The Gulley Family

I took senior pictures for the youngest daughter in this family, Shonda, a few years ago, before I was officially in business, and this time she brought her family for a session! Here are a few of my favorite images from their session.

Here they all are together:


Dad and Mom:


Shonda & her husband, Wes:




Sisters:


The original four:


Thanks for letting me take your family pictures!

Snow Day!!

Well we have finally been blessed with some SNOW around here! Everyone might not agree with me, but I don't care, I LOVE snow! And we haven't hardly had any this year, so it was high time we got some weather this year! I am glad we haven't lost power though, that would be miserable! Maddie Kate and Johnny have gotten the past 2 days off from school, and they are out tomorrow, too! There has been a lot of playing out in the snow around here, and I bundled Cohen up (like the boy's mom does in "A Christmas Story") so that he could hardly move! I took a few pictures, but I didn't really get shots of everything we did. It was so cold I hated to have my camera out too long, so I missed the kids getting pulled around behind the 4-wheeler, and the finished product of Maddie Kate's snowman's circle. I'll have to get some shots of those tomorrow.
Here's Ava all bundled up ready to go out!



Here's Cohen on his first snow playing day...I know I'm his mommy...but those baby blues are to die for! :)



Maddie with her snowman! The snow was pretty soft, so we had to pack it in buckets to get it to stick together good enough to build with, but it turned out cute!



Yup, he made this super serious face the whole time we were outside! This is the same face he made at Halloween when he had to wear his very constricting caterpillar costume! I think he just resigns himself to not being able to move when he is wearing a ton of clothes, ( "Could I BE wearin' any more clothes?!") and this is the face we get...



MOM! Take me inside! What is this stuff anyway!?



Well, the fundraiser I'm doing for DuQuoin's Youth and Government is canceled for tomorrow, because school is canceled. The coordinator is still planning for us doing pictures Friday and Saturday, so if you want to get in on this sweet deal for photos, please call Sarah (number on the flyer I posted a few post ago!)
Thanks!

the McGowan kids Sporty session!

This was a fun session! My mom is an old friend of these 3 kids' mom, and they do Stampin' Up! together, so I remember Jan from...well, my whole life! I used to babysit her 2 older daughters, and I will be shooting her oldest daughter Danielle's wedding in Missouri later this year! And my sister teaches at the same school these three kids go to, I think she has taught them math...so I guess we have a lot of connections!...anyway, here are some of my favorites from the younger kids session. Here are Taylor, Kirsten, and Dalton:







These girls are in basketball, volleyball, and soccer! I would go nuts trying to get to all those games! Kudos to mom! :)





And a few tricks...


Great job kids! Hope you enjoy your photos!
Thanks for being loyal blog readers, too! ;)

A really cool site you chould check out!

Whether or not you are an Obama supporter, you will enjoy looking at this site and the photo of the 2 million people at the Inauguration last week. It truly is amazing, and many politicals and even celebrities can be found in the audience. It also seems that no one came without their camera!! If you read down other peoples comments, they will assist you in finding some people...including a guy who looks like Obi Wan Kenobi! That was my favorite! :) (yes, I come from a family of Star Wars geeks...hee hee!)

To check out the awesome photo that David Bergman made and to read about how he did it click here:

How I made a 1,474 Megapixel Photo during President Obama's Inaugural Address

Have fun checking it out!!

ADDITION TO THIS POST: If the link doesn't work for some reason, (I checked it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't) maybe too many people have linked to the site? Just type it into google, I'm sure it will come up! :)

Mylie's 2 year pictures

Those of you who read my blog often know that I get to take Mylie's pictures a lot! :) She is one well-photographed little girl! And I'm so glad her mommy lets me help capture her special moments! Mylie is now 2 years old, and so busy! She and Ava ran around me and Jamie in circles when we were trying to take these pictures, and it was a wild time...but I love what we ended up with!





There are the beautiful eyes!!

The lollipop was very key in getting some smiles! I thought it was very cute!



Thanks for the fun time and for letting me take Mylie's 2 year pictures! Happy Birthday, Mylie!

One for the Gulley family

One for the McGowans

Another fundraiser opportunity!

