Eli is a busy little 9 month old these days!  He’s into everything, the good, the bad, and the dangerous.  He’s such a little daredevil!  He definitely keeps us on our toes, and he’s not even officially walking yet!  We’re aware that our world is about to be cranked up a notch in the energy department—also in the discipline, safety, and fun departments, for that matter!  While Eli isn’t “walking” yet, he does take steps.  We decided to document his fun tonight before he’s running around and we miss our opportunity.  He crawls, cruises, and steps his way around our house just doin’ his thing!

I think it’s fairly obvious that Matt and I absolutely LOVE being behind the camera!  The downside of being photographers is that OUR life is rarely documented.  Matt and I have said that Eli may one day wonder if he even had parents his first year, due to the fact that there are so few pictures of the three of us together!  Sad!

Several months ago, we had a local photographer and amazing artist, Jen Snyder, hire us to do a portrait session for her family.  We decided that this would be a great opportunity to have our family documented as well, so we simply “exchanged” shoots.  Why didn’t we think of that before?!  We had a great time hanging out with Jen on a blazing HOT and HUMID July morning and were extremely pleased with our family photos!  Jen’s baby boy is a month younger than Eli, so between that and our common interests in photography, interior design, and fashion, we’ve become great friends over the past couple of months!

Thank you, Jen, for the priceless memories!

Matt and I have this on-going joke that “scratch” must be the best and most versatile ingredient ever!  He wants to bottle “scratch” and sell it, since you can make anything from it.  Oh, I love my husband’s sense of humor!

Anyway, as Matt was recently rambling about how he would go about this endeavor, I realized that I’ve never made a cake from scratch!  I often make cookies, muffins, banana & blueberry bread, among other goodies from scratch, but I’ve never tried a cake on my own.  My mom says that I helped her bake cakes through the years, but I’m not sure that counts.  I wanted to prove to myself that I could make it happen!  My best friend from high school/college roommate, Jessica (Aunt Jessie as we now call her), has been in town from Nashville all week, so we decided to tackle the “Best Loved” Carrot Cake from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook together.  I think it could have risen a little higher, but all in all, it was a success!  We baked it Wednesday evening, and nearly the whole cake has been eaten.  I’m pretty impressed by this, since Matt claims that he doesn’t even like cake!

Here’s a picture documentation of our cake baking debut!

Professionals--watch out!

Aunt Jessie gettin' mean with the carrots.

Finely shredding 3 cups of carrots was more tedious than we anticipated!

Eli happily standing by.

Laughing at Aunt Jessie shredding carrots.

The supposed masterpiece!

After Matt's sampling.

Eating off of our fine china for the first time. Ha! We recently unpacked it after buying a cabinet for it. To prove how unfamiliar our household is with it, Matt called it crystal! I should be ashamed of myself!

This weekend we shot a wedding in Hartsville, SC and my parents came in town to watch E. I wish we had had more time to hangout and goof off, but our time was good!  I think Eli had a blast playing with his grandparents!

Friday evening we went to the new Mt. Pleasant Waterfront park – a really cool place that just opened in July and if you haven’t checked it out you need to!  I was able to grab several great shots of E with Pops and Ellie…

. . .

And then last night, Jenna and I were in Hartsville for the wedding.  It was a fun wedding and we got some great shots.  While we were there we stumbled upon a cool little coffee shop called The Midnight Rooster.  We could have stayed there for hours!  It’s the kind of place that not only makes good coffee, but fosters good conversation and laughs too!  So if you’re ever in Hartsville, check it out!

Etiwan Park has been a favorite hangout spot of ours since we moved to Charleston over three years ago!  We have great memories there, including deep conversations early on in our marriage, yummy picnics, some intense frisbee tossing, random pick-up basketball games with strangers, lots of ball throwing for Kelsey, and now some precious, unforgettable moments with Eli.  Other than the fact that it always seems to be 10 degrees too warm and way too humid, we always have great family time there!

Here are some recent pics from a Saturday evening at Etiwan Park!  I promise Matt was there too, but he was behind the camera, of course.  I promise that we’ll be posting some pictures of our whole family soon!

. . .

