Matt & Karisa: Cousins

These pictures were taken toward the end of March. They were taken as a surprise Mother's Day gift for the grandmas. :) Becca arranged for her photographer sister (Alissa) to come to town, and we all hung at Luke & Becca's house and had a fabulously crazy picture time! It.was.nuts. To say the very least. There were our two kiddos, Benton, and Alissa's THREE kids. The oldest of these SIX kids was 4. The noise and activity levels where astounding, but I'd say we walked away with some pretty good pictures. :)

The biggest challenge was getting all three cousins to stay in the frame happily at the same time. Pretty sure it never happened. As you can see by Makenna's stance (and/or blur), she was ready to bolt every second. And as you can see by Mattaya's expressions, she was weary of waiting for the younger two to cooperate and GET THIS DONE!

(end of March means, Benton had just turned 1...Makenna was 1.5...and Mattaya was 3.5)

I swear no children were drugged for the shooting of this picture.

"Ohhhhhhh love."

This makes my heart happy.

This girl loves to twirl!

And she does love to pray. It's truly amazing what random things she thanks God for. It's pretty typical to hear her thank God for the good day, the sunshine, that we could go for a bike/stroller ride, that we could go to the playground or have friends over...but then there are things like "and thank you, Lord, Esau and Jacob can come togevver". Whaaaat? :) Apparently the one story from her Bible that struck a chord with her was when Jacob returned to Esau (and the picture shows them embracing). Oh how we love her. :)

Not sure if this was a "woohoo" or a "so big". ;)

(Or maybe an "if this show doesn't get moving, I'm going to EXPLODE".)

Glad to have gotten a REAL smile from her. :)

This is Makenna's pouty-stink-eye cry that she uses to communicate that she has been gravely wronged...and YOU'RE to blame.

Nice that she can turn it off and start blowing kisses. :)

This is a "so big" picture. Or as Kenna would say: "Thohhh!"

We love this little ham!

This is how she sings "I've Got the Joy Joy Joy Joy Down in My Heart".

And when she sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", she has to look at her twinkling fingers. :)

A rousing game of peekaboo. Or as Makenna says: "I THEEEE! I THEEE oo!"

Clapping? Praying? Could also be an act of rebellion/displeasure. Sometimes when she's unhappy/frustrated, she'll tightly clasp her hands together and grunt as if to say "I'm so upset I don't even know what to do!"

"And that's all I'm going to say about that."

(Doesn't she kind of look like Gramma Catherine here?)

Can you say "protest cry"?

And here is where Makenna began testing out her sprint skills.

Tried setting her on a box so she couldn't run. Didn't work. She would maintain eye contact with Alissa while slowly slithering off the box, thinking she was so sneaky we wouldn't notice or something.

Oh Makenna--way to make a gong show out of a photo session. :)

These two were actually being pretty cooperative considering how long we'd been at it.

And then we took the "3-ring circus" and put it in a box! Brilliant, right? Except for one thing. Sure they were all forced to stay in the frame...but Mattaya figured out how to hide.