I hope everyone is having a nice Monday!

And if not, here’s something to make you smile.

Me. About twenty years ago.

Have you ever received an unexpected letter or card in the mail?

There is something so wonderful about a hand-written note that just melts my heart. Unlike an email or facebook message (which make my heart flutter when they include lots of smiley faces and exclamation points), writing a note takes time. To sit down, grab a pen, and use a stamp, envelope, and cute return address label.

I like to call hand-written notes ‘love notes.’ Whenever I receive a ‘love note’ from someone I’ve taken photos for, I can almost feel them hugging me with their words of thanks and appreciation.

Here are just a few that I have received in the past year. If you look closely, you’ll see that two are from Brittany, who also loves love notes. :-)

p.s. Hand-written exclamation points, hearts, and smiley faces always ALWAYS give me the warm fuzzies. :-)

“sayWHA?!”

Yes, that’s right. This past weekend my family celebrated Christmas. And Thanksgiving. And my birthday. And it was FABULOUS! Lance and I got home just after my brother and his family, and just before the ‘bad weather.’

The next night, we opened presents. Because someone kept asking “When can we open presents? When can we open presents?” And it wasn’t my three-year-old nephew. :-)

Since Jonas got a train set for his birthday, I gave him a train conductor outfit for Christmas!! When I was little, I had a McDonald’s outfit and I played restaurant ALL the time.

Thank goodness Lance has so much energy to entertain Jonas all weekend! :-) In between helping everyone open their Christmas presents, Jonas would come over to Lance and they would pop the bubble wrap used in some of the boxes.

Jonas also likes to snuggle and giggle with grandpa.

Isaac is already three months old!! Did someone say ‘time for a photoshoot?!’

Baby burrito!! :-)

Time to go sledding!

This is how Isaac felt about being outside in the cold:

“Aunt Laura, what does this do?”

“Hold it up to your face and find out.”

Snuggle time with grandma!

And of course I got some snuggle time in as well. Whenever I sat next to the Christmas tree, Isaac would stretch to look at the lights.

Caramel bourbon spice (birthday) cake.

It’s okay to be jealous. :-)

Apparently mom doesn’t keep birthday candles around the house.

“Aunt Laura, how many numbers are you?”

Me and my nephews! What more could a girl ask for on her birthday?!

I want to thank everyone who sent me birthday wishes! I had a fabulous day and it was a great way to finish up the holiday weekend with my family!

I hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving! This year I was thankful for good health, family, my wonderful boyfriend, new friendships, and everyone who has trusted me in the past year to document their marriages and growing families. And caramel bourbon spice cake. :-)

My family is celebrating Christmas over the Thanksgiving weekend. So of course I already have all my Christmas shopping done. And of course I have all the presents wrapped. So naturally I have my Christmas tree up and decorated. And you can’t have a Christmas tree up without a Nativity scene set up.

And you can’t have your apartment decorated for Christmas without a whole bunch of tasty treats to munch on!

As I was putting the drizzle on the peanut butter balls, I had Willow Smith’s song stuck in my head. Except I was whippin’ my fork back and forth, splattering chocolate drizzle all over the place. :-)

There might have been a one-person dance party in my kitchen.

I really have no clue what qualifies a dessert as being a ‘tart.’ I would imagine something fancy, bite-sized and lemony. Because lemons are tart, right?

So I’m browsing recipes online and I find one for a Turtle Tart. It looks nothing like what my imagination would call a ‘tart,’ but it does look AMAZING. It has chocolate. caramel. and pecans. and looks fancy.

I am planning on making supper with my dear friend Halley tonight and I thought it would be nice to bring dessert. I had already gathered all the ingredients to make this fabulous ‘tart,’ so why not try out a new recipe?

And just to make sure it wasn’t deadly, I tried a piece. Because I’d hate for Halley to get sick just because I wanted to try a new recipe.

And it was good.

And will be tonight after supper.

And every day for a month because it made a whole 9×13 pan and it is so rich, you can’t eat a whole piece without a glass of milk.