Author: lauraherr8

Dear Alexa and Zach,

You are both awesome.

It was a joy to be able to grab a few quick shots of you both on Easter.

We are so excited to see that great things that God will continue to do through you both.

We love you!

Happy Easter!  One of my new Easter favorites over the past few years has been waking up early to go to the Sunrise Service.  Well, maybe not so much the waking up early part, if I’m being honest.  Besides that, there is just something so amazing about spending Easter morning, watching the sun rise over the water and reflecting on the resurrection of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

A pretty great crowd of our church family and friends gathered together this morning at Newport Beach.

We sang songs

And listened to a pretty amazing message from our new friend, Eric.  He is a pastor from Zambia and we were so blessed to hear him share this morning.

Afterwards, we drove back to our church to enjoy a delicious Easter breakfast cooked up by some of the men from our church.  Everything was delicious and we really enjoyed it all.  After we ate, I asked my friend Olivia to take a quick picture of our family.

Then, I took a quick picture of her and her beautiful friend.

And then I proceeded to take a few cute pictures of her brother and his amazing girl friend, who was here visiting this past week.

As friends were trickling in for the Sunday Service, I grabbed a few more quick shots.

We have so many wonderful friends in our church family and we are so, so thankful for all of them.

The Sunday Easter Service was wonderful.  It was good to be surrounded by amazing people and to focus on the Jesus’ resurrection being the reason why we celebrate Easter.

After the service, we headed home.  We don’t have any more activities today, which makes this Sunday unique for our family.  Usually we would have Sunday School, Bible Study and College Group.  The kids had fun finding their Easter eggs, which held a few yummy pieces of candy and lots of quarters.  The rest of our day has been spent resting and relaxing.  I hope that you all had a wonderful Easter!

A Bad Friday, becomes a Good Friday when you remember that Jesus loved you so much that He died on the cross for your sins.  Dying on the cross seems pretty bad.  But giving humanity a chance for a right relationship with God in heaven?  That’s pretty good if you ask me.

It’s Easter Weekend.  And for many, that means egg hunts, candies and chocolates.  We are finally getting some “warmer” weather here and it looks like it’s going to be an amazing weekend.  I personally don’t mind the extra hype of the weekend.  My childhood memories always included a focus on celebrating Jesus’ death and resurrection, but also being super excited to color eggs and find the big Easter baskets that my Mom would create and hide for me and my sisters.

However, I know that for me, this weekend is so incredibly significant.  I want to embrace the love and the grace that flowed down from the cross, when Jesus died to pay for my sins.  I want to celebrate the joy of the resurrection, and fact that I can have a right relationship with God, because of what Jesus sacrificed.  It’s powerful and true, and it stirs up my hearts emotions when I think of it.

So tonight.  We will celebrate a Good Friday at 7:00pm at Eastport Bible Church (386 Montauk Highway, Eastport, NY).  My amazing husband will be sharing the message and I know for fact that it is going to be awesome.  If you are local, we would love to have you join us.  Then, on Sunday, we will wake up early, for our church’s Sunrise Service at 7:00am out at Newport Beach in East Moriches.  We will sing and celebrate Jesus’s resurrection, while watching the sun come up over the water.  Afterwards, we will enjoy an Easter breakfast, with our church family and then the Easter Service which will start at 9:30am.  Again, everyone is welcome to join us for this wonderful day.

Afterwards, we’ll do a little celebration with our kids.  There will probably be hidden eggs (the plastic ones, though, not the dyed ones, because I can’t figure for the life of me what to do with perfectly good eggs that have been hard boiled, but then colored on) and a smidgen of candy.  I won’t go overboard on the candy though, because with Christian having his first cavity, we are trying to be reasonable in that area.  We’ll probably eat something, though I’m just realizing that I should probably figure that out.  Granted, I have all the yummy sides planned, because those are my favorites, it’s just trying to figure out that elusive “meat dish” that would work out best.    And then we will relax.  And bask in the magnitude and glory of a weekend well spent.  I know that I’m really looking forward to it and hope that you enjoy this amazing weekend as well.

With my photography business, my sessions are primarily with children and families.  However, this past week, I had the privilege of working one on one with a beautiful woman, my new friend Estrella.  We met through the Facebook ESM Community page and she contacted me recently to set up a session.

We had a lovely time.  We met up at a friend’s home for our session.  March has been so cold here, which makes things a touch more challenging when you work on location and with natural light.  The home was beautiful and the setting was perfect though.

It was a wonderful experience for me to work one on one with Estrella.  In my photography business thus far, I’m more familiar chasing around toddlers and working to get older children and teens to smile naturally.  However, I really enjoyed working with someone who just smiled so easily and followed suggestions readily.  I also just loved the confidence and beauty that Estrella presented as we worked through our session.

I wish the very best to my new friend Estrella as she works to put her book together.  She is smart and has overcome so much.  Her book shares her story and her advice to others.  Thank you Estrella for a wonderful session and I am so excited to see the great things that will come with your new book!

Tonight we celebrated the Sweet Sixteenth birthday of our dear friend Victoria.  We’ve known her for practically forever and she is an incredibly amazing and beautiful girl.  She is an active and important part of our youth group and she adores our Ellee girl (the feeling is quite mutual on Ellee’s end).

