My challenge for the DPP this year is to, well, challenge myself. Instead of taking a shot of a Christmas wreath in my own house (ain’t nothin’ wrong with that!) I might try taking a shot of a wreath hanging at the mall because I’m a little more cautious about shooting at the mall. Instead of photographing Livia on our front porch I might try my hand at street photography—something I have always wanted to do but lacked the boldness in approaching people.

Today I put my camera around my neck as I walked into Le Quartier to pick up lunch for a friend. I felt awkward walking into the bakery with a camera, but I also knew I couldn’t take a picture if I didn’t have it. While waiting for their fabulous tomato soup and chicken sandwich I spotted a profile in the back office that looked familiar. My friend Keri apparently now works at this particular location! I flagged her down and got her to pose for me. It was pretty great. Seeing Keri, my fellow artist and all-around encourager, gave me the boldness to grab today’s DPP shot.

And then things got even better. Keri introduced me to the chef who runs the shop (her name is escaping me, argh!) and I got to walk into the kitchen and snap a few more pictures of her decorating a cake. (I also heard of this incredible cake she made for the new senior pastor at Grace Chapel, Ben Loos. Congrats, Ben!)

Keri’s shot wins the day, but it was such a learning moment for me, such a moment of opening the door to opportunity and being prepared to walk through it. This is why the DPP excites me. I’m hearing story after story of people looking for beauty and taking the time to capture it this December. Thanks for joining me, friends. It means a lot.

I love this shot of my fun, generous, sassy friend Amanda. This is another one-shot post, but there are MANY more gems from a shoot with the fabulous Wittmann family. Stay tuned.

I have many great shots from a recent family photoshoot with the Mackrill family, but little Rowan has a special place in my heart. This kid! He is feisty and hilarious and smart and all kinds of wonderful words in between. I could take pictures of him all day long and could fill books of the funny things he says and does. This kid is a treat. He reminds me, in many ways, of Livia and thus I know precisely what his mama does from day to day. Rowan’s mommy is a special woman. [big smile]

Now that I have two little boys in my household I value Rowan’s four grubby fingers all the more. Every night I empty a tubful of water and marvel at how exponentially dirtier it is than any bath water Livia ever played in. And this is a mud-loving little girl we’re talking about. Snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Little boys. There’s nothing like ’em!

I have had a latte, a sippy cup, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, cinnamon bread, a potty seat, a farm set, diapers, and a meal dropped off at my doorstep over the course of three days.

People, there is nothing greater in this world than a Doorstep Present.

Or maybe I just think so because gifts are the way I feel loved. Whatever it is, I am grateful for these tangible signs of kindness, care and provision from my friends. I feel incredibly loved. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

The five of us are keeping afloat due to the massive prayers being sent heavenward on our behalf. I swear a few of you quit praying as much Saturday night—the banner was let down, so to speak—because the 3 year old woke up at 12:30am and then the 1 year old at 3:30am and Liv never went back to sleep after 4am. Sleeplessness is no joke. So keep praying. I know God’s grace is sustaining us. That, and of course Doorstep Presents. You can keep bringing those, too. They don’t count less if I’ve mentioned how much I love them, I promise.

We have our work cut out for us in finding a new normal. “Normal” in foster care isn’t really a standard, however. So the goal is more to stay on top of duties and responsibilities while still loving each other with gentle and generous spirits. Again, please pray for us. We need it.

July 27 was a beautiful day in Lincoln, Nebraska. I watched the sun rise next to my laboring friend Lauren and remember remarking that today would be her son or daughter’s birthday. Remember these images from Lauren’s maternity shoot? And this one a few days after Judah was born. Well, here is the rest of the story—with permission from Lauren and Josh—as seen from the lens of my camera.

We arrived at the hospital in the wee hours of the morning. Lauren worked through contractions in the dark quiet room for awhile, and then she walked the hallways. First with Josh, and later with me.

I’ll never forget our brief explorations of the hospital before it really woke up for the day. Lauren sashayed through the empty halls, powering through contractions as she walked in order to move the baby downward. We stepped outside and watched the sun begin to rise. When we arrived back in the room, Josh was sound asleep on what some nurses call the “empathy couch” due to it’s lack of comfort. There’s something about a husband resting that, in these two labors I’ve attended at least, puts a laboring wife’s mind to ease. I like Lauren’s happy smile in one of the following shots—she could still smile at this stage.

