We have long been fans of Julie Horner, aka Julie Christine from the talented Julie Christine Photography. She has photographed more friends that we can count and has given us beautiful photos of our two boys as newborns. With Welles she braved a snow storm and spent ALL night with us to capture photos that regularly bring (good) tears to our eyes.
It was our pleasure to return the favour and capture her and her beautiful family at Mud Bay.
2020 has been… well, it’s been 2020.
No one could have predicted the way this year turned out.
As we continue to live through restrictions and social distancing we thought it would be fun to look back at our year and remember the good things. Sometimes the best medicine for rough times is taking inventory of all the blessings we experienced in the midst of chaos.
For us, 2020 was the year of family.
We started 2020 with our second son Welles coming into our life on January 13th. He was born during a small snow storm, and we are so blessed to have had the most amazing team from Grove Midwifery, a wonderful Doula named Kortney, and beautiful photos capture by Julie Christine.
The first few weeks of life with Wellesy-boy was amazing… because he actually slept unlike his older brother! Myles turned into an emotional dad who cried tears of happiness daily and we spent a lot of time watching movies together as a family.
As you do as photographers we dressed Wellesy-boy up in all his new clothes (Chantelle has an addiction) like a little doll and took pictures every chance we could get.
It was a couple of months after the birth of Welles that the whole pandemic thing happened. At first, it wasn’t so bad. Like most people, I think we embraced things pretty well and enjoyed the extra time spent together at home.
We had just purchased a townhouse in September and the excitement of doing updates was in full swing at this point. We also bought a lot of plants. We don’t have any more room for plants. Also, Wellesy-boy like to eat our plants… so if you are thinking of having kids but also really love plants, maybe thing of investing in some hanging plants.
We didn’t take that many pictures between March and April so here are some pictures of the boys. Welles was growing so fast at this point and was the happiest little guy ever. Aspen was loving all the extra time that Dad was at home trying to work. Free tip: 2 year olds aren’t the best for productivity at home.
By Aspens birthday (April) we were basically in the full swing of social distancing and staying in our bubbles. That meant that Aspens 3rd birthday was going to look different than we had originally planned. It was kind of hard to explain to him why all his friends and family were on a computer screen instead of there in person, but hey, he is young and very forgiving.
Chantelle made him a sprinkle donut cake because he was (and continues to be) obsessed with them. I think we combined two of his favourite things, donuts and sparklers, so big win on that front.
At this point of 2o2o we began to feel some of the pains of not being with our community in person. That being said it was hilarious having everyone on Zoom on our dining room table singing Aspen happy birthday, completely out of time, but bringing him so much joy regardless.
By the time May rolled around we (Myles) had gained some lbs and started to embrace some creative ways to show each other love. Mothers day was going to be a home cooked meal this year, and the boys decided to spoil Mom with some hugs and kisses while Dad took some pictures.
This was also around the time that we started to realize that our wedding seasons was going to be looking a lot different. If you are a wedding photographer, or in the wedding industry you have an idea of how wild those first couple of months were when we were all frantically trying to salvage the year and help our clients get through the chaos. We were in full damage control mode while trying to figure out what our future looked like. There was a lot of praying, planning, and maybe a few tears. We are so thankful for our clients. It has been a wild ride, and they have been amazing despite their wedding plans being dramatically changed.
With Easter on the horizon, we really felt the loss of not being around our church family as much. For those who don’t go to church, Easter is a really big deal and is always marked with celebration with our community. Without that, it was a very quiet celebration as we took the boys out and dressed them up for some nice pictures that we would have taken before heading to church.
Welles was a ball of cuteness at this point who was so happy and fun to be around. We brought out Chantelle’s favourite bunny outfit that Aspen wore when he was first born and squeezed Welles into it. Needless to say, he was a lot bigger than Aspen was at this time of his life!
A highlight for us in the summer was going to Whistler with the Koebel family. A few days in the mountains was just what the doctor ordered (not literally, parks were heavily restricted at this point) and we took the boys up for a little hike. Our only regret is not doing this sooner, and not as frequently as it was a beautiful time up together, sharing in some fresh air and exploring.
These photos hold a special place in our hearts because they are the last photos we took of Aspen with his long hair!
Welles had a new friend he made while looking at flowers. At this point he was crawling around like crazy and just overall ready to be independent.
