December 14, 2011

Lewis Family- Santa Cruz Family Portraits

Facebook is pretty great in a lot of ways (and not just because I get to see all sorts of fun videos of cats). 🙂  I love that I’ve gotten to connect with people I haven’t seen for years, including family.  My cousin Bobbi lives in Kentucky and I hadn’t seen her in at least 14 years.  Her dad and mine are brothers, so she’s on the Disney side of the family.  Bobbi and her husband came out to visit when I was in college and that’s the last time I had seen her!  She didn’t have any kids at that time…. now look at them!

A couple of months ago Bobbi emailed me and told me her family was going to be in Santa Cruz for a few days and wanted to see about flying me up there to do some photos.  FUN!  Of course!

So we made it happen!  I got to spend a few days getting to know her family and it was such a fun time.  I got to stay at Mt. Hermon Conference Center.  BEAUTIFUL!  We did a little photo shoot around the camp.

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Kayleen decided it would be fun to eat leaves.

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Look at these handsome guys!

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And beautiful girl!

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Silly faces are fun.

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The next day we went exploring.  We went to this park that had an old covered bridge.  Uuummmm… yes please!

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We heard that there were a couple of places in Santa Cruz that the monarch butterflies come to rest on their journey south to… wherever it is they go.  The first one we went to, I think we counted about 10 butterflies.  To say that the kids (and I) were underwhelmed would be a big understatement.  But the next day we went to another one and saw TONS!  It was really cool!

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These kids are super active so it wasn’t long before they were climbing up trees.

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It doesn’t really show here, but they were kinda high up.  It made me a little nervous, I’m not gonna lie.  But my cousin Bobbi wasn’t nervous at all.  I love mom’s like that!

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Look at that smile!  She is one good natured little girl.

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Then we headed down to the beach.  The kids had so much fun and definitely didn’t want to leave.  They were soaked!

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Then we popped over to see the redwoods for a little bit.  This would be the part of the day where the clouds came in and it got really cold.  And then… it started to pour!  The kids were already wet so it didn’t really matter.  They didn’t complain at all…. yeah right! 🙂

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I loved how there was a little beam of light coming through the trees right on this bench.  She looked so tiny amongst these HUGE trees!

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Such a beautiful area!  I had so much fun connecting with family.  Thanks so much, Bobbi, for flying me up there!  Your kids are just wonderful and some of the best behaved kids I’ve ever met.  They are just really cool people!  Merry Christmas!

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