Lucky7s Studio: Waiting on Sweet Laney Lovette...

This past weekend I got to get together with my cousin Kayla and her husband JW to do a maternity shoot up at the farm. All of us "Miles" clan are eagerly awaiting the new bundle of joy that will be here soon. When we were first talking about doing a photo shoot, I asked Kayla where she wanted to meet to do it, and she said "The Farm." It may seem like my family do a lot of pictures there, but it's not just because of good scenery of fields, meadows, forest, or a running creek. My family's legacy is at that end of that red dirt road. All us {aunts, uncles, cousins, parents} have a sentimentality attached to that little piece of land.

My grandparents built their family there. Holiday traditions ranging from Easter Egg hunts, Thanksgiving lunch, Christmas Eve dinner have paved the path to create lesser known traditions of our family. Traditions like the women-folk sitting at the formal dining room table where we talk shopping, church, and babies. Men take the old kitchen table (which is closer to the food!) where jokes, hunting & fishing tales, and guns and ammo stories are traded. Or traditions of taking pictures of cousins around the tree that once was a lineup of oldest to youngest, now is tallest to shortest. We each know our exact place to be without even thinking about it. And when food is involved, we all are known for a signature dish that is to be brought for holiday get-togethers ....so much so that if you throw a curve ball and bring something different, it can be a serious let down to the rest of us who were excitedly waiting to eat that dish.

These traditions, wrapped in love of family and rooted in our faith of Christ is where our sentimentality comes from for that farm. It's why we take pictures there. It's why Kayla (without missing a beat) can say "At the farm," and I know exactly what memories she wants to capture at that place. It's why all of us children & grandchildren want to continue on with those traditions. It's why we take pictures of our growing families in the field, or on that old rusty tractor, or by the barn, or down at the creek. It's why "visiting the old house" still means something to us even if its in shambles. It is about capturing photos of us and our children enjoying and savoring the legacy that my grandparents have created and gifted to us.

So without further ado.....