I’ll be honest.  Before we moved to New York, I had never really heard of people throwing big Sweet Sixteen parties.  I figured it was merely the age right after fifteen and before the slightly less exciting age of seventeen.

However, in the past ten years, I’ve had the privilege of attending a good number of Sweet Sixteens.  I’ve photographed some and considering the fact that we continually work with teenagers, we have been invited to quite a few as well.

Victoria’s party was fantastic.  I knew most of the kids because most of them are a part of our youth group.

It was so fun to see them all dressed up and having a great time.

Ellee played shy for awhile, but it didn’t take long before she was all in.

Victoria is such a wonderful girl.  She also has wonderful friends as well.  Friends are such an important thing when you’re a teenager, and it always makes me so happy, when our students surround themselves by good friends.

It was so good to see Victoria’s mom and when she introduced me to her sister, I figured I’d better take a quick picture.  I love sister shots and it always reminds me of how much I love and miss my own sisters.

Later on in the evening, everyone gathered around as Victoria did her candle lighting.

This is by far my favorite tradition of most Sweet Sixteens.  I love hearing the stories and memories and what makes her friends and family so special.  Victoria was so sweet too, as she shared a candle with Jer, Christian, Ellee and I.  It definitely made me tear up to hear the kind words of our dear friend.

Victoria had many special candles and many friends to share them with.

Ellee loved watching the candle lighting.

More Candle Lighting fun.

After her candles were all lit,

it was time to make a wish and then blow them all out.

Victoria then shared the sweetest dance with her Dad.

Followed by lots more dancing.  We all had a great time celebrating Victoria’s big day.

I’ll finish up with one more shot.  How amazing is this cake?  Since it was late, we had to leave before they cut it, but it was so incredible that I can’t imagine eating it after admiring it all in one piece.  Happy, happy birthday Dear Victoria!  We love you so much and are so thankful for your special day!

Yesterday, I ended my birthday by hanging out with some pretty awesome kids at our Youth Group Movie Night.

Their awesomeness looked a little bit like this…

And this.

Before we started the movie, the students sang a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday,” led by the great Jack Hatton.  It was kind and melodious and definitely made me feel quite loved.

We had a great turnout of leaders and students.

It may have been that they were just all so excited to see Napoleon Dynamite.  Or it may have been because we just have an amazing youth group.  After watching the movie, although quite funny, I’m guessing it was the later.

Christian had fun helping out with the popcorn machine.

And Ellee had fun eating the popcorn.

It was great to have a few of our college students home on their Spring Break.

All I’m saying, is you gotta love a picture of the pre-movie texting checks.

And you gotta love this picture of these awesome guys.

And this picture was pretty nice as well.

Movie night was a great success.  A huge thanks to Jack for handling the popcorn machine like a Pro.

And a huge, huge thanks to my dear friend Emily for making this amazing birthday cake for me.  It was a beautiful and delicous way to end a busy 32nd birthday.

This past weekend, I learned that Facebook would no longer allow me to share my blog posts.  It was some something to do with some strange feud they had going with Google (who runs Blogger).  I was a bit frustrated, because Facebook is the primary way that I share my posts with friends and family.  I started blogging two years ago as a way to share my life and photography.  It’s been a great experience and something that I definitely want to continue.  That being said, I’m working on creating something new and here it is.  It’s still me, it’s still a blog, but I’m using WordPress.  To my knowledge, they don’t have any issues with Facebook and I think it’s going to be good.  Because change is good.  And trying new things is also good.  And I’m ready to embrace good.  Even though it’s new, and a little different.

So here goes.  My first WordPress post will look something a little like this.

This afternoon, after picking the kids up from school, Christian finished his homework, grabbed a snack and then we headed over to Nathan Tuttle’s workshop so that he could work on this:

This is Christian’s first year of Stockade, a program for boys in Third through Sixth grade.  He’s absolutely loved it.  We have some pretty amazing men in our church that run the program.  He goes each week to play games, learn good things about God and have a great time with a wonderful group of guys.  They do all sorts of guy things, and they always finish up the year with a Shape and Race Derby.  They basically start off with a block of wood, shape it and then race it.

There’s actually a few steps in between there, that involve sanding and painting, and that is what he worked on today.  One of Nathan’s sons, Jonathan was there to help him out.

It was really fun for Christian to be able to spend time with Nathan Tuttle and Jonathan.  When I went to pick him up, Nathan took some time to show us some of the amazing machines in his woodworking shop.

Nathan Tuttle is known around our town for his incredible craftsmanship with woodworking.

It’s kind of funny, because we’ve known him for ten years.  He and his family are a key part of our church.  He is an elder on our church board and we really loved having his three boys in youth group throughout the years.  That being said, I never thought about the fact that he makes a living crafting and creating amazing pieces of woodworking.

It was really fun seeing some of the things that he does and the machines that he uses to create great pieces.

It’s good to create.  It’s good to take something ordinary and craft it into something meaningful and new.  I’m hoping that I can do this with my new blog.  As I continue into another year of sharing and writing and creating, I’m looking forward to the new things that will come.  I thank you for stopping by and for sharing this journey with me.