Welcome to the first day of December 2021-! This week we’re bringing to you another Family Holiday Portrait Session that we just captured this week here in South Bend of the Keith Family. We actually photographed their Session the evening of Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving this week and this family of 15 were troopers in what ended up being the coldest day of autumn so far (with highs of 33 degrees)-!
If you don’t know The Keiths they’re one of the jolliest, kindest bunches in all of South Bend (and we’re not just saying that). This family is full of former St. Anthony’s grade school/ St. Joe High School grads with daughters Rachel & Sarah just having moved back to Indiana recently after around 5 to 10 years each of building their little families out in Arizona-! Daughter Sarah has been friends with Jenny for 20 years having been best friends in high school starting in 2001. Her sister Rachel and Jenny’s sister Jill were in the same grade as well, so the 4 played volleyball together getting into fun shenanigans during sports travel (though this was well before the likes of Facebook and Instagram, so you’ll just have to trust us when we say that there were many hilarious side splitting laughs had together with this family)-!
For their Holiday Portrait Session we met the 15 of them at their Thanksgiving festivities at the Keith parents’ home- the same that we hung out in during high school! Their backyard was perfect for the Session with its evergreens and a bit of freshly fallen snow, so we set up in their backyard and shuffled folks in and out of the home so that they could thaw out in between group photos. Some of our favorite photos are definitely the Keiths with their grandkids who we’re sure they’re beyond thrilled to- for the first time ever- have living near them here in Indiana versus across the country from them-! You can just feel the love and Thanksgiving happiness radiating off of them here!
The Keiths have 3 kids- Sarah, Rachel, & Trey. Their 3 little families were included in the Thanksgiving/ holiday festivities that day as were all 4 grandparents-! We were/ are both personally very close to our grandparents, so getting to capture these 4 generations of family members together was extremely heartwarming and wonderful to get to do over the holiday.
With all of the warmth and love of this family you’d never be able to tell that we were all freezing our limbs off! To stave off the cold everyone cuddled up to keep warm.
With the rare occasion of having everyone together, we got to bring out some of our studio chairs to have the great grandparents cuddle up with their great grandchildren! It’s so wonderful to see their families united now that Sarah & Rachel’s families have moved here to their new homes in Indiana after having raised their families fully in Arizona. Not only do their kids get to spend time with their grandparents, but they also get to know their great grandparents (which is something not many of us can say we ever got to do)-!
This family is truly the embodiment of love & opened arms-! They spent their Session laughing together, helping one another, and at the end even invited us in to spend their Thanksgiving with them (though we sadly had to decline since Jenny had a cold).
We feel so lucky to get to capture love and these memories that last a lifetime. Especially during the past couple years of Pandemic craziness we’ve all really come to cherish these times with our closest loved ones and really appreciate these wonderful moments spent with them-!
Thank you so much to Rachel & the Keiths for having us capture your wonderful Thanksgiving celebration! It was so good to see you all, we are so happy that you are all reunited here in Indiana now, and we hope to get to spend time with you all again in the future! Thank you so much for braving the cold for your Holiday Session and we look forward to finishing up edits on your full gallery this week so that you too can enjoy looking through all of these wonderful memories! Happy December 1st, 2021, all!