I feel that I need to catch you up to speed on the happenings of our little fam!  Therefore, this post will be “Matt” style.  When I first met Matt, I didn’t know what to make of his bullet point style emails.  I wasn’t sure if he was trying to present a business plan to me or what!  After several conversations and 6 years of getting to know one another, we usually type emails to each other in paragraph form, but when we have a lot to cover in a short amount of time (which always seems to be the case these days!), we both communicate “Matt” style.  So, here goes…

• Our baby boy is going to be 8 months old tomorrow!  I feel this way every month, but I sincerely cannot believe it!  He’s crawling EVERYWHERE!  If we turn our heads for a second, he makes a mad dash for the toilet with the intention of pulling up and smacking the top of it.  mmm.  He’s also got some mean moves!  He got a hand-me-down activity table last week that plays music, and he immediately started bouncing and dancing the first time the music played.  So now his favorite thing is to stand in the living room, push the buttons, and dance—over and over.  And over.  I have to brag for a second and say that he even “dances” to the beat.  That’s my boy!  His obsession with dancing is hilarious and pretty convenient when I need to get things done.  I’ll post a video sometime soon, but it deserves its own post 
• I’m working on becoming more independent with photography.  I always second shoot for weddings, but the way we work best for portraits is for Matt to be behind the camera with me communicating with the client, working with lighting, positioning, etc.  Since Matt is working ridiculously long hours between Blackbaud and photography, I’m trying to learn as much as I can so I can take on some work independently when needed.  So Eli  and I took off to Greenville last week for two solo shoots.  It was quite overwhelming for me, but I learned a ton and the boss seemed to be pretty pleased with the outcome.  E had a great time tagging along, playing in Nana and Papoo’s pool, hanging out with his buddy Zeke, eating grass in Falls Park downtown, visiting Papa’s goats, etc.  We had a blast, but we were anxious to get back home to Matt and Kels, sleep in our comfy beds, and have some downtime (if that exists with an 8 month old!).  
• I feel like I say this every time I give an MDP update, but things have really taken off!  We have four weddings in the next three weeks, and each one is in a different city!  It’s going to be CRAZY, but we’re really looking forward to it!  Thank goodness for mommas.  One of our moms (Ellie or Mia) is going to step in to take care of Eli for each wedding.  I’m sure they’re really dreading it!  
• Our prayer is that our photography business would continue to grow stronger, as that income is allowing me to stay home full-time with Eli.  Since we have no family in Charleston, we feel very strongly about the two of us being his primary influence at this point in his life.  Plus, we have really developed a joint passion for photography and love love love every job we get!  Please send people our way if they need any type of photography work done!  We’re completely willing to travel, so don’t let distance stand in the way.  We’ve done a little bit of everything recently–belly shots, new born sessions, engagement sessions, an actual proposal (which was really cool!), some unique commercial work that we thoroughly enjoyed, family portraits, and of course, weddings!  All of our work thus far has come our way through word of mouth, so thank you for spreading the word!  

Ok, so I pretty much wrote a full post for each bullet point.  I warned you that I had a lot to update you on.  But I think that’s it for now!  Thanks for checking in on us!  Here are some pics from our trip to Greenville.  Enjoy!

Hangin' with his great great grandfather, Papa. Pretty amazing, huh!?

 

Not loving the grass. He usually won't even touch it!

 

"Well, maybe it's not so bad."

 

"Mom, you should puree this stuff! It's awesome!"

 

Eli and Mia at the Overlook Grill in Falls Park

 

Eli: Dude, let me show you how to groove to this funky tune. Zeke: Look, kid. I got this. Now let go of my shirt!

 

Swinging by the pool with Papoo, his great grandfather. Papoo always makes funny voices for Eli.

 

Eli and Uncle Zach--caption anyone? I can't quite find the words.

 

Gotta love the trunks with no diaper. I don't think Zach knew that part!

We miss you!

. . .

More at www.mdpblog.com!

For the 4th we were in Alpharetta visiting my folks.  We had a great time being there and did some great stuff!  To hightlight a couple items…

We went on a bike tour of Atlanta, lead by my Mom’s Friend Robin who owns Bike Tours of Atlanta.  It was a solid 15-20 mile ride through different parts of ATL and a fun way to spend the day with the fam!  We saw all sorts of stuff that normally we blow right by in the car.  If you’re in ATL and lookin’ for something to do, check it out!

Bicycle Tour of Atlanta

My folks’ neighbor, Mr. Frank, rents jump castles and so for the 4th, well…we rented a jump-slide!  I don’t care how young or old you are, this thing is awesome and will have anyone laughing!  Good times and great call Mom and Dad!

The Slide!

Finally, here’s a slide-show from the weekend with more photos.  Enjoy!

M, J, & E