Drew B Photograhy

I’m 2 for 2. Another absolutely fabulous wedding with another amazing couple. How do I get so lucky? No mountain lions today, but we did have an encounter with some killer bees.  Here are two of my favorites. More later!

So excited! My new baby cousin is here! We’ve been awaiting her arrival for some time now. Chuck’s Aunt Shari and her boyfriend Don brought her home this past weekend. She’s gorgeous with big brown eyes and sandy blonde hair. She’s a tiny little thing weighing in at about 5 pounds. She sleeps most of the time (as most newborns do) and really doesn’t make too much noise. And, she’s almost potty trained! At only 8 weeks! It’s going to be great for Brayden to have a cousin so close in age. They will get to grow up together. How fun! Here are her newborn pictures! 

Did I forget to mention that Charley is a dog? She’s a golden doodle and she’s the 2nd cutest dog I’ve ever seen! We’re so excited for Shari and Don to finally have a puppy of their own! It’s the best!

Funny story about her name, Charley the IV. When I was pregnant we were out to dinner with Shari, Don, Chuck’s other aunt Connie, and his Grandma. Everyone was asking us what we were going to name the baby. Chuck is Charles Frederick Bittel III. And while that’s a great name and all, I really didn’t want a Charles the IV. I had my heart set on naming him Brayden. So when we told everyone the baby’s name, his Grandma didn’t love it and Shari, being the antagonist that she is, kept saying that we really should name the baby Charlie IV to carry on the family tradition. I told Shari that SHE should have a baby and she could name him Charlie IV. Well, she did! And although the puppy is a girl, they just adapted the spelling to Charley IV. LOVE it! Now all the pressure is off of me and the family name is carried on

This afternoon Chuck, Brayden, Hauggy and I took a walk at our favorite park. I was scouting a cool field where I planned on shooting Jill and Brandon’s maternity session in a couple of weeks. However, we won’t be going to that park again. We’ve been going to this park since Brayden was a few weeks old and I love it because there are so many cool trails to explore. We were walking towards a dam with cool graffiti on it and I hear Chuck yell, “Pick up Hauggy and RUN!”. I scooped Hauggy up and ran for my life, which is really hard to do with a 25 pound dog when I haven’t run in ten plus months. I knew from the sound of Chuck’s voice that it was either a mountain lion or a deranged man with a knife. We ran down a hill and got off the trail. We realized that we were going to have to walk back towards the mountain lion to get back to the trail. So, we started yelling help. As we were walking on the trails earlier I was cursing the mountain bikers who would go zipping up and down the trails, but now I was so happy for them because they could get to us fast. Two mountain bikers got to us right away and they escorted us back to the park.

Chuck told me when we got back to the car that he saw a big brown thing in the bushes about 200 feet away from us. He didn’t say anything at first because he didn’t want to scare me and he thought it was just a coyote. But, then it started running towards us and jumped over the bushes. That’s when he saw that it was a big mountain lion. I’m so glad I didn’t see it because I think I might have been too scared to run. When I called my parents to tell them, my Dad said that we did the completely wrong thing and should have faced it and made ourselves “big”. Dad, the next time you get chased by a mountain lion let’s see what you do! We were just trying to save your grandson and granddog. I think once I picked up Hauggy it gave up. The whole thing was so scary. I don’t even want to think about what could have happened. I’m just glad it didn’t. The statistics say that you are 1000 times more likely to get struck by lightning than you are to get attacked by a mountain lion. But, today was close enough for me.

I don’t even want to think about little Brayden on his chair in the middle of that field (because I probably would have taken his 3 month pictures there) and a mountain lion jumping out of the bushes or if I would have had pregnant Jill all the way out there who wouldn’t have been able to run. I’m going to start carrying pepper spray with me so at least I will feel a little bit more in control if I were in the situation again. I’m bummed because I lost one of the coolest locations to shoot at, but I will just have to find another one. Any suggestions for my maternity shoot?

And to make everyone happy after my scary story, here is a picture of Brayden Bittel. He was 4 weeks old in the picture. I love his toothless yawns! The shirt was given to him by my friend Jamie. He was supposed to wear it on Valentine’s Day, but he was still in the hospital. By the way, he slept through the whole ordeal. Even with Chuck running for his life he stayed totally asleep in his Baby Bjorn. Crazy kid misses all the fun adventures!