The sun’s brightness reflects on Lauren’s face. She is not sleeping here, don’t be fooled. Things are starting to get intense.

Out of the tub. The clock keeps ticking and we’re getting closer to meeting Judah.

And then he arrived. And all the hard work, all the growing of these past nine months, revealed itself in the form of a gorgeous gift of a baby boy. It was unbelievable. Even now I struggle to find the words to describe what it was like to see him for the first time. Thank goodness for photos.

Nine weeks of foster parenting classes together. One life-changing call for the placement of two little boys. Approximately a year and a half of watching them work through the foster care system like champs. Two family photo shoots. One profound and perfect adoption court date. One pregnant belly. Five people in the Cranford family by the end of the day on September 17, 2013 (and yes, I am counting wee Cranford in utero who we’ll meet face-to-face this winter).

Praising God with my friends today.

Commence the debate as to whether it’s still summer or not. Summer, the season, came to visit us again yesterday (and I hear it’ll show up in full force today as well), so even though we’re in full swing at school, summer still reigns.

A quick note about photography and motherhood. Sometimes photographers who happen to be mothers get tired of documenting every event. We do this for work and are keenly aware that sometimes you need to put the camera down and simply *live* life, without documentation. And yet, I describe my cameras as being almost like a body part of mine—I want them with me pretty much all the time and feel something less than whole when I don’t have one at my disposal. But yesterday, while the kids were playing outside, I was somewhere between laziness and living in the moment, and had this ridiculous internal dialogue going. This light is wonderful… Look at these little faces… That’s okay, just enjoy it and enjoy chatting with Renae… But the light! Aaaa, the light! And that’s when I got up and shot a few images.

I’d say my efforts were entirely worth it in the end. I love these precious kids and I’m glad to make art from some of their last carefree summertime moments in 2012.

On August 10 a walk/run fundraiser was held for Priya Steiner. It was a beautiful morning at Holmes Lake and I praised God for his healing hand in Priya’s life. It was a joy to participate and to see her friends, family and devoted public gather to support her that morning.

Read more about Priya’s story on her Caring Bridge site, and consider making a tax-exempt donation for her family at West Gate Bank in Lincoln, Nebraska (“Pennies for Priya,” Attn: Scott Faber).

I’m waking up out of a fog and into another this morning. In what has to be the coolest, mistiest, most autumn-like final days of July I can recall, I awake this morning and relish the quietness of a household on a cloudy Tuesday morning. I pull on socks—socks!—and briefly wonder where my fleece jackets are. Still strongly on my mind and embedded deeply in my heart are the events of last weekend; namely the birth of a wonderful and squeezy baby boy. Lauren had said she’d like to go into labor on Friday and have the baby over the weekend. And she did just that. I joined her and Josh at the hospital at 12:30am Saturday and entered that strange time warp that exists in hospitals. It feels too brief and not accurate really to state that little Judah was born at 5:29pm because somehow the hours between 12:30am and and 5:29pm unfolded themselves into a 300-page novel all it’s own. The clock ticked away as labor worked itself out in Lauren, but how does all the walking and the contractions and the pain and the love fit itself into one small day? How does the start of this new life make sense in terms of minutes and hours? You can see how I’m just now waking up from the fog of this experience; it’s not just the sleeplessness of one night that has affected me. I’m wrapping my mind around this incredible experience and praising God for his inexplicable miracles.

Welcome to the world, little Judah. You are a precious gift indeed. And though you won’t understand this until you’re grown and watching your own children being born, I can tell you one thing for certain: your mom is a rock star.

 

Jeremy and I have long wanted to take Livia to Disney. Land or World, it didn’t matter much to us. Both of us had been to the parks as children and we wanted to take Livia while she was still young enough to enjoy the magic of the place. But every time I looked into going, I felt overwhelmed by the vast amount of information available to me. Did a Disney vacation really require this much planning? And was it worth the amount of stress I’d feel by pouring over the information?

The long and short of it is, yes, Disney does require advanced planning. But yes, it absolutely is worth the effort.

