and she had part of a worship song that says "Beautiful one I love, beautiful one I adore, Beautiful one my soul must sing." and she used that to describe her adorable son Clark. So I copied her (yes, I know...how creative). Anyway, above is the 20x10 collage I created to hang in our bedroom with the amazingly beautiful frame my daddy made. He is so creative, he makes these amazing frames, so if you need a frame made at a seriously decent price, like a simple 1inch (all the way around) frame in a 20"x20" is like $15, you don't get much better than that, he makes all my frames. My dad, my hero, he never ceases to amaze me. Anyway, here is the collage.

****Congrats to the Duman Family who's adorable daughter

Stella (love the name) won our contest!****

So Much Fun!

Sarah's baby Shower

Turin Family



Stanley Mac

Tristan & Hazel

On Friday we met Scott & Heather Overby and their darling 10 day old son Stanley Mac. He was naked for 98% of our session and didn't go to the bathroom at all! I'll have to say, I was impressed! Yesterday I had the honor to do a maternity/family/2 year old shoot for the Turin Family who is expecting baby #2 any time, their son Easton was so cute (as you can clearly see!) It was a really fun session. Then yesterday afternoon I photographed a baby shower for my cousin Sarah's friend Sarah. It was so fun. Sarah already has two girls, Hannah & Olivia and is expecting baby #3, a girl named Sophia. A really fun weekend for us!

On a personal note, Tristan had a daddy day yesterday and went to the dog park with daddy & papa and Hazel and then came home and didn't nap until 2:30pm! Yikes, he usually goes down about 12:30....that's when mommy generally needs quiet time!!! Hazel is getting big, she is 14 weeks old and 14 pounds (2 times her size when we got her!) she loves to ride in Tristan's car seat, whether he is in it or not!!!

I am super excited as Legacy Mount Hood Hospital, Portland Adventist Hospital and Calcagno Pediatrics have all agreed to allow me to decorate their establishments with our photos! At Mount Hood we will have about 20 newborn/maternity images hanging in the waiting area (as soon as you walk into the Family Birth Center), at Calcagno Pediatrics we will have about 16 images in their main waiting area as well as all over their research center, which gets less traffic, but it is still so cool to me that they wanted to hang our photos up!! Portland Adventist is just going through the final stages to make sure they aren't breaking a contract with FirstFoto, the place that does there newborn photos (that is the one we will be taking over in 2010).

Anyway, just an update on our lives. Mason was doing really well yesterday when I talked with his Aunt and Grandma, so please just keep praying for him. I will update you next week on how much we have raised and where the donation buckets are so that you can help support these awesome businesses that are helping support the Bell Family.

Have a GREAT Sunday!

An Update on the Bell Family

Maddox & Mason Bell

If you read the post below this one you will understand the rest of this post. :o)

First of all I want to thank everyone who has been praying for the Bell Family and donating to help offset their costs. Mason (the surviving twin) is still in the hospital and is undergoing lots and lots of testing. As of yesterday he is still on a feeding tube. Brandon and Leah are staying in a trailer on the hospital property so they can be close to their precious son, Mason.

There are lots of events that will be happening soon to help raise money for the Bell Family's costs:

May 17th - Action Motor Sports (Gresham Location) will have their annual Anniversary Event and will be raising money in support of the family.

June7th - Bogey's (next to Gresham Golf Course) will be having a fundraiser and auction

If you would like to donate directly to the Bell Family, please contact me at 503.960.6856 or Amy@fullofgracephotography.com to get more information on how to do that.

Please please continue to pray for them, they have so much on their plate, a funeral to plan, another child to support and try to get healthy, medical bills on top of every day expenses. We can't take away their pain but if we can alleviate the stress of having to worry about how to get the bills paid then we should do everything in our power. Thank you all for your prayers.

It never ceases to amaze me that people are so willing to give out of the kindness of their hearts to someone they have never met. Thank you all so much. God Bless each of you.

Grace,
John & Amy

A Personal Plea from a broken heart

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

At 1am on the 17th, I got a call from Mount Hood. A baby boy, born into heaven, he was a twin, the other little guy was alive. It isn't often that I get calls regarding twins, but I get Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep calls nearly weekly. I grabbed my bag, my file and my suitcase of backdrops/props and was at the hospital by 1:30am. I met the family (it happens to be a woman I went to high school with). I met the babies, and started photographing. The surviving twin was only able to join us briefly as he was still pretty stressed out from all that had happened and was in the nursery on oxygen. I called the hospital the next day to let the mom and dad know I would be bringing their images to them in the afternoon, but one of the nurses let me know that the family had been transferred to Emmanuel. The surviving twin had to have surgery and yesterday was having an MRI. Megan Gebhardt (my friend who makes the amazing memory boxes) went with me and gave the family one of her boxes and shared her story. It was amazing to see Megan who's grief is still raw, share her heart and love with a family she has never met. I share all of this with you because, as you can imagine, this family is devastated. I don't know much about them, but I do know that there hospital/funeral bills are going to be ENORMOUS, baby #1's funeral costs and all that comes with that, mom's hospital stay & surgery, baby #2's hospital stay and surgery etc. costs. We are in the process of setting up a "relief account" at Bank of America to raise money to help offset this families cost. If you know me at all, you'll know that I rarely ask for money (unless you owe it to me!!!) :o) But this family needs all the love, prayers and financial support we can give. If you can/want to give anything at all, please let me know and I will direct on how to do so. As soon as the bank account is up and running I will post a paypal link to it, but there are legal steps to go through to make it official and I am trying not to call the family too often so I don't overwhelm them anymore than they already are. I'll keep you posted as they give me permission to do so. Thanks Everyone.

Please click HERE to learn more about

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Just another goofy day!

