Despite a very full apartment and lots of sniffly noses and allergies, we had so much fun.

The boys thought riding the metro was the coolest thing ever.  We hit up a few favorite museums on the mall,  visited Mt. Vernon, watched a lot of basketball (UK won the NCAA tournament!!!!), and played games until we collapsed.  Family visits are seriously the best…Rach, thanks for making the trip out here…we so enjoyed having you!

we represented Kentucky proudly as we toured DC!

(Yes, I know many of you don’t agree).

Well, I love them.

And it takes a WHOLE lot of self control not to eat the whole box at once.  That is, when I allow myself to buy them.

Well, this year I did so well!  I didn’t even buy any peeps around Easter.

But then my parents let it slip to their bike-riding, prank-loving friends.

Who then proceeded to give me this as a “belated birthday gift” last weekend.

I never thought I’d meet someone who would come to mean so much to me at my own wedding, but that’s exactly what happened.

Our wedding photographers Jeff and Christina brought along an assistant that day…she had bright eyes, dark hair and the sweetest spirit and I liked her from the moment we met.

Since that day (almost 3 years ago!) we have established that I am immensely grateful for.

When I’m in Kentucky we try to get together for a cup of coffee maybe even a sleepover…but it never feels like enough.  Our skype conversations go on for hours…about life, marriage, business and faith.

Whitney,

Thank you for your sweet spirit, your willingness to listen, and for always challenging me to be a better person (in life, marriage, business and faith).  You are a beautiful woman and incredibly talented photographer and I’m honored to call you my friend.

-Susannah

Whitney and I did a swap shoot awhile ago with our wonderful husbands to have photographs for our websites (did I mention that she is an amazing photographer?) and I am excited to finally getting around to sharing these!  Here are a few favorites from Whitney and Michael’s session!

We have been inseparable best friends since the ripe age of 8.  Which means we went through our painfully awkward years together.  Believing with all our hearts that we were the coolest kids about town with our American Girl dolls, horse t-shirts and pony-tails.

Hannah is getting married this summer so like any good bridesmaid (yes, I get to be in a wedding instead of photographing!  fun!), I wanted to throw her a shower.  And since dress-up and tea parties (with Samantha and Addie in tow, always) were the norm for H and I, it only seemed fitting for her shower to echo that!

With the help another amazing bff and bridesmaid, Rachel the baking and decor looked lovely.

Flowers were by the incredible ladies of Sweet Root Village, and the paper products are by the amazing Always Will Design.

Rachel and I made the spread of baked goods, mostly from Smitten Kitchen with a few secret recipes from a wonderful British friend.

The Menu of carb goodness is as follows:

1. Amazing fruit salad (by Kimberly): Pineapple, Mango, Apple, Banana

2. Plain and Lemon Blueberry Scones…perfection.  Adapted from this recipe.  Served with a side of hand-whipped cream and fresh berries

3. Lemon Curd Jam Tarts: mini tart shells filled with lemon curd, baked, then topped with fresh cream and a blueberry

4. Mini-Sandwiches: Chicken Salad and Cucumber/Cream Chesse

5. Bakewell Tart: Crisp almond and raspberry filled tart.  First attempt making and tasting it…and it was ah-mazing.

I love baby fingers and toes!sometimes new little siblings take a little getting used too. :)  I love this.

J and I drove up Saturday evening to visit my cousin and his family that live an hour north of here on an army base.  David and I spent many Easters, Thanksgivings and Christmases together growing up with our very large families (I’m one of 5 and he is one of 6 kids), so it was perfectly natural for us to crash at their place for Easter weekend!  David and his wife Melissa have three wonderfully sweet (and equally funny) little girls that make life quite entertaining.  We played games, ate an excess of baked goods, and laughed all weekend.

It was such a sweet joy to celebrate the resurrection of Christ our Savior together with them (and on that note, you should check out Hannah’s Easter post…it is beautiful.)

When we weren’t eating, sleeping or playing board games (rare) J spent some quality time playing Wii with the girls and I got to play on the trampoline!!!

I was the very deprived child of a family doctor who saw one too many trampoline injuries in his office, so we never had one at our home, despite my relentless begging.  So getting to jump on David and Mel’s trampoline was like Christmas.  Seriously.

I mean, who doesn’t love that sensation of floating through the air for a moment in time?  Then jumping until you’re so exhausted that you collapse on the trampoline and it bounces lightly up and down as you try to catch you breath?

And then you open your eyes and the sky looks like that?

Yeah, so Easter was all kinds of wonderful this year.

oh, and if you leave your phone laying around the house for too long, you might find some bonus photos:

Here is a little sneak peek from his session…more to come soon!

