At two minutes after six o' clock in the morning (PST of course!) a few handfuls of years ago, a little girl named jamie delaine was born. And here I am, posting at the exact. same. time. eighteen years later! This year I'm celebrating my birthday with Sarah and the Barlow family in Chicago, IL. Last year, I was in Paris on my birthday and this year I'm in Chicago. Not a bad two birthdays, if I do say so myself.



So much has happened this year it has just been absolutely mind-blowing and just completely humbling at the same time. God has poured out his blessings on me, every single blessed day: truly AMAZING what I have seen happen in my business and personal life over the last twelve months. I am so excited to see what the next year holds and just can't wait for all the growth and change I am going to experience. I'll be sure to post some more photos of my adventures here in Chicago, but right now I'm headed to this BEAUTIFUL lake in Glen Ellyn where I'm going to go for a birthday run.

As I mentioned in my last post, my only female first cousin Kristy and her husband Vince had their first child at 10:03pm Sunday night. His name is Caleb Hunter and here's some photos I snapped of him during our short visit yesterday on the way to the Vancouver Airport. I can't get over how CUTE he is. Seriously. He was only twelve hours old in these pictures! Usually I'm not a real baby person, sometimes they look a little squishy and odd at first: but he is so beautiful. This is so exciting for our family, because it's the first great-grandchild for my grandma. Also, Kristy is an only child, so it's the only grandchild for both of her parents. And then, with her being the only girl out of my five first cousins: that's pretty special as well!



I was so excited that I got to see him before I had to leave for Chicago yesterday. Speaking of that, I had a veryyy long day. I was supposed to fly out at 2PM in Vancouver. Well, they were calling for volunteers about 40 minutes prior to boarding time, who would give up their seat as they had overbooked the flight. (Is this normal practice? Like honestly...don't you know how many seats the airplane holds? I don't understand). They kept calling, calling, calling and I saw a couple of people go up and volunteer their seats. Well, I get up there to board and the guy says to me, "Oh, sorry ma'am--you were one of our volunteers." Honestly. Yes, he said that. "You were one of our volunteers." He didn't even say, unfortunately you were bumped here's what you can do. I was not a volunteer! Sheesh. Whatever. So I was a little upset, because I was already just exhausted from my Saturday wedding and basically my whole life lately.

Turns out I left Vancouver at 3:15PM, flew into Denver. Had about 40 minutes there to check my email, grab a quick garden salad with chicken and then I flew from Denver to Chicago. A direct flight would have been MUCH nicer. By the time I got my baggage and we drove to the Barlow's house here in Glen Ellyn (30 minutes outside of Chicago) it was 12:30AM. I had a good sleep though, so I'm all ready for the week's events upcoming. I should have Mike and Amanda's beautiful wedding blogged by tomorrow as well. Until later!

After Mike and Amanda's fun, adorable e-session a few months ago, I was definitely looking forward to their wedding! It was a perfect July day, not too hot, not too breezy, a little bit of sun but just enough cloud to make for some amazing photos. I started the day with Amanda and her girls at Spa Utopia. After all the hair and makeup appointments were finished, we headed for some pre-ceremony pictures at Amanda's aunts house. Mike and Amanda chose to see each other for a "First Look" in order to fit in the wedding portrait session before the wedding: which I love of course! It makes the ceremony and reception flow so much more smoothly and just makes the day more enjoyable in general. Thanks again for such a beautiful day you two: you are just too sweet and too considerable and too adorable to be real. :) Hope you are having a wonderful week in Mexico right now.

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