Happy last day of summer!! But actually, is it happy? Like most of you, around this time of year I am wishing away summer and anticipating fall. But this year? This year, I’m trying to slow down. I’m reminding myself of how painful winter can be, and trying to soak in those last few hot and humid days. I’m spending extra time outside barefoot, swinging in my hammock, watering my plants with a joyful heart and continuing to wear shorts and tanks, even though my heart is screaming for jeans and sweaters.

Before fall is officially here, I wanted to share a little recap of my summer.

This summer was, dare I say it…the best one yet. I can’t believe it was our second summer in Missouri/Illinois area, because it definitely feels like our first. Last year this time we were getting ready to close on our home and spending our days traveling back and forth to Wisconsin to finish out my wedding season up there. We didn’t go to church often and we definitely didn’t try and find community in the area. But this summer was SO different. This summer, Missouri finally began to feel like home. We made friends, found community and best of all, fell in love with our church. Its been incredible and we’ve just been loving life so much.

On top of making this town our home this summer, I spent quite a bit of time traveling to photograph weddings. I spent well over a month of time at home in Lancaster, a few weeks in New York. And a weekend here and there in Wisconsin, Chicago, Maryland, etc…

And now… a recap of our summer in photos, because thats how I do it best.

We start off every summer with our anniversary (June 5th) and so that usually means some sort of anniversary trip. This year we combined my birthday and our anniversary trip in one and Jake surprised me with tickets to Colorado. I guess it technically doesn’t count as summer since we went the end of April, but it was a beautiful weekend and honestly, felt like summer!!

I traveled home in May to photograph a wedding and throw my sisters tropical themed, bridal shower! It was SO FUN. And it was featured on Inspired by This!!

I got to spend a lot of time in New York with my best friends that I don’t get to see often anymore ;(

The brand new parlor opened at La Belle Dairy!! Y A Y !!!! Happy husband, happy cows, and proud wife. 😉

We spent a lot of time on/by the river.

And marveled at how high and fast the corn grew…

Our Colorado fam visited!!! (We LOVE visitors! 🙂 Please come!!)

Our besties got married…

We spent A LOT of time in Lancaster and loved every second of it.

We also went on our annual family beach vacation to Ocean City, Maryland. It was short, but so sweet.

My sister got M A R R I E D !!!! (Highlight of the summer, obvi.)

And a majority of our summer was spent on the road. Back and forth between Wisconsin again and I spent MANY wonderful hours behind my camera! 🙂

But the cherry on top of this summer was when the ENTIRE family came out to spend time with us in our Missouri home. Perhaps the only time it will EVER happen and I’m so grateful. The newly weds surprised us by coming out as well, and we spent a long weekend playing games, laughing, walking to the river and drinking lots of wine!!!

There were so many other great moments this summer that either didn’t get captured, or I just didn’t add in this blog post, because, W O W !! Putting that together was more time consuming and overwhelming than I thought it would be! I hope you enjoyed getting to see this little glimpse of our summer—and if anything, I’m excited to have this blog post as a way for me to look back years from now and remember our Missouri summer.