Brandon and Angela

When Brandon started back at BYU he met a lovely girl named Angela. She lives in the same complex and is from Florida.  Most of my family had a chance to meet her over the summer when they were visiting Utah, but we hadn't been able to meet her, so we invited her to join us at the beach in August.

It was great to get to know Angela. She is a wonderful young woman and she and Brandon are a very happy couple.  We enjoyed having her with us that week!

Brandon did something completely out of character during that week. He repeatedly ASKED me to take pictures of him . . . . with Angela. They were happy to pose repeatedly and exuded such happiness that they made great photographic subjects!

Bailey made a sport of photobombing Brandon and Angela pictures!

 It is great to see Brandon so happy!

Our quest for family pictures

One of these days I'm going to gather up all our efforts at family pictures over the years and put it into one post. We have some great stories behind most of our tries for family photos.

For now, I'll just include some pictures of this year's attempt at the beach house. We decided to have Angela help us shoot some pictures with the beautiful coastline as a backdrop. 

Bright lights and Joseph don't mesh very well. The sun was out, and this was hard for him. (After awhile he also wanted to wear his jacket because he didn't like the breeze).  I need to learn how to "move heads" from one shot to another on Photoshop, because I would really love to order a large of this photo of the kids (below). I would just need to replace Joseph's picture with one of the photos where the sun wasn't in painfully in his eyes.

 Still trying, but the sun is still a problem, so we moved on.

Finally, we found a better angle, facing somewhat away from the sun.

 Love these kids!

 Maybe someday I'll actually update my facebook photo to something from the past decade? This one might work. It has my favorite stretch of ocean behind me and my awesome hubby.

 

 And then, off we went along the ocean to look for more good picture spots. Bailey taught us a dance to do as we walked. Don't we look cool?

 My girls.

My boys. Not sure why two of the three are looking away from the camera.  I wish I had made them stand still until I got more shots, but they were some of my biggest complainers (and maybe not just the youngest).

 And off again to our next photo location.

 Brandon and Angela are so darn cute that I'm going to do a separate post just with pictures of them.

 I love this one.

 

 Stopping at our bench to get our traditional individual shots.

 

  The girls including Angela this time!

 We love our bench.

Now we were walking through the woods for a few more pictures.  Everybody was losing patience with my insistence on photo taking.

 

 This one definitely goes on the wall.

 And that's it - we definitely captured the moment and also got some great shots of a beautiful place! Thanks to Angela for helping with the picture taking!