Monthly Archives: September 2008

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In Loving Memory

September 25, 2008 – 12:20 pm

Mom Blogging:

Early this morning my grandma (Nonna to the boys) left the pain and sadness of this world behind and joined God in His kingdom.  We are rejoicing for her, but grieving for us left here.

As many of you who follow our blog know, over a year ago she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.  It weakened her body but never her spirit.  She was simply an amazing woman.  She was definitely a matriarch, heading her family and her TEN children.  Grandma was fiesty and such a strong woman, stronger than she herself realized at times.  All her stories of life as an Italian girl in New York sound like a movie!

I grew up with my grandma always near by and when she moved to Florida Jason and I drove down every summer to visit.  Even after Jason and I moved to Montana, grandma came up to visit and pretend to hike the mountain trails :)   She was always so much fun to be around.

During her last days, she was looking forward to celebrating Jason’s birthday.  She was weak and knew her time was short, but she told us how much it meant for her to be spend an evening around her family.  She got home and soon it was obvious how short her time with us would be.  But we are grateful that she passed on peacefully and we will treasure our memories and hold onto her spirit.

I love you grandma.  You are an inspiration.  You are already missed.

At mine and Jason’s wedding:

Meeting the boys:

Grandma turns 80:

2 days ago at Jason’s birthday:

We will be taking some time off to be with our family as we mourn our loss and attend the services.  It may take us a while to return phone calls and emails and we apologize for any delay.

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Mom Blogging, Our Family | Comments (12)

Nicole and Matthew’s Engagement Session

September 23, 2008 – 9:41 am

One of the cool things about Florida beaches is that are a variety to visit.  Last Wednesday dad met Nicole and Matt for an engagement session on the beach.  They will be getting married in October of next year and dad is looking forward to their Greek Orthodox ceremony with all the traditions involved.

Nicole and Matt were up for anything, even climbing over a huge, tall bank of sand bags to get to a spot dad thought would be cool.  A beach session doesn’t always have to be sand and ocean!  Dad was happy that they liked the location, and even thought the thousands of tiny crabs making an eerie rustling sound through the grass were cool.  It was a fun session with a really friendly couple and dad had a great time!

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Engagement | Tagged | Comments (3)

Baby Girl

September 22, 2008 – 1:37 pm

Last Tuesday Lindsey and Bernard brought their beautiful baby daughter so dad could photograph her.  She was almost 2 weeks old and looked like a perfect combination of her mom and dad together.  Mom thought her hair was so cute!  We know her mom has been waiting for a few sneak peeks so without further delay here are a few images from the session:

Dad said it was wonderful meeting you and congratulations on your growing family!

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Baby's First Year, Newborn | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Jessica and Del

September 22, 2008 – 2:05 am

Last Sunday dad photographed Jessica and Del’s wedding in Lakeland.  He had a terrific time and said the couple was kind, genuine, and smiled the whole day.  They were so into each other and that was obvious to anyone who spent any time with them.

Jessica and Del had a great team of vendors, from the talented Darla Stafford for hair and makeup to the wonderful Rob Sword of Sword Sounds as the DJ.

The couple decided on a first site before the ceremony and dad said it was great to get some of the pictures done and out of the way so the couple could get more bride and groom photos and could get to more of the reception.

The ceremony was held at Hollis Garden and dad saw a few other photographers there with couples as well.  One photographer that dad saw was an older gentleman, dad is guessing in his early 70s, photographing an engagement session.  When dad saw that he thought it was awesome!  What a blessing if mom and dad are able to continue to work and make a living off of their photography at that age!

During pictures after the ceremony, the groomsmen pulled out some authentic swords.  They were real, heavy, sharp swords and dad thought it was really awesome that they wanted the swords in the pictures!  Dad got some fun shots making sure to be safe as well.

The reception at the Peggy Brown Building was decorated in white and black patterns with pink accents.  There were homemade cookies in jars and personalized coloring books for the kids. Everyone was great and dad came home telling mom what a great time the wedding was.  Congratulations Jessica and Del!  Enjoy the preview of your pictures:

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Weddings | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Bonni and Drew

September 20, 2008 – 2:56 am

When Bonni described her wedding to dad, she used the phrase “super laid back” many times.  She wanted a beach wedding with a relaxed atmosphere and dad said the day was just that. Bonni and Drew had their closest family and friends there to join them as they celebrated their wedding day.

The ceremony was held at The Helmsley Sandcastle Hotel in Sarasota and they smoothed the sand to create an aisle.  Shepherd’s hooks held glass vases with beautiful flowers (put together by Beneva Flowers) in dark purple with green and white, and larger floral arrangements sat on white columns where Bonni and Drew exchanged their vows.

Bonni and Drew told dad that pictures were very important to them, so they planned enough time in their day to let dad be creative and give them a variety which was great!  Drew’s dad is also a professional photographer and dad enjoyed talking with him about lenses and lighting.

The reception took place as The BeachHouse Restaurant where guests enjoyed a candlelit dinner by the beach.  The favors were CDs and both mom and dad loved many of the songs.  Jason Mraz, Alison Kraus, and even mom and dad’s own wedding first dance song was on them.  There was a song by Barry Louis Polisar called “All I Want is You” that dad hadn’t heard before and now loves.  He made mom listen to it saying it was a really sweet love song.  Mom thinks he is giving the song a little too much credit but it is catchy :) .

Thanks for a laid back night on the beach, and congratulations Bonni and Drew!

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Weddings | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

1 Week Anniversary

September 19, 2008 – 12:54 pm

Today is Christina and Michael’s 1 week anniversary!  They are probably still off enjoying their trip to Alaska (what a fun idea for a honeymoon!)  Hope you two are having a blast! They were married last Friday in Orlando.  Dad said it that Christina, Michael, and their families were all wonderful.

