And we’re again back this Weekly Wednesday! This week marks the first Weekly Wednesday of December, so we wanted to start this holiday month off strong with The Laxners’ 5th Annual Christmas Portrait Session! You may remember this sweet Chicago-turned-St.John-Indiana family from their 2019 Sunrise Chicago Engagement Session or big University of Notre Dame Basilica-Smith Ballroom wedding (with trek onto the Notre Dame football field) back in 2021 (rescheduled from 2020), but we’ve also been photographing their Indiana Christmas Family Portrait Sessions for 5 Autumns now-! It’s hard to believe that we’ve gotten to capture this sweet couple 7 times and their dog Wrigley 5(-!) times, but here we are-!
The past nearly 4 years seem like a crazy blur to most of us in the United States (especially those of us who were deemed non-essential and were even more heavily rocked by the Pandemic- rescheduling every wedding, engagement, & family client upwards of 3 to 5 times), but the vaccines keep rolling as do all of us. Though so much has changed in our country and world since 2019 from presidents to catastrophes to travels to homes and births, often it’s the people in our lives that keep us grounded and squeezing a bit of joy out of life (no matter the national or world chaos). Through the ups and downs at least some things and people in life stay consistent, so with that being said, let’s get into the Laxners’ 5th Autumn/ Christmas Family Portrait Session!
This little family formerly of Chicago lives an hour & a half away with their house in St. John, Indiana as of years ago when they bought their home across the state line here in Indiana. Over the years we’ve photographed this little family for their Christmas Family Portrait Session both here in South Bend (mainly at the University of Notre Dame) and by their house in St. John. This year we almost captured their Session in one of our personal favorite hiking spots (an hour to hour & a half from all of us), but it just wasn’t in the cards. Instead we captured their Session in a different spot than they’ve done previously here in South Bend! The autumn leaves were popping that week near downtown South Bend and there were no closing times near sunset for this particular park near us (unlike other county & state parks), so it worked out perfectly that Sunday during the great weather!
This little family were troopers as usual! The weather was pretty nice and relatively warm this autumn sunset with the sun shining and little pup Wrigley being a great sport as always. Her favorite thing in autumn is always to snap up the crunchy leaves from the ground to play with, so it’s clearly her favorite season to be out and about in nature! Her parents brought her treats again, so we made sure to give her some good rewards for looking at the camera at this strange park she’d never been to (filled with so many fun sights and sounds). ((*We were so excited to see that the vintage red & green checkered picnic blanket we brought for them to use even worked perfectly with Wrigley’s green & white checkered bandana and her mom & dads festive green, black, and red checkered clothes too))!
We remember when Bridget & Branden adopted little Wrigley, so it’s always fun getting to see her again annually whether it be at her big, awesome house by the Illinois border with its awesome backyard or whether it’s here in South Bend! Other than 2019 each of the recent years has brought its own pretty intense happenings within the U.S.A. and world, so their Sessions also often end up being a time for all of us adults to chat about not only upcoming family and holiday plans, but the craziness nationally and internationally.
After 4.5 years of getting to know this family starting with meeting them near their corporate jobs in a packed mega huge dining hall of sorts in Chicago, capturing their sunrise Engagement Session in sprawling Chicago, adapting with them during the start of a worldwide Pandemic, Five Holiday Sessions of their little family in late autumn, huge and exciting 11 hour wedding day, and more we do all feel much more at ease being candid with each other as we do with some other Millennial families that we’ve worked with annually or bi-annually over the past 14 years. With appearances having to be kept up on social media often and in-person when photographing new clients/ near strangers, this ability to be more genuine & candid in-person with some is so appreciated regardless of what the topic is!
Thanks so much, Branden & Bridget for again having us create your annual Christmas Family Portraits for a 5th year/ 7th time of us capturing you all! We can’t wait to see which your favorites are (and thanks so much again for adapting to the last-second change)-! We hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving with extended family and that your holiday season this December is going well!
Unrelated to Readers/ Viewers:
Happy 1st Week of December-! We hope you’ve been holding on through these very weird national & international times as it seems the craziness just keeps coming and has non-stop since March 2020. Hopefully the next year pre-election goes quickly, but we foresee much more intensity as presidential debates ramp up. Hopefully though they can be exhausting, the holidays bring a bit of cheer in some way whether that be a momentary break from the craziness or any little thing (like the enjoyment of twinkle lights).
A big focus this year across the board in corporate marketing departments/ campaigns and in the country has been a shift to focusing on Millennial families, but also authentic and genuine connection. We’ve been trying to reflect this in our own personal lives, but also within our business as well. It feels good to get back to more open communication and working through difficulties as straight-forward(-ly?) as possible with some radical transparency! We have a few more weeks of work before our annual holiday break and this year we’ve opted for a healthy, relaxed Staycation wherein we’ll mainly be relaxing after the annual Wedding Season turned Autumn Family Portrait Session & Engagement Session Season turned Holiday Events Season. Whew! We’re still printing, designing, packaging, shipping, and delivering for our awesome near & far clients’ holiday orders and wedding/ Portrait Session choices all month long (as has been standard for the past 9 of 15 autumns). We’re really, really looking forward to a couple awesome things coming up in January, but most of all are thankful for moments of relaxation and connection in-person. Thanks for being with us throughout the past 14+ years- especially the past 8 or 9+ of this journey!