Above: Tristan's Hilarious Jumping Video

Above: Tristan watching the video of himself in the video above this one!

Below: Tris & Aunt Stacy

It always boggels my mind that Tristan can think up the things he thinks up. This afternoon, "Aunt" Stacy came over, all of a sudden Tris went in my studio and got the bean-bag out of my closet and brought it into the living room. Above you can see the video! Watching him figure out where to put the beanbag and jump was so funny and then to hear him yelling the numbers made me cry I laughed to hard! He loves his "Aunt" Stacy, as you can see, he was copying the way she was sitting and then kissed her...we have such a cute kid! Also below you will see precious little Elias Mark, oh my he is so cute! I did his newborn session this morning, all of the other images are done and have been posted to the Recent Photo Session Page of Full of Grace's website, but this collage was so sweet!

***Don't forget our cutest baby photo contest is still going on, see the photos in my April 14th Blog and make sure you vote!***

Cutest Baby Photo Contest

Above: Stella


Above: Brynn




Above: Vernon


Above: Myiah


Above: London




We have just launched our Cutest Baby Contest! Please only vote 1 time per day for the next 2 weeks! The winner of the contest will receive a Precious Portraits Collection of 1 year of photography at 3, 6, 9 & 12 months! Make sure to forward this on to your friends and families to vote!!!
Have Fun!!

A Photographers Dream!

Today I had the distinct pleasure of photographing some of the most beautiful women in Gresham! The best part was at the end of the day we went to the dog park (yes, you read right) the dog park, and took some photos of Tori & Crystal. Seriously, shouldn't these girls be models??? It was so much fun to do all the photographs today!

A Day With No Pants

Today, our friends, Elise, Anton & Avery came over. We walked up to Fischer's Implement's (John Deere" and looked at all the tractors and trudged through the "forest" (a row of trees in front of the nursery) and came home and played in the back yard while Elise & I made peanut butter balls...so good. After they left I realized that Tris had been playing in the backyard with out his shoes on, just running around in the soggy grass with pants and socks, so I made him take his pants and socks off and as you can see it simply didn't deter him from playing in the grass. Currently he is laying on his bed trying to get my attention because as he mentioned when I layed him down for a nap, he wasn't tired. Sorry dude, mommy needs nap time too! I cleaned up since "GG", Great Grandma is coming for dinner tonight and tomorrow is the big "Ladies Hair, Make UP & Photography day" here. John and Tris will have the entire day to do as they please, which will most likely include a trip to the Clutch Place. because his car is dying....we may have to share the Saturn soon...yikes! Anyway, I get to spend all day tomorrow taking photos of beautiful women who have just been made over!!! It oughtta be fun!! Tris is still not asleep, still with no pants, oh well, at least he has his binky.

I just thought I'd add, that I had to stop in the middle of the post because Tristan was calling me from his room and it sounded kind of paniced, so I went in to check on him, below you will see clearly, that he had decided that bed wasn't for him so he got up on his dresser and got stuck!

Decompression

Today Tristan went to his grandma's house to hang out. He loves it there. They went to lunch with Great Grandma (known as GG) and Great Uncle Bill. He has so much fun when he is with them. In fact the only way John and I could get him to bed last night, after his photo shoot, was to tell him if he slept good, when he got up he could go to grandma's house. It worked. I had a meeting at Portland Adventist Hospital to see if in exchange for free framed newborn prints, if they would hang my work in and around the maternity ward. They are going to do it!!! This is a huge thing for us personally and for Full of Grace. This will hoepfully mean a ton of exposure for us. Then it was off to OHSU for a Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep session, a little boy, 32 weeks gestation, beautiful, his parents were just heart sick. I finally got home and needed quiet time. I am listening to my Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep music, it always helps me to cope. Some sessions are just much harder than others. Time to decompress.

Why I shouldn't take photos of my own family.

Today I was playing with Tristan, when like usual his shirt was soaked in his drool so I took his shirt off to change it and there he stood in his cute little jeans, barefoot with no shirt on. I realized in that moment how very cute he was. So in my infinite wisdom I decided that when John got home from work I would have them both shirtless and barefoot in cute jeans and do photos. Seriously, sometimes I think I live in dreamland. Because in that moment I really thought it would be cute. The photos speak for themselves. I didn't get the one of his freaking out when John put gel in his hair (he HATES that), nor did I get the one when he told me I was mean. That's just super. Anyway here are some "highlights" of our shoot.

A Truly Amazing Woman

So, as most of you know, John and I are a part of Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep, it deals in Infant Bereavement Photography. When a baby is born deceased or is not expected to survive, the hospital tells the families about our services and if they would like them, we are called in to photograph the baby and/or family. Everything we do for the families is completely free, we would never charge a family in such a great time of need. In December of 2007 I met the Gebhardt Family. I was called into to photograph their son Macsen who was born into Heaven. He was a full term baby and absolutely beautiful, as you can imagine the family is devastated. But Megan has found a way to honor Macsen's memory and keep it alive. Megan, is an incredibly strong Christian woman and incredibly talented. So she has begun to make memory boxes. Boxes that she will make and give to the families while they are still at the hospital so that they have a place to keep their precious baby's memories. She has put an amazing amount of thought into what she will give each family. Things like a herbal tea that helps to suppress breast milk, a journal to keep your thoughts in, a handmade/decorated little heart to hold a lock of the babies hair & hospital bracelet, and 2 candles that calm you down. She will be including lots and lots of resources that are local for these families. You can see the images above of what Megan has created. It costs her about $40 per box to make, if you would like to donate to her cause please contact me via email at Amy@fullofgracephotography.com As you can imagine she will eventually need monetary support as we have lots and lots of families that need this amazing gift she is giving.