FIRST Day of School!! My baby started real school this past week!! Ashlyn Grace Steller is now in kindergarten. Wow. It was tramatizing!! Well…at least it was for mommy and daddy. Daddy feels a lot older and we were both truly overwhelmed by emotions we have never felt before! Ashlyn was just fine and took everything in stride.

We got to the school as a family and waited to take her to her class. I can imagine that walking into the building for the first day was a bit awe-inspiring, with the ordered chaos of throngs of children and parents walking to their respective classes. Ashlyn had her own little Nikon paparazzi snapping away with tears in his eyes and pride in his heart. We got the typical shots of the first day (with sissy, mommy and daddy and teacher, but I snapped of few of her moments of school…the embarrassment walking down the hall with daddy shooting away and all the other kids looking on…a tentative “do I sit down at my desk now?” look of bewilderment…some little details that some folks tend to miss, but the photographer in me kicks into gear.

My favorite photo is this last one and it is a bit heart-wrenching to say the least. As we were walking out of the room, after saying our good-byes, I turned one last time and saw my big girl apprehensively looking at her peers for the very first time, wondering if she should start her coloring now, and wondering if she was following directions, wondering if she was doing the right thing, wondering if she could be brave and make it through her first minutes, first hours, first days of this new journey towards growing up.

Ashlyn, I am so proud of you, baby. God gave me a beautiful, red-haired little angel, with a sweet temperament and a quick, intelligent mind. I already know how smart you are and I just know that you will continue to love school as much as your daddy did. Baby, just know that I am always here for you whenever you need me, for anything, anytime. When you can read this yourself, I want you to test me on this. I am your number one fan. I love you, my big girl.

SIDENOTE: Half a week into it, she already loves school. After her second day, I overly-animatedly (that’s a new word, I think) asked if she had fun and what she had learned that was cool. She calmy stated that “her teacher still hadn’t taught her how to read, yet.” I stifled an uproarous laugh and replied that I was sure they would get to that later this year, then followed up with a question about recess, which she told me was a lot of fun and that they got to have two of them! It’s an all day kindergarten, so they break it up a bit, for everyone’s sanity, I imagine.

Jake is a quiet, strong baseball player for a college team down in Texas who absolutely adores his sweetheart, Ashley! Ashley is full of radiant smiles and affection for her fiancé. They are too cute to watch!

Their wedding is coming this December and while the wedding plans are well under way, we took a couple nights during the hottest days of this summer to meet up and get some great engagement photos in the Lee’s Summit area (Downtown Lee’s Summit and the new Bass Pro)

I hope you enjoy some of the photos I was able to put together here. There are always so many to choose from that it is hard to narrow down for the blog. I hope you like my favs!

What can I say? This was one incredible wedding day celebration. My day kicked off at the morning rehearsal at Country Club Christian Church off Ward Parkway and ended adrenaline-pumped, late that night at The Boulevard Brewery in Kansas City. I met so many amazing people and was truly blessed to have been a part of Jon and Caycee’s ROCKING day! If you were a part of the day, then you know what I mean.

Post a comment and tell me what you think! If you were at the wedding, then I really want to know what was your favorite part of the day!

Earlier I posted a sneak preview of the photos. I really hope you all enjoyed this full post. I had a very hard time narrowing down the vast amount of photos that Neal and I took that day!

Oh! That reminds me! Neal Troester, half of the dynamic and creative team at Lemon Lime Photography, was the very generous and talented second-shooter for the day. His style is great. His skilled eye was treasured and several of the photos here are his. (I have a special post coming that tell more about how valuable a second shooter can be.) Go check out more of Lemon Lime’s work at their new site at lemonlimephoto.com.

Look for an outtakes and behind-the-scenes post coming soon!