I am going to be doing another fundraiser! This time it is for DuQuoin High School's Youth & Government program. Here's how it works: The Youth & Government students will be selling tickets for $20 for a quick photo session with me. They get to keep the money they make from the sale of the tickets, and will receive a bonus from me if they book a certain amount of sessions...
Here's the flyer:



If you have questions, you are welcome to email me at info@jessicahollisphotography.com or call me at 618-625-6787. If you want to make an appointment to have photos done at this fundraiser, please contact Sarah, her number is on the flyer.
Please help support DuQuoin's Youth & Government, and get some cute pics of your family or children while you are at it!

One for Mylie!

Emma's 6 month session

I met Emma, her siblings, and her mom back in November at the PTO fundraiser. Emma was about 3 months old then, and so adorable! She's just as cute as ever now for her 6 month pictures!
Here's Emma:
This was a special blanket that her Grandma made.





I love those chubby arms! So cute!



Thanks for letting me take Emma's 6 month pictures! She is so sweet!

What was she thinking?

Oh my Ava! My sweet crazy insano Ava.
Last night we were getting ready for church, and I had just dressed Ava and Cohen. I had left them together in his room and went to my room to change. Not a minute later, Maddie Kate runs in and says, "Mom! Dad says for you to come right now!" She kinda freaked me out because of the urgency in her voice. So I ran into Cohen's room, and this is what I saw:


Just when I'm starting to think she's growing up a little, she goes and squirts half a bottle of baby lotion on her brother's head! Not to mention I just dressed him for church, it's all over his shirt, and so he had to have a bath and new clothes! Johnny said the look on my face was priceless.

I've been playing with my new backdrops and lights a lot lately...still working on it, but thought I'd show off a few of my faves of the girls from the past day or two!

Jennifer was nice enough to bring back these lollipops for the girls from her DisneyWorld trip! So we tried to take some pics with them, but Ava had busted hers before it got opened, so she couldn't really do the cute lolli pics....sounds about right, huh?! :)




In the words of my friend Wendy, "She may look innocent, and she may look sweet, but that girl is a LITTLE RASCAL!"

One for Emma

An Ava story and The Sulser Family

I think it was probably last November when Johnny asked the gymnastics place where we take Maddie Kate if we could get Ava in a younger children's class at the same time that Maddie Kate goes. They had to put her on a waiting list, and then we made the huge mistake of telling Ava that she was on a "waiting list" to take a gymnastics class. The next time MK was going,and Ava was NOT going, Ava started crying and trying to get dressed in a gymnastics outfit, saying, "But I have to go! They are WAITING for me!!" We felt so bad, and have been trying to explain to her ever since what a "waiting list" means! Well, Christmas break was over, and it was time for Maddie Kate to go to gymnastics (or "ranastics", as Ava calls it) last night. Once again, Ava tried to get dressed and was so sad when we tried to explain that she could go watch, but she couldn't be in a class yet. She was in tears, I mean, really falling apart, so I kept her home with me and Johnny took MK alone. I got her gymnastics outfit on her and let her wear one of the new pettiskirts, and that cheered her up quite a bit. The skirts are so twirly! So we took some pictures, and here's a storyboard I made for her:


Then last night while we were eating supper, we got a phone call from the gymnastics place telling us that Ava was in! I told her and we all cheered! She was SO happy! She has been planning on doing the big girl things that Maddie Kate does (school, gymnastics, baseball..) for a long time, and the first one is here! I am so happy for her! ♥

The Sulser family had booked me for this session back in June. At the time, I thought that was crazy, I just wasn't that busy, and couldn't imagine ever being so busy that anyone would have to book me 6 months in advance for a session. Well, it turned out that my fall was so busy that I took December off from sessions, so I guess it's a good thing Tiffany booked me for this one so long ago! I guess she knew better than I did! :)
We took the large family portrait in the seats at the Historic Downtown Opera House in Sesser. It really worked out quite well! There were about 40 people, and it would have been hard to arrange that many people just about anywhere for a group shot! But having the seats made it work well, everyone was spaced out, and the only problem was getting the little kids to look! But I loved the idea, very original!

Then we got all the great-grandchildren together...a few mommies had to stay, the little ones weren't loving it...

And some of the kids with their great-grandma, I LOVE this one!

And some smaller family group shots:










Thanks for giving me the opportunity to meet all of you and figure out one more branch of Sesser's family tree! :)