Those events were the following:

1. throw Hannah’s bridal shower in our home

2. cheer UK to victory (Saturday night)

3. Run the Cherry Blossom 10 miler (very early Sunday morning)

4. photograph a newborn session (Sunday afternoon)

(5.) Prep house and receive sister and the 4 kids for a visit (Sunday night)

(6.) Cheer UK to national victory (GO BIG BLUE!!!) (Monday  night)

Thanks to a fabulous husband, a faithful God and a dear friend (Rach I couldn’t have thrown that shower without you), the weekend was a wonderfully exhausting, raging success.

H’s shower is deserving of at least one blog post of it’s own, so look for that lovely tea-themed shower and photographs on the blog sometime this week!

In the meantime, let’s talk about the run.

Yes, the 10 mile run.

10 MILE RUN.

TEN MILE RUN.

sorry, I just wanted to be sure you understood that I ran 10 miles.  At once.  Without stopping.

how, you ask, did I get myself into that mess?  …let’s rewind a few months to a conversation Hannah and I were having (sidenote, Hannah is a real runner who runs for fun and sport and has run in many races).

Hannah: Suze, wanna do the Cherry Blossom Run with me?

Me: Ummm…sure!  I love me a good 5k!

Hannah: Actually it’s 10 miles!  We will run together and it will be so much fun.

Me:  Oh, no thanks.  I don’t run long distances.

Hannah:  You can totally do it!  10 miles isn’t that far!  PLUS, it’s the only way you’ll get to truly enjoy the famous cherry blossoms…the roads will be cleared for us to run below that beautiful pink canopy and you can drink it all in!  Any other time, there are so many tourists that you can’t see past the sea of cameras.  Don’t you want to see the cherry blossoms?

Me: errr…ummm…dang…yeah, I do.  Are you sure I can run 10 miles?

Hannah: Yes!  Of course!  Anyways, you have to enter a lottery to get in the race…a million people enter and only like 20,000 get drawn!  See, our chances aren’t even that high…but we should try!

Me: hmm, yeah, the chances aren’t that high.  Ok, I’ll enter with you!  (hehehe…because obviously we won’t actually get chosen)…

but then we did.

And thus followed a comically intense few months of more running than I’ve ever done in my life.  3 normal runs a week, plus a long(ish) run on the weekend, building up to race day.  Over those months I fell in love with chocolate milk as a post-run drink (sometimes I ran just so I could drink it), listened to an insane amount of TED talks and learned all kinds of amazing and interesting things, did long runs with Hannah (in which we stopped to pet horses and take photographs of our awesome selves running–at the time it seemed like a good idea), and gained a wee bit of confidence in my running skills.  Don’t get me wrong…I’m don’t run to win, I run to finish.

And that’s how I ended up wide awake at 3:30 am on Sunday morning, in a cold-sweat thinking about my race.  Which thankfully is over.  Here’s a little re-cap of Sunday morning in iphone photos.

At dawn we walked up out of the metro with thousands of other people all dressed in spandex, wearing numbers toward the Washington Monument (it all felt slightly apocalyptic).

Hannah wanted to be sure that Rach and James knew how to properly cheer for us so they did a little practice run.The running crew: James (Hannah’s fiance, who signed up because he loves her.  He ran the 6 mile route), Hannah (the instigator), Me (innocent bystander/friend that got roped in), Sarah (Hannah’s roommate who is an actual runner that runs fast and has run a marathon).In case you weren’t sure, 20,000 people is a lot.  It looks like this at the start of a race.I’ve been known to stop mid-run to photograph something with my iphone…I had to stop for a quick calf stretch 6 miles in and looked up to see this lovely sight!

At this point I’m sure you’re probably wondering where the beautiful photographs of the breathtaking cherry blossoms are…

well, there aren’t any.

Because this year the cherry blossoms bloomed early.

Then a rainstorm washed them all away a whole week before the Cherry Blossom Festival weekend.

But thankfully there were people cheering for us all along the race course with entertaining signs.  Some drew us cherry blossoms.  Others cheered for us by name (because our names were on our race-tags…I loved that), some set up speakers and played music for us, and still others held up signs that said things like “Great job!  You training for this race lasted longer than Kim Kardashian’s marriage!” , “Push yourself!  Your legs will forgive you later.” and “Worst Parade Ever.”

Thanks to the comic relief of the signs and Hannah’s very impressive ability to talk and run, I finished the race!  (without stopping to walk or getting picked up by the slow bus)!

Then we went back to Hannah’s house and ate copious amounts of crepes.

I feel that all too often…especially when I get to hang out with my awesome nieces and nephews.

When in Kentucky a few weeks ago we snuck out for a quick session with my sister’s kids…4 of my favorite kids.  I have had a front row seat to these their lives and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  In high school I would stop by Rachael and Aaron’s house almost daily for a good few hours of snuggles and giggles with my then tiny twin nephews and two very little girls.

This is the oldest pic I could find of them (quickly)…

Fast forward a few years (that have literally flown by) and here we are now…with two beautiful girls and a very handsome pair of almost-9-year-olds with more personality than I know what to do with!

Here are a few of my favorites from the recent Bullock bunch session!