This is the first set of pictures of Aspen with his new haircut (plus sunscreen that gave it a beautiful greasy, stuck to his forehead look).
We are so thankful for the friends in our life. We have a good group who have stuck together for the last few years and have been creating these amazing children! They don’t really understand the whole play together thing too well, but it has been so fun watching them grow up and interact with each other. This picture of them is a great glimpse into our lives with them!
The summer went by so fast. We did not do a good job of taking pictures on our big cameras so we fast forward straight into the fall. As soon as the decorations for Halloween came out Aspen was in his glory. His favourite holiday that he got to share with Welles at the pumpkin patch many times over!
Halloween is a big highlight in our house thanks to Aspen. Anything and everything related to Halloween gets him so excited, and so we decided to dress up as something creepy this year. He went trick-or-treating for almost 3 hours and cried when we had to stop, which is honestly the best reminder of how much fun we used to have back when we were kids doing the same. He talked to everyone who was ‘spooky’ and finally got over his fear of saying ‘trick-or-treat’ to strangers at their doors. It was so fun seeing all of the creative ways people were handing out candy while being safe; candy launchers, slides, and more. We also live in the most amazing complex that does Halloween really well. So amazing seeing our neighbours come together and do community tables while having hot chocolate and fires with each other.
Overall 10/10 time.
What should we be next year? Aspens vote is for spooky vampires.
Also, at this point Welles decided that he wanted to start walking at 9 months old. What is this kid eating?!
The fall came and went SO fast. We had some pretty wild post-Halloween blues now that this amazing time to dress up and eat candy was over. We decided to fully embrace the Christmas season as soon as possible, so we threw up the lights and decorations in the middle of November. To be honest, we spent a lot of time inside together just watching movies and reading. In a normal year there would be a lot of shame and guilt attached to that, but one really beautiful thing about this year was the ability to slow down without those feelings. Slowing down seems so opposite of what we should be doing.. and while we wish we were more active, it is just the season of life that has been handed to us. We hope you were able to find some peace in this season!!
Snow has a special place in our hearts. We spent a LOT of time snowboarding together before the kids came along and we long for the day when we can get back up to the mountains as a family. We try our best to show our excitement to Welles and Aspen when it snows and have them out in it as much as possible.
This year’s first snow was special because it was the first time Welles has seen snow since the week he was born during a small snow storm.
With that we come to the end of 2020. What a wild year it was. Nothing was expected. It came with a lot of ups and downs, and so much time spent together. It feels like it flew by looking back, but we can’t get over the feelings we had when it seemed like it was never going to end.
At the end of 2020 we know a few things for certain: we love our family so much and this year would not have been nearly as bearable without them, having two boys means our house will never be boring, we are blessed to have an amazing home to call our own, and we miss our community so much.
If you made it this far, we hope you enjoyed this little recap of our year in photos! It doesn’t show any of the 20,000 iPhone photos Chantelle took, so believe us when we say the moments between these photo sets were just as life giving and special.
Wow it’s been one year already since we ventured to Southern Spain with Aspen in tow ready to explore! To be honest we were originally planning to go to Hawaii for a vacation but due to it being Spring Break, prices were through the roof and we were actually able to fly to Malaga for cheaper (crazy!). We arrived in Malaga after about 15 hours on two different planes. Aspen did wonderful on the flight there but was exhausted when we arrived at our Airbnb. We immediately set our stuff down and went out to walk around in order to stay awake and not crash too early in the day. It was warm, sunny and beautiful and everything was in walking distance from our Airbnb. There were orange and lemon trees everywhere which filled the air with a sweet smell that I could not get over, it was so dreamy!
We were using Malaga as just a start and end point to our trip so we only had one day/night to explore. We made the most of it while trying to take hold of our jet lag before heading out the next day to our first stop in Frigiliana.
While researching the top places to explore in Andalusia, I stumbled across Frigiliana which was rated “top most beautiful white washed city.” Thankfully it was on our way to Granada so we made the stop and I am SO thankful we did. We could have spent endless days walking through this tiny but beautiful mountain town. It was incredibly picturesque and not all that crowded with tourists. Aspen loved roaming the narrow walkways dodging mopeds (sort of scary!) and climbing ALL of the stairs. We enjoyed lunch perched above the city then let Aspen play at a playground before we hopped back in the car and headed for our Airbnb in Granada.