Our trip didn’t happen by my own efforts; rather, our Disney dreams got kickstarted when our friend Brian was planning to attend a work conference in Anaheim. After delicately stepping into conversations with Brian and Maralee—Would you mind if we went with you? Feel free to say no!—we hitched our wagon to their star and we were off. Plane tickets were first. I wanted for our families to sit next to each other on the plane and have our hotel rooms next door as well because the trip would be more fun that way. A few weeks later we purchased park tickets and negotiated all that meant too. Two day park-hopper passes which allowed us to enter both parks for two days in a row. We planned a third day to relax by hotel pools and maybe visit a nearby beach.

With plane tickets purchased, hotel rooms secured and park tickets arranged, we just had to wait for the vacation to start. Oh and plan the details of the actual trip.

You can jump over to Maralee’s website and read all about her uber-planner personality. About two weeks before the trip I realized that merely talking to Maralee about it was stressing me out. This girl is crazy about details. I’m a J on the Myers-Briggs scale, but only just so. Maralee, well, she’s something special. (I say this in absolute love and will acknowledge shortly how simply being close to such a planner benefited us at Disneyland.)

In preparation for our trip I wanted to get Livia excited about all things Mickey Mouse. We watched Youtube videos of theme park rides, caught up on Disney movies and watched a behind-the-scenes feature on Netflix. When her jaw dropped at the sight of real-life Tinker Bell, we knew she was engaged. Over time we discussed the things she most wanted to do at Disneyland, and it was a relatively simple request: visit Tinker Bell and see Cinderella’s castle lit up at night. Jeremy and I also decided to remain really flexible once in the parks. Our goal was having a good time as a family, so we wanted to be able to go with the flow and do what felt right at the time. Most importantly, we knew that having a tight agenda and rushing our daughter would only frustrate the three of us.

Enter one plan-loving Maralee Bradley. Maralee, as you can read for yourself, developed a game plan based on the rides her boys wanted to go on and mapped out park routes with help from a cousin who used to work at Disney. This was pure gold, my friends. I’d say my forte is travel plans—I’m all about getting on the right flights at the right times and making arrangements with the front desk at hotels. It was delightful to then back off and let Maralee take the lead on times to get into the parks and where to go once we got there. We basically followed Brian and Maralee like ducklings into Disneyland, and left their sides when something more girlie appealed to Livia. I think we visited Pixie Hollow instead of Toad’s Wild Ride, and Ariel’s Undersea Adventure instead of another Toy Story attraction. The Tredway strategy would not have included getting up at 6:00am to get into the parks at 7:00am, but the Bradley strategy did. And it paid off big time! We got on rides quickly and thoroughly enjoyed our adventurous mornings.

There are countless resources available to Disney travelers, but here are a few tips that helped our trip go smoothly.

• Travel with friends or family. You will multiply your fun and reduce marital stress by sharing friendship and laughing at the ways your kids push your buttons. You can also share trail mix, lollipops and Skittles this way.
• Buy Disney shirts and even toys from local stores or internet retailers prior to your travels. Disney is all about being cheesy—matching clothing and Mickey on your shirts is encouraged there. But you can save tons of money by purchasing the clothing in advance.
• Brings snacks and an empty water bottle with you. Everything in the park is crazy expensive. Yes, you’ll have to spend money once you’re there, but granola bars for breakfast and a refillable water bottle will save you money. Says the woman who paid $3 for a banana. Seriously.
• Figure out how the parks work. We got in early (during the Extra Magic Hour) because we stayed at the Disneyland Hotel and used the Fast Passes when needed. Awesome.
• Pretend to be a kid again. The magic of Disney wasn’t for Livia only—we all enjoyed it. From the kindness of the park employees and characters to the magical fireworks at night, from the little rides I remember as a child (Snow White and Pinnochio!) to the newer attractions at Disney’s California Adventure (Cars and roller coasters!), the experience was incredible. Jeremy, Livia and I had the time of our lives and made joyful memories we’ll cherish for a lifetime.

**The first and third images were snapped by Maralee. This last picture makes me laugh so hard. Half of Livia’s Mickey-shaped ice cream treat had just sheared off and, clearly, she is in dismay. I did what any good mother would do; picked it up and handed it to her to eat quickly. What? You wouldn’t do that. Okay, that’s fair. I love this shot and I love that Jeremy is wearing a Livia-given flower tucked behind his ear as well.

**I have perhaps a million Disney photos on my Facebook page for friends to peruse. I’m showing great restraint—or maybe just exhaustion—by posting so few here.