Professionally Cold

For Jack's first birthday, we knew we wanted to do the same with him as we did with Allen on his first birthday... hire a professional photographer to capture a few good family pics, as well as of course, a bunch of the birthday boy himself!

As you can imagine, there weren't too many professional photographers to choose from... but we got lucky in finding one we really liked, but more importantly, who was available to shoot on Jack's birthday.

Don't let our clothes or lack thereof fool you... for it was mega cold that afternoon and wearing 14 layers with huge puffy jackets and ski masks just wasn't exactly the look we were going for in our family pictures! 

So although we were all freezing and uncomfortable... we followed the birthday boy's lead and were all happy little (cold) campers! 

Standing in the snow without snow gear on was cold enough... but add in some bone chilling wind and it was darn right miserable! Of course the wind didn't help much either with Jack's birthday balloons.   

With all the snow, mountains, pine trees, rivers, cool old buildings and beautiful scenery around town, it wasn't hard finding several great places to snap away.

Jack was actually feeling a tad under the weather, so we were a bit worried (among other things) about him cooperating with the whole photo shoot process in the snow... but much to our delight he was good to go, as long as he didn't touch the snow... but of course it was only a matter of time until he did, and then he quickly realized just how cold & miserable it really was! 

Props to Aunt Moo for finding and eventually bringing a blanket to the shoot! Sitting on a blanket rather than in the snow made all the difference in the world.

Not only did Moo help with the blanket... but she also helped with all the balloon wrangling for each shoot, which with the wind made it quite the task. Fortunately she had Hamp & Sam to lend a hand too. 

With both boys getting tired of smiling for the camera and enduring all the snow and cold conditions, their patience was wearing thin... and our window for capturing a cute pic of them together was quickly coming to an end.

In the end, despite the freezing cold (by the way, the Hightower boys were wearing even less clothes & layers than we were and thought we were really lame complaining of how cold it was!) everything worked out better than we expected and we got exactly what we wanted!

Happy 1st Birthday Jack Jefferson Etheridge!

We may have tortured you in the cold snow...

but that's only because we love you so very much!