Well, I haven’t posted many images of my kids on here lately. Jenny keeps stealing them for her family blog (Running in Circles), but tonight, I decided I wanted to change that

As a wedding photographer, Jenny & I get to attend a lot of weddings (obviously). But, rarely do we get to attend as guests….or with our kids. So, one of my buddies from all the way back in middle school was getting married in Branson this past Sunday. Jenny and I didn’t have anything planned, so we decided to head down there for a few days, attend the wedding and relax for a few more days. Maybe we’d hit up Silver Dollar City, drive some go-karts, go to the water park, who knows. Well, the wedding was awesome…..and everything else, kind of blew.

Silver Dollar City – Do not, I repeat, DO NOT go there if you have 2 adults, and 3 kids (only 1 of them being tall enough to ride anything). Poor Ava missed out on all the rides by about 1 inch, and no one would budge. Which turned out to be a good thing, because for them to ride any rides, Max would have to wait with me for a ride, then we’d have to get in line again so Ava could go. Well, we got our money back from there and decided to head to The Track to ride some go-karts. Turns out Ava is too short to ride those too, but we promised Max he could go. One turn on the go-karts and we split from Branson. On the way home, we did go to Wild Animal Safari outside of Springfield that was cool and you could feed the animals when they came up to your car. Ok, enough writing, here are a few pictures…

Lia was pretty tired and grumpy the whole trip, probably due to the fact that she has 3 teeth coming in at the same time.

I did not take many pictures at the wedding. I refuse to be that photographer, but when the fire dancer came out, I had to snap some shots. It was so cool. I shot all these only with my 24 2.8 lens, so I didn’t get many close ups. Either way, I like how they turned out.

Max & Ava had fun dancing.

Here’s a shot of Ava dancing by herself

The Wild Animal Safari was pretty cool. And, no, this camel did not eat Lia’s hand.

“I want to feed the chocolate horses, mommy!”

This buffalo tongue was gross…at least, I think it was a buffalo tongue.

Ok, funny story about this. We were feeding some zebras when this one zebra comes sprinting down the hill and ramming another zebra into our car. I pull up a little to get out of the way. We thought they were playing, so I watched from the side mirror when one of the zebras just mounted the other zebra. I had to take a pic

Lia says, bye-bye for now

I have a sweet engagement session to share this evening (late), but for now, enjoy this shot of Maxaroni

Every month, Drew and I spend countless hours trying to figure out where we should go for our random shoot. Well, not for the month of June. I have visited a small town we’ve yet to photograph, and that town goes by the name of Tonganoxie. Tonganoxie is really quite an interesting place. In fact, UPS only delivers there on Mondays (I kid). It was totally worth the trip when we stumbled across this really sweet farm

They were Longhorn fans

They had super cool old chairs.

I think the mayor lived there.

They have a lazy gardener

And creepy eagle statues.

The rusty, blue tractor was super sweet, though.

Then we met this VERY intimidating guard dog. He liked to shed hair all over us

We decided to leave the awesome farm, and head into town. After these next 2 images, I got yelled at by a butcher with some REALLY big knives. I walked away from that one complete with all my limbs!

We visited the local record store and found an exciting assortment of new releases.

Basically, Tonganoxie is kind of creepy. They do have good BBQ (Daniel’s BBQ), and my awesome friends, Kelley & Sam live there (Kris, if you still live in Tongaxoxie, you’re cool too, as is any/all of Kelley’s friends who might/might not live there)

Note: Thanks, Kelley for having such a cool farm to take pictures of. And, Sam, your eagle statue is cool, I was just jk’in ya. But, really, the rest of Tonganoxie is a little weird (no offense).

Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed at how much beauty is in my world. My wife, my kids, my parents, all our wonderful friends, the world in general is stuffed with so much beauty that everywhere I look I see it, it’s in the music that I have playing all the time (currently Amy Seeley’s Indigo Sky), I smell it when I snuggle my children close to me. I wish I could soak it all in, but I know that that’s impossible, so I try and enjoy as much as I can in any way I can. I hope that you try and do the same

These pictures of my kids below are just a sample of the beauty in my life this evening…