Family Pictures!

For one of Andy's gifts THIS year (haha :) I gave him the gift of family pictures.

He has been saying for a long time that he wanted us to get some new ones...especially before Josh heads off on his mission.  Through the years we've had some family members take some with the best camera (or phone) that was available to us but our last ones that were done by a professional were 10 years ago...yikes!

So I contacted our good old friend Casey who did our wedding pictures and he was only happy to do it for us.  We had wanted to go up to the trailhead of Wayne's Loop where there was a great spot but a few days after we hiked it Andy ran into an old student that lives near there and he told him it had just barely been closed.  I had Andy drive up and scope out the situation for us and sure enough, it said due to insufficient parking the trail was closed until the city could do something about it...AND a No Trespassing sign had just been put up exactly in the spot we wanted our pictures :(  I was sad since I had wanted to try that spot for sentimental reasons.  It is in the same area as the place that Andy proposed.  Ironically, Andy said there was a family taking pictures there when he went to check it out.

Luckily Casey had another spot that he thought would be great so we went there instead.

It was so fun to see him and catch up a bit since it had been years since we had talked.

He and Andy met while they both worked on the grounds crew of the Logan Temple in college.

Ben was struggling...he had just come out of his really rough patch a couple of days before and he was not in the best mood.

I was stressed because of course I wanted these to turn out great but could not get Ben to cooperate.

 Well, Casey worked his magic and we actually got some shots of Ben smiling and not too obviously struggling to get away :)

This one is my favorite!!! 

I stressed over the clothes and color coordinating...I even ended up paying about $20 in shipping to get the right size of shirt for Ben on time.  I found it at Old Navy and wanted to base everyone else off of that one shirt but they didn't have even close to his size so I ordered it online.  Looking back on it I wish Josh and Abby weren't in the same solid color but, oh well...I'm just happy we got Ben to smile :)