the best of 2013: portraits || dfw portrait & wedding photographer

These end of year posts are some of my absolute favorites.  I get excited to sit down and scroll through all my work from the past 12 months and whittle down hundreds of pictures into my very very favorites.  So here I am about a month and a half late, posting my recap(s).  I'm certainly not going to miss out on this fun, even if it did take me way too long to put it together.  You also may notice several pictures from sessions and weddings that I haven't blogged yet, but they're coming soon!  *pinkie promise*  Today will be all of my portrait favorites: engagement, senior, proposal, etc. then all of my wedding favorites will be posted sometime in the next week or so.  Thank you to everyone who trusted me with such happy and precious moments and days of your life this year, it was an honor and a joy to work with you!

A family of three: personal || dfw wedding photographer

(on a completely unrelated to the rest of this post note: I've recently had my domain name for this blog stolen and may not be able to get it back for a while.  In the meantime I will be blogging here with my old URL www.jessicashaephotography.blogspot.com.  Sorry about the confusion!)
Judah Wesley Sherrill entered the world an 8 pound ball of beautiful screaming happiness in the wee hours of the morning on September 12th.  (I had been in labor for almost 48 hours at that point, so while I just really REALLY WANTED THAT BABY OUT OF ME I was slightly grateful that he waited an extra hour so he didn't have to share a birthday with one of the greatest tragedy's America has ever experienced.) Those next hours were the sweetest, most incredible moments of my life.  Better than my wedding day, better than any holiday, gift, party, trip, adventure I'd ever experienced or been given, those first few hours of holding and studying and smelling and kissing were overwhelmingly wonderful. That first night after he was born, before I fell asleep I asked Josh to put him in my arms.  I felt a little bit sneaky about it, because the nurse had told us we weren't allowed to hold him while sleeping, because they were afraid we would drop him out of the bed or something. But I didn't care.  He was my baby, I'd waited 9 months to hold him, I had rails on either side of my bed, and pillows all around me and him, there was no way he was going anywhere, and there was certainly no way I was giving him up to that hard plastic box sitting next to my bed.  I woke up so many times during that night, my body wavering between it's intense need for about 30 straight hours of sleep, and wanting so badly to just stare at the tiny person that slept quietly in my arms.  I remember waking up that first morning, feeling the heaviness of the little bundle laying in my arms before I'd even opened my eyes, and my heart splitting right open again as I soaked in that moment of awe that this was my son, and I was his mother. I never want to forget his tiny-ness, his skinny arms and legs, the thin little lips that smacked together whenever he was ready to eat, the thick brown hair all over his head, and perfectly formed nose.  I'm so very grateful to Elisabeth Carol for not only taking pictures of his birth (those will eventually be posted on our family blog with my birth story that I'm still working on) but also came over on his one week birthday and took pictures of our newly minted family.  I adore these pictures so much and get all weepy for another baby every time I look at them ;) Judah: meaning "Praise" and Wesley: after John and Charles Wesley. Judah has been my favorite boy name for a long time, I love how strong it sounds especially since Jesus is called the Lion of Judah.  We chose Wesley because we both love John and Charles Wesley and would love for all of our children in some way to be named after a hero of the faith.  Our prayer is that he would grow up to be a strong and fierce protecter of the faith and proclaimer of praise for our Lord Jesus!