Like many of you, I’ve spent the last few days thinking about the past year, and looking forward to the new one.  I’ve made a list of goals for 2010, and I look forward to this coming year with a great deal of hope.  And as I look back over the past year, I am filled with so much gratitude, it’s really hard to express.

My personal life has been full of fun times and lots of love this past year, and my professional life has been full as well…. thanks to many of you who are reading this!  So I just wanted to take a minute and write up this post to say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who chose me to do your portraits this year, and to all of you who have supported me as I continue to try and live out this dream of being a photographer.  I hope all of you have a year full of blessings and love, and I hope that this time next year, we’ll all be looking back at 2010 and thinking it was one of our happiest years ever!

And of course I couldn’t let a blog post go by without posting pictures!  So here is a small selection of some of my favs from 2009 that never managed to make it into my blog for some reason.
Enjoy!  And have a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Senior sessions aren’t just for high school seniors you know!

Last Friday evening I had a super fun senior session with Melissa.  She’s graduating from SUU next month and wanted some great shots to send out in her announcements (and of course some to keep for herself)!   A storm was coming over the mountains and headed right towards us, but we got through our session before the wind picked up and the rain started that night.  Whew!

Here are just a few of my favs (Isn’t she so cute??  Her boyfriend’s a lucky guy!):

Congratulations on your graduation, Melissa!  I know you’ve got nothing but great things ahead of you!

Well here they are!

She finally decided on her hair style, so we headed to the great outdoors this weekend to get some fabulous shots of my sister in her beautiful wedding dress.  Isn’t she gorgeous?

These are just some of my favs (there were SOOOO many I just love)…

This past weekend my sister Liz wanted to get some “bridal” shots done, since she finally has her wedding dress put together.  As you know, I much prefer outdoor portraits, but the wind was FIERCE this weekend so we had to bring it indoors.

She still hasn’t settled on how she’s going to wear her hair, and after we spent a while getting these portraits, she decided this probably isn’t how she’s going to wear it.  I’m sure she’ll change her mind again a couple dozen more times, but I thought I’d share these anyway.  No matter how she decides to wear her hair… she’s always gorgeous.

The good news is, that means there will be  another “official” bridal session coming up soon!  Stay tuned!

At the end of 2007, I got a call from one of the leaders of the Young Women’s organization at my church.  She asked if I would be willing to help with a project they had envisioned for 2008.  Throughout the year, they wanted to have me do a short portrait session with each girl and design a personalized magazine cover for them, as an inspirational gift for their birthday.

Of course I said yes.  I would have LOVED something like that when I was their age!  I think it was a really really neat idea… something they could look at and feel proud about and keep forever.  I especially liked that they wanted the “magazine” name to be Standing Strong, and we made sure all of our “teasers” on the cover were about each girl’s special talents and the wonderful things that make them so strong in these hard times.

Now that the year is over, I thought I’d share the covers with you.  They were all full of personal info, so I had to blur out the words, but I think you’ll see how neat they were…