A few times a year we get to travel back to the mountains of North Carolina to visit family (and photograph/film weddings!).  We were both raised there and only moved away 7 years ago so it has a very special place in our hearts.  Taking our daughter, Hazel, back brings out all sorts of memories!  My family lives on the top of a mountain and raises bees, goats, mules, donkeys, and other assorted animals.  Josh’s family lives in the city and has a pool just yards away from their front porch.  Hazel gets the best of both worlds, lucky kid!

As soon as we arrived on the mountain, she started playing with her cousin Aiden.  They’re big buddies, and only 6 weeks apart in age!
She also spends a fair amount of time yelling at the dogs (see above picture!).  And Papaw (her great grandfather) lives right next door, so he took the two all around the mountain on his gator.

That night we had the rehearsal for my brothers wedding.  It’s pretty difficult for my family to take anything too serious, so you can imagine how the rehearsal went down.  🙂  We had a lot of fun, though!I love seeing all the cousins hang out and play together.  It makes me feel a little old, but it’s worth it.

A few weeks ago Hazel informed me that she wanted to ride a horse.  Here at the beach, that’s not as easy, but in the mountains, no problem!   She didn’t end up riding a horse per se, but my dad had a mule ready and it was close enough for her.  🙂  She’s a natural!^See the green chair randomly sitting next to the metal chicken?  Hazel decided she wanted to take the chair out to the end of the driveway to look at her ‘chicken farm.’  So she put the chair in a little red wagon, pulled it out there, and set up camp!

Her & Aiden also got to lead the mule back to his pasture!  They were pretty proud of themselves. 🙂And my favorite picture of the weekend.  My siblings and myself.  I love coming from a large family, and I think it’s wild that none of us looked like each other for most of our lives, but over time we’re starting to all look very similar!  And yes, I got the short gene, and no, my sister isn’t wearing heels!We can’t forget a family picture!  This was after the wedding– Josh and I had worked the whole time, and Hazel had been playing and eating sugar pretty much all day at that point!  The redness in the pictures… that’s our actual skin.  It was hot and we’d spent a fair amount of time in the sun despite the ceremony being indoors!  We always forget to take a picture before the wedding when we look all fresh!
Usually when we’re in town we don’t get too much free time because we want to spend every extra minute with family.  But we had a session end right at sunset with a fantastic view, so we grabbed a few landscape shots while we were there!  The first one is of downtown Asheville, and the second is looking west, right as the sun set.  I wish pictures could accurately capture the true breathtaking beauty!