After getting ready at Salon Bienvenue, everyone headed over to the Lake Mary Events Center.  The ceremony was in a rotunda with windows letting in the sunlight all around.  Mom loved that the couple’s reception was decorated in bright fun colors.  The linens were purple and green and the centerpieces had green and purple sparkly branches and feathers.  How fun is that!  Shelly at Country Club Florist did a terrific job.

Al Dee Productions was the DJ for the reception, and the cocktail hour had a live music by Michael’s dad’s band.  It is wonderful to have family involved in a wedding day.  The whole celebration was very kid-friendly, with toys and coloring books and other goodies.  Dad even brought us home a dinosaur to play with so thanks Christina and Michael!  Here are a few pictures from your beautiful wedding day:

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Weddings | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

5 Weeks Old

September 18, 2008 – 12:38 am

Last week dad photographed an awesome new family!  Mom and dad said they instantly felt like Tiffany and Tom were good friends.  They brought their adorable new son who was 5 weeks old for a portrait session.  He was still just under 8 lbs because he was born over a month early.  He spent his first couple weeks in the NICU and when Tiffany talked about the experience, mom’s heart went out to her.  So mom and dad made a donation in honor of their son to the March of Dimes, which does research on prematurity and has a campaign for prematurity awareness and education:

With all the craziness from the computer crashing, mom actually had this session edited and online before we had a chance to blog about it!  So even though Tiffany and Tom have already seen the images, we still wanted to share some of our favorites.

Dad wanted us to include this picture with the Dr. Evil (from Austin Powers) pose:

Mom thinks the baby looks just like his dad in this picture:

Dad thought this was so cute because he looks like he is in a hot pocket:

And this was one of mom’s favorites with the teeny toes poking out:

The baby is in our Baby’s First Year program and mom and dad know it is going to be so fun to watch him grow, and hear all the funny new parent stories Tiffany and Tom are sure to have.  They are great people and we are so happy to have met them!  Can’t wait until the next session!!

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Baby's First Year | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Getting Back On Track

September 17, 2008 – 11:28 pm

Mom Blogging:

Well after what can be described as a really horrible few days of everything going wrong from an ER visit to our car completely breaking down to a minor car accident and more, we are determined to stay positive and move forward.  Before we do though I had to share a few pictures of this weekend’s events.

After our 8 hour day in the ER on Saturday, the discharge nurse let us keep the hospital gown.  I didn’t bring a camera with me so I had Jason take a picture the next day.  It is sad, but cute.

And speaking of cute, when a 3 year old is left to get dressed on his own:

And though it sucked to have my computer crash, I was able to save all my personal files (our clients’ files were always safe because we back those up) and we are now the proud owners of a new Mac.

So now I am going to try my best to stop dwelling on all the bad things that happened the past few days and get back on track!  We’ll have a new blog entry almost every day so we can catch up so keep checking back!

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Mom Blogging, Our Family | Comments (3)

AHHHHHH!!!

September 14, 2008 – 9:52 pm

From Mom:

Well, Jason has been having lots of fun at weddings but here at home it has been a crappy weekend.  First E was in the emergency room (he’s fine now, though I am still recovering from the 8 hours there), then a car broke down, and now my computer CRASHED! Don’t worry, we always back up our clients’ pictures so none of those are lost.  The only images that might be gone are of our own family (I kept putting off backing those up, sniff sniff). I just pray that most of our stuff can be recovered. I had some family memories on there that I don’t want to lose including my journal from when I was pregnant with E and anyone who knows me knows how much I put into that.

**Update:  It looks like all the files are still there so we will most likely be able to save them! It is just going to be very time consuming…

Please bear with us as we get this taken care of.  We’ll be heading to the Apple store tomorrow; HP’s tech support is horrible and we are so done with PCs.

Thanks!

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Info, Mom Blogging | Comments (1)

Kelly and Ryan’s Georgia Wedding

September 11, 2008 – 1:05 am

Last weekend we all took a road trip to Georgia! Dad was headed there to shoot Kelly and Ryan’s wedding and we decided to make it a family trip. We had some fun uninterrupted time in the car to talk and play games and sing, and while dad was at the wedding on Saturday we were with mom who took us on a walk to explore. Thank you so much for Kelly and Ryan for having us come up there for your wedding day. Not only did dad have a terrific time sharing your day with you, but we all had a great weekend away.

Dad met Kelly at her house for some getting ready pictures.

Then everyone headed to the Second Baptist Church for the ceremony. It was a gorgeous church and Kelly and Ryan had a wonderful and meaningful ceremony. They really focused on the ceremony as the important part of the day. After all, the ceremony is what makes the marriage! The couple was married by Kelly’s brother which made things even more special. During the ceremony, Kelly and Ryan knelt in prayer while messages they had recorded played over the loud speaker. It was a prayer to God thanking Him for bringing them together and asking Him to be with them in their lives together. Mom loves that they included a prayer they wrote as part of their ceremony and that they kept Christ as the center of their relationship.

The church had a gym and after the ceremony dad went there with the newlyweds to shoot some hoops!

The reception was held at Houston Lake Country Club (which we were told is pronounced “House-Ton” not “Hughs-Ton” like the city.) When it ended, Kelly and Ryan drove away in a golf cart and then joined dad for some sunset pictures. It was a beautiful sunset that night!

Dad got to see Suzanne and Scott at the wedding too! They were married a year ago on Monday so Happy First Anniversary! Kelly was a bridesmaid in their wedding and now Suzanne was Kelly’s bridesmaid.

Congratulations Kelly and Ryan, and thanks again for having dad there for your wedding day!

By Jason Angelini | Posted in Travel, Weddings | Tagged , | Comments (0)